Some Studs, Some Duds, and Kevin Love's Moustache

We’re back, baby! That’s right, after a lengthy hiatus due to the off-season, other time commitments, and general apathy towards the sort of NBA “news” typically found between July and October (Al Jefferson thinks the Bobcats are “ready to take the next step!”), Volume Shooters is returning for a second season. This year, in addition to the quality writing (OK, just quality .gifs, but please bear with us here) you’ve come to expect from Paul, Jack and Brian, we have a veritable stable of new writers coming into the fold this year anxious to share their thoughts on the greatest professional league in the world. We will have them introduce themselves when they write their first pieces, but trust us when we say they all will have good insight into the season – despite what you may think from talking to them every day.

But onto the important stuff: this NBA season! Most teams are 16-18 games in so far, so most of the extremely small sample size results (the Sixers can win the East! The Nuggets will be favorites in the lottery!) have evened themselves out. Despite this, there have been some major surprises thus far, and people are starting to backtrack on some of their preseason predictions. So which of these trends are likely to continue and which will die out by season’s end? Considering I was correct on a full ONE AND A HALF out of FIVE bold predictions last year, I feel as though I’m uniquely qualified to answer that question. We will examine some early season trends, and grade them as True, Truthy, Falsey, and “Skip Bayless-certified.” So here we go…

Trend: Indiana is the best team in the league

In fact, they are so good it bores Lance Stephenson

The Tweener: The Finals, Ejections, and an Actual Tweener!

On February 26 I wrote an inaugural Tweener column.  It's that time of the week again - and as a special bonus, the French Open is going on!  Here are this week's quick hitters:

>>>> Obligatory note here to acknowledge that Miami put in a dominant performance last night and will face the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals.  My co-writer Paul turned out an amazing piece yesterday on Gerald Green, which was fantastic because we actually had a Gerald Green sighting in last night's game!  I'll go ahead and throw out my ill-thought-out Spurs-in-6 prediction here.  Once Westbrook went down I think we all secretly wanted this.  And if someone tells you they know how this is going to play out - they're lying.  Which is why we'll probably put out a piece on Thursday about how that series is going to go.  And Gregg Popovich will react like this:

Obscure NBA Player of the Week: Gerald Green

Each week at Volume Shooters, we highlight an NBA player, past or present, who doesn't spend much time in the spotlight but is nonetheless a valuable cog in his team's quest for the championship. Obscure players tend to be on obscure teams, but with the playoffs going on, we tried to pick somebody out from one of the title contenders. Here's this week's edition:

During the Pacers' run this postseason, one of their weak points has been a complete lack of bench production. Bench production is obviously not as important in the postseason as it is for a whole 82 game schedule, but when all 5 of your starters are averaging more than 35 minutes per game and no bench player averages more than 17, it is pretty clear you have a lack of balance on your roster. Surprisingly, Frank Vogel seems to be turning to players with limited offensive skills (hello, Sam Young) over more dynamic options available on the bench. It is obviously important to keep sound defensive players on the floor against the likes of Lebron James, but rather than keep throwing Sam Young out there for 10 minutes a game, you have to think the fans would prefer to see this guy:

The photo is a bit blurry, but yes, that's Gerald Green, and yes that is a 10-foot rim which HE IS TRYING TO AVOID BANGING HIS CHIN ON. HIS CHIN. Since he's played less than half of the games in this postseason, seems like a great candidate for this week's column!

The Tweener: Moore, OK, we're here for you.

On February 26 I wrote an inaugural Tweener column. It's that time of the week again - this issue's quick hitters are below with a special topic at the end.

• This is the worst part of the playoffs, where the time between televised games gets longer, and the entertainment factor within each game gets smaller.  You have to assume the NBA office is performing every sort of voodoo magic they can think of to prevent a Memphis-Indiana final. If there wasn't the possibility that at any moment Wade could throw an alley-oop pass to Lebron, and if the Spurs offense wasn't the prettiest thing to watch since Emma Watson in Harry Potter 7 Part I (the saving grace of that movie), I wouldn't watch any of these Conference Finals games.  And even though Miami and San Antonio aren't the largest markets out there, they're still pretty effing big. And the best part is, no one knows what to think about that match up. Seriously. They've basically never played each other at full strength. Can Popovich draw up the perfect Xs and Os to beat a small ball, athletic, we're-faster-than-you-because-you-play-3-old-men kind of attack? So here's to Indiana beating Miami so this intrigue can live on for another year!

No really, the Pacers are so boring Lance Stephenson tried choking himself.

Obscure NBA Player of the Week: Ian Mahinmi

Each week at Volume Shooters, we highlight an NBA player, past or present, who doesn't spend much time in the spotlight but is nonetheless a valuable cog in his team's quest for the championship. Obscure players tend to be on obscure teams, but with the playoffs going on, we tried to pick somebody out from one of the title contenders. Here's this week's edition:

To quote a friend who I'm 99% sure never reads our blog, now that the Conference Finals have started, the playoffs are really starting to get down to brass tacks. All the fun teams pretenders have been eliminated, and with them, many of the truly obscure players still making a playoff rotation have been sent home for the summer. Fortunately for our readers, I will stop at nothing to bring a fresh edition of this column every week until the playoffs end (even if I am secretly just trying to take up all the good players so Shane Ryan's "Who's that Guy" column runs out of material before we do). With my task at hand, I scoured the remaining playoff rosters to find a non-household name who may trend on Twitter before the 2013 season is said and done. This week, I came up with this guy:

Although pictured here in a Dallas uniform, that's current Pacers backup center Ian (pronounced "Yan") Mahinmi, who somehow managed to get a custom wallpaper image with him ascending from a giant ball of flames. Estimated total downloads: 6 (well, 7 now that we've put it on here). Anyways, here's the lowdown on Ian.

Prediction Review

Way, way back in December 2012, before most of you even knew this blog existed, I put together a piece outlining 5 bold predictions for the upcoming NBA season. The prediction piece is a classic space-filler for most sports blogs looking to put up more content before the season started, and - full disclosure - that's exactly the purpose it served here. But unlike most preseason predictors who make their claims then pretend they never existed when the season blows them to smithereens, I am here to own up to my claims and see just how I did. A few quick disclosures:

• When I initially published the column, I specifically noted they would be bold predictions, i.e., things I didn't really expect to come true, but things I thought had a legitimate shot of happening that most people seemed to disregard. Does that excuse my pick of Kyrie Irving to win the scoring title? Absolutely not! Just wanted to state my case before diving into too much detail.
• These predictions were not technically made before the season, but they were made after about 13 games for each team, so the sample size was not high enough to really get a good read on any teams. I would have been pretty happy to get 2 out of these 5 predictions correct at the time I made them.
• I'll go ahead and score myself using the following grades: resounding victory, victory on a technicality, loss on a technicality, and "what were you thinking?"

With those out of the way, let's see how the predictions played out...

This guy knew a thing or two about bold predictions.,