Russell Westbrook and the Thunder will be hard-pressed to keep up with the Spurs’ high-scoring attack. (Larry W. Smith/Landov)

There have been injuries across the Eastern Conference and the usual drama in Miami and Los Angeles, but amid all that hoopla, this is the series we should have been looking toward all along. With the Heat’s Chris Bosh hurting, the Thunder and Spurs (16-1 combined in the playoffs) stand clearly as the two best teams in the NBA. They were the two best offensive teams all season and finished in a virtual tie for 10th in points allowed per possession, meaning they both improved defensively as the season progressed.

And in the playoffs, as scoring has dropped leaguewide, these two juggernauts have increased their scoring rates. Given the star power, the Spurs’ pleasing style and the myriad connections between these two franchises at the highest levels, this should be a ludicrously entertaining series. Getcha popcorn, people.

Know this going in: If you are picking the Thunder to win, you are relying on trends and developments that haven’t yet happened. And that’s fine! Things change, teams improve, coaches tweak rotations and the state of basketball at any given time is never identical to what it was a day or a week or a month ago. The Thunder are young and growing, and picking them based on the notion that they have another gear to unleash on San Antonio is perfectly rational.

But every bit of evidence suggests that the Spurs are going to win this series. They have been the best team in the league for most of the season, and it hasn’t really been close. They are 29-2 in their last 31 games, and one of those losses came when coach Gregg Popovich sat Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. They have outscored opponents by about 15 points per 100 possessions in the last 30 games. The 1995-96 Bulls, the winningest team in league history, outscored opponents by 13.6 points per 100 possessions, the largest recorded margin.

When you start talking about how a team is dominating on a 1996 Bulls level, it’s probably smart to make that team the de facto favorite in any playoff series. The Spurs have also handled this Thunder team without much of a problem, going 8-2 against Oklahoma City over the last three seasons, including a 2-1 mark this season without Ginobili for any of the games. This season’s loss came when Popovich pulled his stars early on the second end of a back-to-back in early January. (The Thunder, in fairness, were on the third game of a back-to-back-to-back.)

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Tony Parker had 25 points in a March 16 win at Oklahoma City. (Larry W. Smith/Landov)

Before we get to a proper preview of the Western Conference finals, let us address a curiosity about the Spurs and Thunder courtesy of the fancy STATS LLC camera system installed in 10 arenas around the league, including in San Antonio and Oklahoma City. I’ve written about the tracking system here, and Zach McCann of ESPN.com had a nice feature on the technology last week. Basically, it tracks every movement of player, ball and referees in three dimensions. It tracks how fast players run, how often they dribble before particular types of shot attempts, how high in the air a rebounded ball is when a player grabs it, how far players run in total distance during a game, etc.

Here’s the curiosity: The folks at STATS were kind enough to send me their season leaders in several categories, including the most times a player dribbled the ball during a game. Turns out, two of the five highest dribble numbers, including the top spot, come from Spurs point guard Tony Parker in games against the Thunder. Parker dribbled 839 times in the Spurs’ Feb. 4 victory in San Antonio (where he scored 42 points) and 724 times in a thrilling March 16 win in Oklahoma City (where he scored 25).

It wasn’t just the number of dribbles that stood out. Parker shot the ball much more against the Thunder, averaging 19.7 field-goal attempts in three games compared to his season average of 14.8. He got to the foul line more often against the Thunder, so the jump in shot attempts is not the result of Parker’s failing to draw his usual number of shooting fouls. He dished 7.7 assists against Oklahoma City, identical to his season average.

Parker also dribbled more than usual each time he touched the ball. That might seem obvious given the overall increase in dribbles, but it nonetheless indicates that the broader jump isn’t merely the result of Parker’s actually getting the ball more often. Rather, it might indicate that he held the ball longer against the Thunder when he did get it. Parker dribbled the ball 7.5 times on average when he touched it during those two high-dribble games, compared to his season average of 5.5 dribble per touch, according to the SportsVU numbers.

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• Heat coach Erik Spoelstra essentially says the league is treating his team and Indiana differently when it comes to punishing hard fouls.

• The Pistons are angry that USA Basketball left Greg Monroe off the U.S. Select Team, a group of young players that will help the Olympic team prep for London.

• This is a pretty funny photo of Lou Williams playing defense.

• Sixers coach Doug Collins wanted point guard Jrue Holiday to attack Boston in Game 6, and by golly, Holiday attacked.

• The guys at SB Nation debate four general ways to fix the Lakers.

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Boston’s inability to keep up with the Sixers’ quicker legs allowed Jrue Holiday and his teammates easy access to the basket late in Game 6. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)

The Boston-Philadelphia second-round series is a battle between two bad offensive teams and two great defensive teams, and so the games have mostly been close and low-scoring. There has been one blowout, in the Celtics’ favor, but these teams are so close and the chances of an offensive explosion so low that even a wheezing, limping version of one of them could walk out with a win in Game 7 given a bit of luck and good shooting.

That’s good news for Boston, which is wheezing and limping home after the double blow of losing Game 6 on Wednesday in Philadelphia and likely losing second-year guard Avery Bradley for the rest of the playoffs because of multiple shoulder injuries that may require offseason surgery. In addition, shooting guard Ray Allen is suffering from injuries to both ankles, small forward Paul Pierce is playing through a strained MCL in his knee and center Greg Stiemsma’s foot problems have acted up again.

You have to wonder now if Boston has reached a tipping point with the injuries. If playing Game 7 at home represented something like a 65/35 proposition for the Celtics (and that’s probably generous), Bradley’s injury knocks that down to something like 50/50. Boston may well eke out a victory on Saturday, but we have likely been robbed of the chance to see a close-to-intact Celtics team — proud champions with a ferocious defense — make one last honest push for an NBA Finals appearance.

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• Howard Beck of The New York Times reflects on the Lakers’ dramatic (as always, with them) flameout against the Thunder. The piece includes this quote from the great Dr. Jack Ramsay:

“Pau [Gasol] and Andrew [Bynum], how much would you want to put the ball in either of their hands for a last shot in a close game?” Ramsay said, adding, “I don’t know where else you go to [besides Kobe Bryant].”

The Lakers had one of the league’s two or three best crunch-time offenses this season precisely because Bryant opted to share the burden a bit with Bynum. The 24-year-old center was an astounding 19-of-23 from the floor (82.6 percent) in the last three minutes of games in which the scoring margin was three points or fewer, and 35-of-46 (76.1 percent) if you extend the time/points parameters to five and five, according to NBA.com.

Ramsay’s larger point, though, is the classic big-man crunch-time issue: You have to pass the ball to a big man on the block, and for that to happen, the big man has to establish position, the defense must do its part to allow that to happen, and the guards must be willing to pass the ball. Bynum tried to establish position at the end of Game 2 in Oklahoma City, but the Thunder fronted him, and the Lakers could not find an antidote.

Things were more complicated down the stretch of the Lakers’ Game 4 collapse. Bynum indeed wanted the ball and had position several times, but on a few possessions, he was on the weak side of the floor after one swing of the ball. On others, players aside from Kobe — Metta World Peace, Steve Blake — looked off Bynum in the post for some reason. And Bynum, perhaps owing to some combination of fatigue and knowledge that Bryant would not pass, never tried to establish post position for a second time after try No. 1 did not yield the ball.

In that game, the Lakers could have entered the ball to Bynum several times had they worked harder to do it. That applies to everyone, but especially to Bryant, who broke plays, held the ball and took awful shots.

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Andre Iguodala (right) deserved All-Defensive recognition for his work in slowing down top scorers such as Carmelo Anthony. (Howard Smith/US Presswire)

We have reached the point, friends, where it’s time to end the voting for NBA All-Defensive team. Or it’s at least time to stop using it in barroom arguments and Hall of Fame debates.

It was revealed Wednesday that a “head coach” somewhere in the league cast an All-Defensive vote for Bulls power forward Carlos Boozer. The same Boozer whose flat-footed pick-and-roll defense makes him the target of opposing game plans and a crunch-time spectator so often for Chicago. The same Boozer against whom opposing power forwards posted a very good Player Efficiency Rating of 17.3. The same Boozer who is a regular fixture in all of Chicago’s worst defensive lineups — units that aren’t all that bad, because the team’s coaching and supporting players are so darn good.

Boozer received one second-team vote, placing him exactly two votes behind Shawn Marion, who spent the season tirelessly defending four positions for the Mavericks, one of the league’s 10 best defensive teams. Coaches are not allowed to vote for their players, so the anonymous Boozer backer is not Chicago’s Tom Thibodeau and may not be a head coach at all; some coaches have been known to farm out the voting to staff members.

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After Miami’s bloody, violent smackdown of Indiana in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Tuesday, Pacers president Larry Bird (and, also, just Larry Bird) told the Indianapolis Star that his team was “soft”:

“I can’t believe my team went soft,” Bird said on the phone. “S-O-F-T. I’m disappointed. I never thought it would happen.”

When asked to elaborate on those comments, an obviously frustrated Bird said, “That’s all I have to say.”

Bird is playing mind games here, just as he was during the legendary 1984 NBA Finals, when he called his Celtics teammates “sissies” after the Lakers ran Boston out of the building in a Game 3 blowout. In Game 4, the Celtics’ Kevin McHale nearly decapitated the Lakers’ Kurt Rambis, Boston scratched out an overtime win and Bird’s public rebuke now stands as one of those mysterious “turning points” of a classic NBA series.

Bird is right that the Heat outrebounded Indiana 49-35, a gap that overstates things a bit, because Indiana missed 59 shots and gave Miami a huge number of chances to snag high-percentage defensive rebounds. The Pacers also lost the flagrant foul count 2-1, on all three judges’ scorecards, and they shot a disturbing 10-of-30 from within 8 feet, according to NBA.com. Those missed close shots, including a few “soft” finishes by center Roy Hibbert, resulted in several run-outs and bundles of the chaotic fast-break points that fuel Miami’s attack when its half-court offense goes through bouts of stagnancy, as it did on Tuesday.

But with all due to respect to Larry Legend, when I watched Game 5 and reviewed pieces of it on Wednesday, I did not see a team undone by physically “soft” play. I saw a team that just has not been able to figure out the Heat’s fast, swarming defense. I saw a team that hasn’t been quite good enough to take advantage of the fleeting gaps that open up amid Miami’s frantic trapping and rotations. The Pacers have scored 97.1 points per 100 possessions in the first five games of the second round, according to Hoopdata, a number that would have ranked 29th in the regular season. That is a huge fall for a top-10 offense that improved dramatically as the season progressed. The decline is a result of both Miami’s defensive excellence and, to be frank, the fact that Indiana just might not have the talent to score enough in this series, which continues Thursday with the Pacers trying to avoid elimination at home in Game 6.

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• What should the Clippers do with coach Vinny Del Negro? They have a (cheap) team option on Del Negro for next season.

• Details on Golden State’s plans for a new privately funded arena in San Francisco.

• Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register gives his postmortem on the Lakers, with heavy emphasis on Pau Gasol’s future.

• Brian Kamenetzky of ESPN Los Angeles looks at the eight biggest questions facing the Lakers in the offseason. I’m in agreement with his take on coach Mike Brown’s future.

• Basketball Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton puts the Lakers’ season in clear-eyed perspective.

• Dwyane Wade on Danny Granger’s recent chest-puffing (via Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com):

“I’m all for standing up for your guys but certain things you just can’t keep doing,” Wade said. “My message to Granger was that you just can’t keep running up into people’s faces for altercations. We’re not fighting on this basketball court so let’s not act like we’re going to fight. We can be physical and do all that but certain things got to stop. Are you out here to play basketball or are you out here to be a tough guy?”

There are some level-headed comments from LeBron James in there, too. Wade is absolutely right that Granger has been yappy during this series, and needlessly so in some cases. But Wade is among the yappier players in the league at times — especially in terms of barking at referees, which is not the same thing as what Granger has done — and when it comes to inciting altercations, his cheap shot on Darren Collison remains the most dangerous act of this series so far.

• Are the Spurs playing basketball like the Dutch play soccer?

• Jay King looks at the decline of a clearly injured Ray Allen. The amazing thing, as King notes, is how effectively the mere threat of Allen’s shot can still create spacing for a Boston offense that badly needs it. Allen can’t plant, change directions or run at his normal level — he looks really unsteady at times — but his side-to-side movement still produced some good looks for the Celtics in their Game 5 win on Monday and generally helped keep the offense moving.

• Chris Sheridan of Sheridan Hoops reports that Dwight Howard still wants out of Orlando, even though the Magic dismissed coach Stan Van Gundy at Howard’s behest. We know by now that any message coming from Howard’s (fairly large) camp must be taken with a pile of salt, but if this report is accurate, you have to wonder why Howard agreed to stay for the 2012-13 season.

• Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel reports how Van Gundy found out he had lost his job on Monday:

Stan was in the Magic offices until 1 p.m and instead of being fired face-to-face, he was let go via his cell two hours later. Gutless. Shame on the DeVos family [which owns the team], too.

He deserved more from [CEO Alex] Martins and the Magic than that after five productive seasons, even if Van Gundy did violate front-office protocol.

Schmitz also has some details on Van Gundy’s immediate plans.

• Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo! Sports with some good perspective on James Harden’s series against the Lakers:

James Harden, by far, managed his best shooting night of the series — coming through with 16 points on 10 shots, a well-deserved payoff after he kept his wits about him and defense active in a second round that he could have let slip away. Not only was Harden missing chippies in the lane earlier in this series, as the Lakers clearly made his penetration a point of order, but he had the misfortune of having to guard the great Kobe Bryant for long stretches of play, rarely getting the benefit of the whistle along the way. Harden could have pouted, or forced things, but instead he came through with a steady, determined level of effort that thankfully paid off in Game 5. A remarkable and warming brand of professionalism from the third-year guard.

Harden wasn’t quite ready to defend Bryant consistently and effectively, at least when Kobe was committed to taking good shots within the flow of the offense. But he put in a game effort and didn’t get beaten to the point where he hurt his team. The guy just keeps getting better.

• Jackie MacMullan on Brandon Bass’ monster performance in Boston’s Game 5 win over the Sixers. The piece includes coach Doc Rivers’ praise for Rajon Rondo, including this tidbit:

“I thought the second half was one of the best games [Rondo's] had, in my opinion, this year,” Rivers declared. “Because I thought it was more than just the basketball part of it. I thought his will, his leadership, we needed it … whether he scored, I didn’t care what he did. He played with force, got us in our stuff.

“I could hear him barking at guys, demanding guys to get into spots. And that’s not something he loves doing.”

That last line is interesting, isn’t it?

• Another big Boston development in that one: Greg Stiemsma’s re-emergence as a usable bench player.

• At CelticsHub, Brian Robb writes on how Bass and Stiemsma stepped up in a big moment. There’s a great quote in here from Bass on Keyon Dooling.

• Derek Bodner of the Sixers-themed blog Liberty Ballers on Game 5:

We’re playing with house money. We really are. We got lucky with [Derrick] Rose and [Joakim] Noah’s injury against Chicago and are now giving the Celtics a run. [Jrue] Holiday and [Evan] Turner are getting significant experience and court time starting together, [Andre] Iguodala is getting some of the recognition he deserves, and perhaps Spencer Hawes made himself some money with his two games against Chicago.

We might be playing with house money, but that one hurt. A lot.

• Should the hack-a-whomever strategy, used recently by Spurs coach Gregg Popovich against Clippers power forward Reggie Evans, be disallowed? Some very interesting thoughts here.

• Should the Hornets re-sign Carl Landry?

• Mike Woodson’s extension with the Knicks will come any day now.

The Lakers likely will need to break up their frontcourt of Pau Gasol (left) and Andrew Bynum in order to upgrade around Kobe Bryant. (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

An optimist might look at the Lakers-Thunder series and come away thinking about how close Los Angeles is to championship contention. The middle three games of Oklahoma City’s five-game win in the Western Conference semifinals were all close, and with better crunch-time execution, the Lakers could have won all three and be headed home for a chance to close the deal in Game 6.

But that’s the wrong way to look at things, and the Lakers know it internally. The other two games were Oklahoma City runaways, and mixing blowout losses with down-to-the-wire contests is no way to win a playoff series. Luck, fatigue and randomness will inevitably swing a crunch-time game or two against you, and given the taxing load that the Lakers’ three best players carried all season, fatigue surely played a role in late collapses during Game 2 and Game 4 — the latter forever known as the game in which Kobe Bryant went completely off the rails, and then threw a long-tenured champion teammate under the bus.

This team was never a real championship contender. The Lakers had the sixth-best point differential among Western Conference teams, and they just couldn’t function as an elite club on both ends of the floor. They struggled to score in the first half of the season, checking in as a league-average offense. The March trade for point guard Ramon Sessions goosed the offense, but the defense collapsed over the final 20 games, surrendering points at a rate that would have made it the NBA’s worst for the full season. Sessions, among the worst defenders in the league for his position, didn’t help, but he alone cannot explain a team playing top-10 level defense for half a season and then hemorrhaging points like the Bobcats for 20 games, plus the playoffs.

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Stan Van Gundy (left) formed a successful partnership with Dwight Howard. (Jason O. Watson/US Presswire)

The best thing that can happen to your favorite team is the union of a true superstar and a Hall of Fame-level coach, two of the most prized possessions in professional basketball. While plenty of superstars have won titles without coaches regarded as geniuses at the time, some of the greatest teams in modern history have been built on such pairings.

Chicago had it in the Phil Jackson/Michael Jordan duo, and Jackson moved on to team with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant with the Lakers. San Antonio somehow still has it in the Gregg Popovich/Tim Duncan mind meld. Dallas appears to have stumbled on it fairly late in Dirk Nowitzki’s career via the Nowitzki/Rick Carlisle team, though last season’s champion faces questions after a first-round exit this year. The Bulls look like they very well might have one for the next decade in Derrick Rose and Tom Thibodeau, though it’s still early in their partnership, of course.

Here’s the crazy thing about the Orlando Magic: They had it, and on Monday, they voluntarily chose to forfeit that ridiculous advantage by firing Stan Van Gundy at Dwight Howard’s behest. (Calling Van Gundy a Hall of Fame coach is a bit premature, but he’s on that level.) General manager Otis Smith has also left the team, the Magic announced.

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