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Adorable that y'all think this means diddly.

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Really pulling for the Mavs on Wednesday.

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4-0

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a. Freedom of movement, including illegal screens.
b. Traveling calls, especially on the perimeter.
c. Point-of-contact plays, before, during and after shot attempts. “We have clarified the rule for teams, that if it affects the natural follow-through, even though the ball was released, we would penalize the defender,” Vaden said. “Hits on the elbow, we’ve gotten better at.”
d. Push or pull plays, physically redirecting an opponent.
e. Delay-of-game calls for handling the ball after it passes through the net. Said Vaden: “Everybody complained, but after about a month of the season, everybody’s running from the ball. The players have done a great job in adapting to this.”
f. Verticality. “It’s easy for us to call ‘A’ to ‘B’ movement,” Vaden said, referring to a defender who goes up in the air but not quite straight up. “As the season went on, we saw more of the defender turning in the air and [confronting the ball handler] with his side.” That’s a defensive foul too. But a scorer who wards off the defender with an arm, leads with a knee or elbow or even “displaces” the man so he cannot rebound can wind up with an offensive foul.

2. Last year in the playoffs, for the first time, the league consistently assigned pairs (and sometimes even entire crews) of officials throughout the playoffs and it appears that the same thing will happen this year too. For those who like this sort of thing, the "crewing" of the officials, which hadn't ever really happened in recent years to any significant extent, was pretty obvious in the conference finals:

a. McCutchen and Brothers worked 3 games and each worked with the other in all 3 games (and those two worked with Jason Phillips in 2 of their 3 games).
b.Danny Crawford worked exclusively with James Capers and Marc Davis (though that likely would have changed had the Spurs-Grizzlies series been extended).
c. Joey Crawford worked exclusively with Derrick Stafford.
d. Foster and Kennedy worked 2 games together.

It was really obvious in the conference semifinals, where:

a. Ken Mauer worked 4 games, all with Ed Malloy and Tom Washington;
b. Danny Crawford worked 4 games and spent 3 of them with Davis and Phillips;
c. Scott Foster worked 4 games and worked 3 of them with Bill Kennedy and John Goble;
d. Joey Crawford worked 4 games and spent 3 of them with Derrick Stafford and 2 of those were Crawford-Stafford-Sean Corbin crews.

Overall, during the course of the entire playoff season, Ken Mauer and Ed Malloy worked 12 games together, Danny Crawford and Marc Davis worked 12 games together, Scott Foster and Bill Kennedy worked 11 games together, and a number of pairs worked at least 6 games together, including Joey Crawford/Derrick Stafford; Danny Crawford/Jason Phillips; and Mike Callahan/Tom Washington. I thought at the time that it made for better officiated playoff games pretty much across the board; obviously, they weren't perfect and there was still some controversy, but not nearly as much as in previous years.

3. The league will have a twitter account to provide clarifications on rules/fouls in something close to real time (@NBAOfficial). This exists during the regular season too, but seems likely to be more active during the playoffs.

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Another crazy curveball on Dallas' end.

A win vs Grizzlies causes the Mavericks to lose a 1st round pick in a loaded draft but sets up a match with OKC

A loss vs Grizzles sends the mavericks to San Antonio but we get a 1st round pick as a consolation prize

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Dallas has been hoping to get this pick off their books. Been untradeable which sucks when trying to get players in free agency and becomes unprotected in 2018, which means losing a lottery pick becomes a possibility.

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Congrats. You'll be able to tell your grandchildren about the time the Rockets swept the Spurs in the regular season.

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@JMcDonald_SAEN: "Things fans of teams that haven't won a title in 20 years celebrate for $200, Alex" ---> RT @Allen_conCemex ICYMI: Spurs got swept.

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Congrats. You'll be able to tell your grandchildren about the time the Rockets swept the Spurs in the regular season and then the Rockets turned around and got swept by the Spurs in the Playoffs

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FIFY

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See, the difference here is one of these things has happened and the other has not.

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Would love to devour both of the lesser Texas teams en route to our fifth banner

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Would love to devour both of the lesser Texas teams en route to our fifth banner

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