So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Ask About Me

Danny Chau: In the NBA, every player was a star at some point in his life. Stardom, and the unshakable confidence that comes with it, is born and bred in the insulated bubbles of small-town high school basketball and the AAU circuit. But the pool widens at each level up, and most stars fizzle out and are faced with their new realities. Not everyone can be a star in the NBA, but the long season offers even the most marginalized player at least a few chances at capturing some of his former glory.

I wouldn’t lump Lance Stephenson anywhere near that “most marginalized” category; his season has been a great success, though quiet. But the high school phenom he once was might’ve scoffed at his modest averages as a show of triumph. There was nothing understated about New York City Legend Lance Stephenson. He was brash, he had a comically presumptuous nickname, and he bullied his way into the all-time record for most points scored in the city.

That outsize caricature of Stephenson still shows its face. In the second quarter of Game 5, Stephenson inexplicably jumped from the dotted semicircle in the lane while attempting to posterize Tyson Chandler. It was a foolhardy attempt, and probably wouldn’t have worked once in 100 computerized simulations — he just isn’t that kind of athlete. He dared to dream, and was given a lesson in pragmatism as he crumpled to the floor. It was the perfect play to illustrate the kind of humbling Stephenson has endured in the league.

The NBA playoffs are upon us, with 16 teams competing for the Larry O'Brien Trophy. But what about the other guys? What about the teams we wish were in the playoffs? We may know, in our heads, that they didn't do enough to get into the postseason, but that doesn't change how we feel in our hearts. We'd like to see these teams competing in Bill Simmons's Entertaining as Hell Tournament, but until that day, we'll just have to write longingly about why we wish they had made it to the promised land.

Portland Trail Blazers

Sean Fennessey: This isn't exactly a song for the Blazers because the Blazers were hard to watch this year. Nic Batum was long and lean and aggressively French, J.J. Hickson played like an exploding can of soda, and Weber State's Damian Lillard was a revelation to those who enjoy tiny-man dunks but don't much care for consistency. (He is only the Rookie of the Year because Anthony Davis hasn't totally figured out how to play basketball yet. He will.) I won't miss those Blazers and I certainly won't miss their bench, mostly because their bench doesn't exist beyond the many terrified faces of Meyers Leonard.

The national title game in riffs and GIFs.

All In

Brian Phillips: At some point during the White Hyperspace portion of the proceedings — between, say, Spike Albrecht's 19th consecutive falling-away 30-footer and the moment when Luke Hancock actually turned into a flock of doves — it hit me that life would be easier if this game weren't so much fun. If you hate the NCAA (and you do), then March Madness is always a time of intense cognitive dissonance. You love the product and despise the factory. You want to smash the whole corrupt system, but first maybe you'll just spend 90 straight couch-hours mainlining the event that makes the system possible. You're like an anti-cockfighting advocate who happened to walk past a cockfight one day and felt your brain go, "Yyyyeessssssss!"

So it's always kind of validating when the NCAA tournament ends with a clunker, or at least a game that's exciting but badly played. You get to cheer for some bumbly-heroic mid-major, and then after their floppy-haired 5-foot-11 shooting guard spends 40 minutes getting slaughtered by a basic zone defense, you get to think, "Well, it's just the NCAA." Last night, though? Last night doesn't leave you any outs. Last night was amazing, full stop, end of paragraph, fade to Northwestern Mutual commercial. Last night, watching the comebacks and the refusals to die, watching Trey Burke hurl himself around with the entire Upper Peninsula on his shoulders, watching about 900 high-pressure makes, you couldn't not wind up all-in. Which means the NCAA won again. At least the officiating sucked.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

The Silver Lining of the Neglect Bubble

netw3rk: Now riding their longest winning streak in 19 years, it's fair to say the Knicks are a good team; I could imagine them reaching the second round of the playoffs. The digit representing decades in my age has gone from two to three since the last time I thought the Knicks could or should reach the second round of the playoffs.

To be sure, other teams have been bad for stretches, missed the playoffs for stretches. But here's where the famed New York Bias enters. One way to think about NYB is as a constant focus on the narratives surrounding a New York City team from the media, irrespective of the team's relevance vis-à-vis wins and losses. This is viewed with annoyance from those on the outside as something approaching arrogance. To wit: Iman Shumpert's profile is boosted simply from his playing in New York, whereas, say, Dion Waiters is overlooked nationally because he plays in Cleveland. This is a fair gripe.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

The Tournament of Knicks-Nuggets Story Lines

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netw3rk: Without narratives our brains would be lost in a chaotic swirl of disparate and unconnected events. Narratives are the stories we tell ourselves. It's the way we imbue our lives with meaning. Without narratives we would all go through our lives like some debauched French existentialist philosopher with Memento disease. Are sports narratives reductive and dumb sometimes? Heck yeah; most times even. But the alternative would mean confronting the reality that you are watching dudes run back and forth, meaninglessly bouncing a ball, as time flows inexorably toward the eventual destruction of Earth when it is swallowed by our aging sun. That's no fun at all. So without any further ado, here are 16 mainstream narratives pertaining to the Knicks-Nuggets game in Denver presented in March Madness bracket form.

Behold a video catalogue of the most hated players in college basketball. Some were generational hate-figures found in our Most Hated College Basketball Players bracket. Some were just guys who pissed off our writers at some point or another.

Michael Jordan

Joe House: There is scientific evidence that suggests the neurological root of hatred follows an activation pattern in the brain that bears certain striking similarities to the pattern for love.

Which happens to provide a perfect explanation for what I'm about to say:

I hated Michael Jordan.

I grew up two miles from College Park, Maryland. While my formative hoops years were populated with heroes on the Washington Bullets and the still-unrivaled highs they delivered (35 years and counting … ), my hoops heart really belonged to the guys playing in Cole Field House. I loved Ernest Graham and Greg Manning and Adrian Branch and Albert King and Dutch Morley and Buck Williams and, of course, Len Bias. Because I could — and did — see those guys play. Not only were the ACC games broadcast on a predictable schedule that was mostly OK for a middle schooler, but I could go to the games (my elementary school had a hookup). And I went to a lot of them. Maryland's coach during this era was Lefty Driesell, who was the perfect underdog coach for a team that never quite got a regular seat at the ACC adults table, and who had a particular skill when it came to fomenting grievances with Dean Smith.

So of course I intensely disliked Michael Jordan. He was an underclassman and he was skinny and it wasn't eyeball-clear why he could play guard and forward so effectively (he used to KILL Maryland on the boards), but more than anything — he was stealing headlines that belonged to Len Bias. Above is the showboater Michael Jordan unnecessarily unveiling the cradle-dunk (10:33 mark) in Cole Field House at the end of a 1984 game Carolina had in the bag.

Join your Shootaround crew for some fake trades, pipe dreams, and beautiful, dark, twisted, deadline day fantasies.

The Book of Revelation

Golden State Warriors get: Devin Harris (Hawks), Earl Clark (Lakers), DeMarcus Cousins (Kings), Aaron Brooks (Kings)
Los Angeles Lakers get: Josh Smith (Hawks), Andris Biedrins (Warriors)
Atlanta Hawks get: Pau Gasol (Lakers), Tyreke Evans (Kings)
Sacramento Kings get: David Lee (Warriors), Klay Thompson (Warriors)

The worst-case scenario is that this is the annihilation of many teams at once — but at least it will be entertaining! The Lakers reunite Dwight Howard with his old pal Smith, who gets reunited with his own Cliff Paul; Biedrins slides in at the end of the bench. The Hawks build around Al Horford, Gasol, and Evans, who gets a little more institutional structure — for him, this is one of those “change of scenery” reboots. The Kings lose two streaky young stars but acquire solid cornerstones for the future, whatever that concept means to them. The Warriors get a couple experienced guards who, on any given night, might offer a passable impression of a fourth-quarter triggerman. They also get the budding Clark and Cousins, a combustible talent who could really benefit from a God-fearing coach. Ivan Johnson gets thrown in just to give the Warriors an edge in weirdness. Consider it an homage to 2006-07, when the Warriors traded a third of their team away in January and went on one of the most thrilling playoff runs ever.
— Hua Hsu

According to a list published by Forbes last summer, the New York Mets — crippled by a Ponzi scheme, castrated by incompetent ownership, and eviscerated by Little Brother Syndrome — are the 49th most valuable franchise in professional sports. This is remarkable and not at all surprising. The Mets are located in (the outer reaches) of the largest city in the country. They own their lavish new stadium. They charge $17 for a lobster roll at said ballpark. And despite their bungling reputation, the team has a rich history as a Major League expansion team made good. Two titles in 50 years — you could do worse. Ask a Padres fan. Forbes estimates the team's value at $719 million, a number that would easily roll past the $800 million mark, among the Atlanta Falcons, the Chicago Cubs, and the McLaren racing group — elite company — if they could only pull themselves from the depths of financial ruin. Last year, the team lopped $52 million from its 2011 payroll. They're down another $9 million this year to $84 million, which includes $19.3 million in dead money buried in the corpses of Jason Bay and Bobby Bonilla. And speaking of dead outfielders …

On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.

Everything, Everything

I don't know if something as unabashedly macro as the Super Bowl could ever be considered a microcosm for anything, but here's what I'd say: It seems almost stupidly fitting, after a season in which the NFL's commissioner displayed an uncharacteristic surplus of political ineptitude, that the league could not manage to keep its own power on. And it seems just as fitting that one of the more entertaining NFL seasons in recent memory climaxed near the goal line, with a quarterback who represents the possibilities of the future ultimately in charge of the game's result. The NFL is great, and the NFL is dysfunctional. It lives in the light, and it lives in the dark.
— Michael Weinreb

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Savvy

The Heat rolled in Brooklyn last night, thanks mostly to a 36-14 third quarter and another 24-9-7 night from the best player in the league. It was during that third quarter, though, that Miami’s other superstar got me thinking, and he did it with something he’s done so many times before:

Ray Lewis Is Truly Awesome

Ray Lewis has described many things as “awesome.” He dieted and exercised before this season and showed up to camp at his lightest weight in some 15 years: “It’s awesome,” he said, “I feel great.” Earlier this season he described Joe Flacco and the Ravens' much-improved offense as “awesome.” Last week, as he took a victory lap around the Ravens’ stadium one last time, he described it as “the most awesome thing you could ever ask for in any professional career.” After Baltimore’s twist-filled victory over Denver on Saturday, Lewis began doing that postgame proselytizing thing that’s common in such contexts. Maybe it’s the awareness that Lewis is nearing the end or maybe it was the delirium of the game, but there was something wildly moving and strange about his incantations. He said some cold-blooded shit about “weapons,” just as the tool that had been forged for his demise, Peyton Manning, walked up to hug him. Then his eyes got gone and serene as he admired his team’s mile-high handiwork: “Man … it’s just awesome,” he said, all blissful and blessed, clouds of mist surrounding his face, as though the Creator had taken a highlighter to him. There’ve been few players over the past decade as intense and absorbing as Lewis. For those of us who remember when “Ray Lewis weapons” turned up a different kind of search-engine result, there hasn’t been another athlete whose path to righteousness has felt so visceral and extreme.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you'll remember forever.

Fantasy Basketball

How does one describe watching the Warriors shoot out the lights on the Clippers last night? What appropriately captures the basketball joy it elicited? What words should I use? Ah, screw it. Take it away, Steph:

David Wright turns 30 in less than three weeks. Wright, for all intents and purposes, is the first superstar athlete I’ve rooted for who is also a peer. People talk about that disconcerting moment when they realize that, say, the NBA’s best player is five years younger than they are. Man, you are old, that realization seems to bellow. But contemporaries are a different sort of phenomenon. To follow a player that shares a birth year is to have your own successes and failures amplified.

On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.

With or Without You

Over the holiday, I was back in Chicago for the first time since the start of football season. Amid all the eating and drinking, there was plenty of time in the car, and with that came the chance to hear Chicago sports radio. I made a handful of long drives over the course of those few days, and each time the radio was on, the programming was the same — a re-airing of that week’s "Jay Cutler Show."

Each week (excluding those after a concussion), Cutler joins the "Waddle & Silvy" show on ESPN 1000 for an hour, and from what I gather, the segment is immensely popular. All of my Bears-fan friends are regular listeners, and considering the station was content to let it run for what seemed like three days, I imagine those friends are a representative sample. They tune in because, much like watching Cutler play football, just about anything can happen. Sunday’s Bears game against the Vikings was a perfect example.

In November 2007, Citigroup Chairman Charles Prince walked away from his post with $99 million in vested stock holdings and a pension. During his four-year tenure running the company, he banked more than $53 million in salary. Prince, a former lawyer and aggressive strategist, stepped down while Citi was in the midst of an epic meltdown, hemorrhaging 57 percent in third-quarter profit, done in by the subprime mortgage crisis. This spell — timed to the country’s worst economic collapse in 90 years — was a centralized slump of unheard-of proportions. As the Dow flailed, Prince walked away sheathed in gold.