• A panel of league executives named Larry Bird, the Pacers’ personnel chief, executive of the year over R.C. Buford of the Spurs and the Clippers’ Neil Olshey. The Pacers are a great story, and Bird is a worthy choice, but perhaps a surprising one. Bird’s three main offseason moves were:

1. Signing David West to a two-year, $20 million deal, a decision that looks brilliant now

2. Trading the draft rights to Kawhi Leonard and two well-regarded international prospects to the Spurs for George Hill, a move that has helped both teams but seems likely to become a long-term San Antonio win

3. Not blowing Indiana’s present or future cap space by overpaying a player who was not worth that sacrifice. Jamal Crawford, for instance, was in deep talks with the Pacers when the league resumed business after the lockout. Crawford eventually signed with Portland and mostly struggled. That discipline allowed Bird to snag Leandro Barbosa for a second-round pick at the trade deadline, and it has Indiana well-positioned to make prudent decisions with key free agents — Hill and Roy Hibbert — this summer.

Wow. When you list all of that, it’s not so surprising Bird got the nod here. Of course, much of Bird’s best work–in the draft and otherwise–came in prior seasons, and some of his most important work has been done with an eye several years into the future. Thinking about this as a standalone award for one season is always a bit awkward.

Olshey was the consensus preseason choice for nabbing a transformation superstar under unusual circumstances, with the league at the time holding final say-so over the Hornets.

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• The Mavs have signed Rick Carlisle to a four-year extension. A no-brainer deal for a great coach.

• The players’ union wants Bird Rights for a particular class of free agents, and they are taking their case to an arbitrator, according to Howard Beck of The New York Times. As Beck notes, this has major implications for the Knicks this summer.

• Matt Moore of CBS Sports with his take on how the Spurs will deal with Blake Griffin.

• Some ideas for how the Pacers might be able to get the ball more often to Roy Hibbert on the block.

• Neil Paine uses some fancy math to simulate how the Heat’s odds of winning the title change without Chris Bosh.

• O.J. Mayo, a restricted free agent this summer, wants to be a point guard. Read More…

Phil Jackson’s options may be limited if he’s interested in returning to the bench. (John W. McDonough/SI)

• Ken Berger of CBS Sports reports that no team has called Phil Jackson about a head-coaching position, though it should be noted only a few jobs are potentially open, and that most of them — Washington, Charlotte, Portland — aren’t exactly the type that would lure Jackson.

Berger’s piece has some great details about Jackson’s physical health, his goals in that regard for the next few months, the internal workings of the Knicks organization and whether Jackson wants to coach.

• John Hollinger previews the Thunder-Lakers series for ESPN.com, and Britt Robson does the same for SI.com. Both take the Thunder, with Robson going with Oklahoma City in five games. That’s my official prediction as well, and this feels like one of those series that will be more interesting in the build-up than it is on the court. I’ll leave the previewing to Hollinger and Robson, but here, to me, are the three most interesting questions of the series:

1. How much does Thabo Sefolosha play? He is by far the Thunder’s best option for defending Kobe Bryant, but he’s a minus on offense, and his presence on the court means that, with some rare exceptions that may not apply against the Lakers (see the next question), the Thunder don’t have their three best players on the floor together. James Harden has looked OK against Bryant in short stretches, but he’s at a size disadvantage, and he’s just not a polished defender on or off the ball — the latter an increasingly important part of defending Kobe.

2. Do the Thunder have the guts to go small, with Kevin Durant at power forward, when both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum are on the floor? They did this briefly in the Thunder’s second blowout win over the Lakers this season, which surprised me at the time. The Thunder are dynamite when they go small, but Scott Brooks might have to be opportunistic about it in this series. The Lakers typically have the less-threatening Jordan Hill on the floor across the end of the first/third quarters and the beginning of the second/fourth, and it will be interesting to see if the Thunder limit small-ball to those stretches.

3. Who does Kobe Bryant guard, and when? The easy answer is that he’ll rest on Sefolosha when possible and slide to Harden when the Thunder pair their two best guards. But Russell Westbrook has hurt the Lakers in the past, and it will be tough to watch Kobe waste big chunks of time on a non-scorer such as Sefolosha if Westbrook is running wild on Ramon Sessions. Then again, the Lakers need to conserve Bryant’s energy for offense. This will be another area where a coach must find the right balance. Read More…

• Very cool charts showing which play types (isolations, post-ups, etc.) various teams use most often, which players get the ball on each type of play, and which plays actually produce points at efficient rates. What makes this post by Ian Levy especially worth reading is his thoughtful, nuanced analysis of the raw numbers. That player X scores at a ho-hum rate on isolation plays, Levy writes, is not necessarily an indication that the player is behaving selfishly or even damaging his team’s offense. Team context is a malleable thing; change one little part of it, and the rest changes along with it in ways that are hard to predict.

• Boston could use more from one slumping bench player.

• A delightful chart of the worst shooters (in a minimum number of attempts) from various spots on the floor. Oh, Amar’e.

• A review of the four regular-season meetings between the Heat and Pacers.

• Potentially bad news involving Chris Andersen.

• At Basketball Prospectus, Kevin Pelton wonders if the playoffs bring unfair criticism of coaches. Read More…

Mike Woodson has won the support of Carmelo Anthony. (Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images)

• Frank Isola of the New York Daily News reports this morning that the Knicks and Mike Woodson have started discussions about a contract extension that would remove the “interim” tag from Woodson’s title in the big chair. Woodson later denied the talks are happening, which is what good soldiers are supposed to do when things leak, and Woodson knows only good soldiers get considered for big jobs at James Dolan’s Madison Square Garden. Dolan would likely make an exception for Phil Jackson, whom a very loud segment of New York fans insists is waiting by the phone at his ranch in Montana, dying to take this job.

• Matt Moore at CBS Sports is worried Woodson might get the job for the wrong reasons, i.e. his connections with several high-level Knicks employees and associates, and the fact that he has won Carmelo Anthony’s good will in part by letting him do whatever he wants on offense. These are fair concerns, and a full analysis of Woodson’s job in New York is for another day. But the Knicks, in general, have played well for him under trying circumstances, and he has shown a willingness to tweak the rotation and yank guys who don’t go all out on defense. Anthony has worked much harder on defense for Woodson than he did for Mike D’Antoni, and it remains to be seen whether that effort is a lasting thing or the temporary product of a position change (to power forward for a late-season stretch) and the dismissal of a coach Anthony didn’t especially like.

• Any analysis of an overtime game filled with clutch heroics is bound to focus on the end stages, but D.J. Foster of ClipperBlog makes a very good point at the top of his recap: Don’t forget what Caron Butler did at the beginning.

• Raja Bell has one year left on his contract for nearly $3.5 million, but the relationship between Bell and head coach Tyrone Corbin might be broken. Utah has the amnesty provision in hand and could have a medium-sized chunk of cap room by using it on Bell.

• Steve Aschburner of NBA.com takes an in-depth look at the Luol Deng-Andre Iguodala matchup, which is not going so well for the Bulls.

• Brian Robb of CelticsHub digs into the numbers to find one big reason Boston is up 3-1 on the Hawks. Hint: The C’s have so far kicked the worst habit of the Big Three era. Read More…

The Thunder have been inviting Jason Kidd to drive into the lane more often. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

• Jonathan Tjarks of SB Nation says Rick Carlisle is playing Jason Kidd and Brendan Haywood too many minutes at the expense of Delonte West, Roddy Beaubois, Brandan Wright and Ian Mahinmi. It has been interesting to watch how little the Thunder respect Kidd off the dribble, and how that lack of respect can bog down Dallas’ offense. Watch how the Thunder defend Kidd in pick-and-rolls with Dirk Nowitzki or any other Maverick big man screening for him. The Thunder will have the man defending the screener stay completely attached to that player rather than sliding off to prevent dribble penetration from Kidd. That is partly out of respect for Nowitzki – no one wants to leave that guy open — but the Thunder big men are willing to help off Nowitzki at least a little bit when a Dallas guard other than Kidd is handling the ball.

Why? Because they know Kidd at this stage does not like to drive into the lane and is rarely a threat to do so; more than 80 percent of his shot attempts this season were three-pointers, and he got to the line just 28 times the entire year. The Thunder are thus inviting Kidd into the lane, confident he doesn’t want to go there, and that if he actually does, their back-line defenders will have plenty of time to make an unexpected rotation. Kidd even got an And-1 out of this in Game 2 when he drove all the way to the rim, to the shock of everyone in the arena.

The consequences are big for Dallas. It is going to very hard for the Mavs to generate good shots when Kidd, Shawn Marion and a non-Dirk big man are on the court together, which is why Carlisle went small, with Dirk at center, for long chunks of Game 2.

• ESPN.com’s John Hollinger, on what NBA history tells us about which teams down 2-0 have a realistic chance of coming back:

I noted this a year ago after the Brandon Roy game between Dallas and Portland, but I’ll say it again: Just winning the games merely prolongs the agony usually. My research shows that when home teams win each of the first four games in a series, the home-court team is virtually assured of advancing unless it was outscored in the four games combined.

Last season, for instance, Dallas and Portland were tied at two apiece after four games, with the home team winning all four. But the Mavs had outscored Portland by 18 points. Dallas won the final two and advanced, the 24th team in the 25 situations where that had happened since the NBA-ABA merger to do so.

On the other hand, teams in that situation that didn’t have home-court advantage but did have a superior point differential have a more reasonable shot of advancing; those clubs have done so seven of 22 times.

• Brandon Bass talks to Jessica Camerato of Comcast SportsNet about his late mother, and how he learned to love basketball.

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• Kevin Arnovitz, on what to watch in Game 2 of the Grizzlies-Clippers series.

• Paul Pierce was wonderful against Atlanta on Tuesday night, scoring in so many ways, using that crafty footwork to create space. Kirk Goldsberry charts the Truth’s favorite shot locations.

• Doc Rivers on where Game 2 ranks among Pierce’s all-time great performances (via WEEI.com’s Paul Flannery):

“It ranks right up there when you factor in no Ray, no Rondo,” Doc Rivers said. “Literally, the only way we were going to win the game — I mean, that was the only way we were going to win the game — is if Paul played like that. He knew that. So did they, yet he still did it. It just tells you how special he is.”

• Kris Willis of Peachtree Hoops looks at how Rivers and Larry Drew managed that game and sees a big difference:

Boston played Paul Pierce the entire second half while Garnett and Bradley played the entire fourth. That signals that one team knew that it had its back against the wall without its best player and went for it in the second half. The Hawks played this more like a regular season game and certainly not like they had two days off in between Game 3.

I thought Larry Drew did an excellent job of protecting his starters minutes this season and the point of that was to have them be fresh for the playoffs. The playoffs are here and I don’t mind seeing those guys out there for 42-44 minutes a night if the situation calls for it. They have entire offseason to rest because this is money time. With the Bulls losing Derrick Rose and the potential return of Zaza Pachulia and maybe Al Horford the door is as much open for the Hawks as ever to finally crash the Eastern Conference Finals.

• The one Nugget trio having success against the Lakers. I really like the description of Andre Miller here. Read More…

• John Hollinger’s recap of an eight-game weekend is predictably great, especially his remarks on Reggie Evans’ out-of-nowhere play in the Clippers’ huge comeback. Evans is known as an energy guy, which means people think he’s a very good defensive player. This is usually not the case, especially when Evans has to defend in space, and against pick-and-rolls. He’s chronically out of position, sometimes due to over-aggressiveness, and he fouls everything in sight.

But on Sunday night, as Hollinger notes, Evans was under control, in the right place and hugely impactful. Ditto for Jason Collins, who slid around the perimeter against Kevin Garnett better than I can remember him doing against any team over the last half-decade. Sunday was quite a day for allegedly limited big man role players.

• Hollinger also takes aim at the notion that the lockout played some role in an (imaginary) NBA injury epidemic, which allegedly peaked over the weekend:

News flash: There is no evidence that ACL injuries happen from wear and tear. In fact, nobody is really sure how or why they happen, just that they do, which makes any discussion of what Chicago might have done to prevent Rose’s injury seem fairly idiotic. For further support, check out this story.

That link goes to this Associated Press story, in which David Altchek, a surgeon who has treated several NBA players, addresses the issue:

But Altchek argues that too much playing could actually make a player less susceptible to the injuries that Rose and Shumpert sustained, because they might lack the type of explosiveness it takes to blow out a knee ligament.

“In fact, I think if you’re tired, you’re a lot less likely to tear your ACL because you’re not going to be as explosive,” said Altchek, who has operated on players such as Josh Howard, David West and Purdue’s Robbie Hummel, and been a consultant for the NBA.

Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus has already noted that the pro-rated numbers of games and minutes missed to injury are actually down this season, and SI.com’s Will Carroll has written here that the NFL lockout resulted in no noticeable uptick in injuries.

I don’t pretend to know the complex things going on inside a player’s body during a the slog of a compressed schedule. Playing more games per day has obvious effects; players have been exhausted, bruised and possibly sleep-deprived. Perhaps being all of those things makes a player more prone to injury in ways we just don’t understand and that won’t necessarily manifest themselves with a jump in the number of injuries during a few months.

But if you are making the simple mathematical argument that the lockout resulted in a greater number of injuries, you are lacking evidence. Read More…

Larry Brown and Michael Jordan have exchanged barbs in the media.(Streeter Lecka, Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

• Larry Brown lashes out at Michael Jordan’s ownership style in Charlotte, and Rick Bonnell, the great Charlotte Observer beat writer covering the Bobcats, offers his informed take on the matter. And in a huge get, Bonnell sits down one-on-one with Jordan, who addresses Brown’s criticisms and the general notion that Charlotte has “tanked” the entire season. Must-read.

• The Jazz won the biggest game of the regular season on Tuesday night, clinching a playoff spot and sending Phoenix to the lottery. Evan Hall of Salt City Hoops with a fun line on Utah’s new weapon — a weapon the Jazz toyed with at the end of last season but essentially shelved until a pile of injuries on the wing forced Tyrone Corbin’s hand:

The “big” lineup of [Paul] Millsap-[Derrick] Favors-[Al] Jefferson is so good that it doesn’t even make sense. It has turned around every game that it has shown up in and tonight was no different. Devin Harris and Paul Millsap came back in when the Jazz were losing- they had built a double-digit lead within 8 minutes together on the floor. It might create some depth issues, but it seems like this should be our starting lineup against the Spurs. What do the Jazz have to lose?

I’ll get into this more in my preview of the Spurs-Jazz series (should it happen, anyway; the Jazz still have an outside shot at the No. 7 seed), but suffice it to say that in a very limited sample size, the Jazz have absolutely mauled people when these three bigs are on the court together. Read More…

• If you haven’t been keeping up with the conflict within the National Basketball Players Association, David Aldridge’s Monday column at NBA.com has most of the gory details all in one place.

• Bloomberg uses public records to show how much the union has paid Billy Hunter’s relatives over the last decade. A couple work directly for the union, and a couple, including Hunter’s daughter, Alexis, work for outside firms the union has hired over the years. Alexis Hunter works for a law firm called Steptoe & Johnson, which the union hired as outside counsel for a litigation matter and work before the National Labor Relations Board during the lockout. I reached out to Alexis Hunter in the fall, hoping to chat about working for her father, but she did not return emails or phone calls.

• Why the Wizards are keeping Ernie Grunfeld as their top basketball decision-maker despite four straight losing seasons.

• Mike Prada of the Wiz-themed blog Bullets Forever asks if Ted Leonsis, the team’s owner, acted too soon in agreeing to bring back Grunfeld. Read More…