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"FacebookPinterest\n\nEach Friday throughout the playoff season, GQ\u2019s guest blogger Bethlehem Shoals and fellow hoop-head David Roth, a sportswriter for The Wall Street Journal and The Awl, team up for a wide-ranging, savant-level dialogue about the week\u2019s action and the games ahead. Click here for Volume 1.\n\nDavid Roth: RIP Orlando Magic. I\u2019m not feeling especially cheated at the prospect of not getting another round of Dwight Howard. I\u2019m aware that he is, at the very least, a more effective rebounder and dunker than I am, at least at this stage in my career. But he\u2019s also a cocky beefcake-milquetoast who does nothing at all to make his teammates better or add aesthetic value to a game. Also, for reasons I can\u2019t totally explain, I take it personally that Howard is so bad at shooting free throws. And I hate him laughing at his crummy Stan Van Gundy imitation.\n\nBethlehem Shoals: I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re saying all this about the only man besides Michael Jordan to win both the Defensive Player of the Year award and the slam dunk contest.\n\nRoth: And I can\u2019t believe that Nate Robinson never won Defensive Player of the Year.\n\nShoals: What makes Howard so frustrating is that, really, a player that athletic should provoke some strong response in us. Stromile Swift and Sean Williams could make us pop up out of our seats. With Howard, as with Derrick Rose a lot of the time, the level of athleticism is both cloying and mundane. It\u2019s good to see them building out more of a game from there, but at times it feels like the human race being conquered by space monsters. You\u2019re not really going to be marveling at their technological innovations while they\u2019re burning down Manhattan, and as it burns, you\u2019re not going to spend the whole time crying or running. There\u2019s going to be a lot of sitting around, trying to eat and sleep, and wishing the aliens would go pick on Paraguay.\n\nRoth: So, the Grizzlies. They have been covered in this space, but I find them fascinating and harrowing to watch, if not exactly much fun. Although I do find it amusing that I barely knew some of Memphis\u2019s guys were in the NBA, and I kind of follow this stuff pretty hard. I remember Sam Young from Pitt, but 1) had totally forgotten about him and 2) still think his name has some NBA Videogame With Copyright Issues vibes on it. He might as well be named Player 31. The rest of the Grizz are similarly mysterious to me. Such as Darrell Arthur, for whom I wrote about 200 rookie cards when I was working at Topps, and then promptly forgot about. And I like Hamed Haddadi fine, but he looks like someone/everyone you\u2019d see at a Dead Meadow show. All beardy and kind of checked-out and distractable.\n\n Shoals: Anyone on the Grizzlies could be a folk hero, and I mean that in the most earthy, unimaginative way possible. I don\u2019t feel bad about that generalization, because they\u2019re just that: A blanket statement, but one that somehow doesn\u2019t involve picture-perfect teamwork or even much in the way of men-crafting-lodges chemistry. Also, I can\u2019t decide if it helps folk heroes to be flawed, or just kind of crappy, both of which would work in the Grizz\u2019s advantage. They turn over-compensation into a badge of honor, and as good as they\u2019ve been without Rudy Gay, they\u2019ll be better, and far less grotesque, with his shooting and slashing. The question is, what will be lost? The Grizzlies have made it seem like anything is possible in this first round; maybe it\u2019s only for the viewers, but even the doomed teams can grab onto a scrap of that and use it to their advantage. The Grizzlies have ennobled the Sirs, whose avoidance of a sweep may have been the feel-good hit of the playoffs, and the Nuggets, who remembered that if they burned down the arena with both teams inside, then only the survivors got to win. Out of respect for Chris Paul, I won\u2019t put the Hornets in that category. I\u2019m not sure how the Pacers fit into this, either.\n\nRoth: Yeah, I\u2019m still a little too sad about the end of the Chris Paul: Special Victims Unit (featuring Aaron Gray as Det. Werewolf and Carl Landry as The Chief) to go into that right now. And the Pacers were a Sirs, not a Grizz/Hornets crypto-success story, I think. Although the Pacers are maybe more like the Nuggets\u2014lots of good players, surprising and admirably offbeat style, but not quite good enough to beat a really good team. (Also, a commendable attachment to type: Denver likes people with tattoos on their throats, Indiana likes clean-shaven white guys who breathe exclusively through their mouths)\n\nShoals: Maybe I\u2019m partial to Philly, and I may be blatantly contradicting something I wrote earlier about Indy and the value of exposure, but I think the Sirs\u2014especially Jrue Holiday\u2014won a lot of people over. Maybe that\u2019s it. For the Pacers, it was an important commodity. We know who they are now. The Sirs had players that most casual fans were dimly aware of, but this wasn\u2019t just a chance to see them (being forced to, even). It was a solid argument for why we SHOULD be watching Philly for a long, long time. In Indy\u2019s case, it was good for the brand; with Philly, it was good for us.\n\nRoth: As someone who lived for the Nets\u2019 one playoff win per season when I was a kid, I know how good it is, and how much it means. That one win is worth so much to fans, and can be worth just as much to the team\u2019s image. And Indy and Philly needed that currency so badly. It means that much more when, suddenly, you are no longer Team Despair. Not that Philadelphia fans will or could ever be happy, or would know what to do if they were.\n\nShoals: Jrue Holiday helps a lot. From a structural standpoint, having that kind of point guard makes zany wings like Thaddeus Young and Andre Iguodala a lot more palatable. All of sudden, they fall into line; they make sense. It\u2019s like in the olden days, when teams would build around centers, except from the outside-in, and with implications for other players that don\u2019t just involve a lot of passive gawking. Holiday also taps right into the part of the brain designed to geek out over point guards\u2014he\u2019s got that level of control that allows him to take what otherwise might count as risks. That\u2019s one thing in a scorer, but when a player does that with the entire team at his disposal, it\u2019s one of those rare times when responsibility is bad-assed. I also wonder if the Sirs, and Holiday in particular, didn\u2019t benefit immensely from being matched up against Miami. Aside from all the obvious drawbacks that come with watching the Heat these days, the Sirs are also more likable because they do have a point guard. There\u2019s a sense of purposes that proceeds from there, one that couldn\u2019t be further from Miami\u2019s half-court offense.\n\nRoth: Yeah, that\u2019s what it keeps coming back to for me with the Heat. I don\u2019t like the moody-black-and-white-Nike-commercial brand, I don\u2019t like the cornball grievance-farming or the studio-gangsta woofery on the court or a lot of the rest of it. But mostly I just hate their style of basketball. All these grunty isolations are not a good look, and they\u2019re no fucking fun. Not to get into rosterbations when there\u2019s still a lot of basketball yet to be played, but I wonder if they couldn\u2019t flip Bosh for a real PG this offseason. But I also wonder whether that\u2019d make a difference. All those ball-stoppers are probably going to lead to a lot of stopped balls (&amp;quot;pause&amp;quot;\u2014Kenny Smith) no matter what.\n\nShoals: We need to stop complaining about the Heat so much. Or at least start complaining about our need to complain. Because that is certainly their fault, too. Meta-suck.\n\nRoth: Aesthetic AND ontological-theoretical bumout.\n\n Shoals: I keep trying to figure out whether the lack of interest in the Heat, after all is said and done, has allowed for this season to be so awesome (more room for other story lines) or makes the awesome season all the more surprising (since we\u2019ve had major stars, media time, and televised games wasted).\n\nRoth: If it kept the freaking Magic off the air a few times, I\u2019ll take it. I don\u2019t need to see Fred Durst, Rep. Allen West and Donald Duck in the front row high-fiving every time Dwight Howard accidentally makes a free throw. That\u2019s what nightmares are for.\n\nShoals is the founder of FreeDarko.com and the co-author of The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History.\n\nRoth writes for The Wall Street Journal, The Awl and Can\u2019t Stop The Bleeding."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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