Bulls In Time, Millsap Supernova, And The Strangest Play: The Corbin Smith Review Of Basketball Highlights

This article is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NBA Playoffs coverage.

Imagine, for a moment, that I am an alien who transwarped to this planet from a distant, alien star. Now imagine that one night, while my wife—she knows that I am an alien, we have a bond of trust that goes deeper than species or time and there are no secrets between us—and our two children sleep in their beds, I step outside and look to the sky.

After a while, I find the star that was once my home. I stare, trying to pry open its secrets from so far away. "It used to be so much bigger," I think. "But now it is merely a dot in the sky of an infinite, dynamic moving history. My vision of what was once my home is no longer tangible to me; hell, what I'm looking at, right at that moment, is the world of nearly twenty years past broadcast to me over a slow connection of light. I cannot know what was once my home as it exists in the present. Its present will not be visible to me for years.

And I weep. Truly, the past has passed; I could not be further from home. But I remember that the past is truly not, and that the future requires tales both told and learned. And so, I sneak into my children's rooms, and whisper legends from my home planet into their ears.

Scottie Pippen daps up Michael Jordan at Heat-Hornets Game 7 — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey)May 1, 2016

Could you imagine being Scottie Pippen or Michael Jordan when the other dude dies?

You've been associated with this other guy for essentially all your life, and together have won accomplishments that carved your names into the marble slate of history. And now you have to sit there at his funeral, feeling everyone side-eyeing you and thinking "Damn, can't believe Scottie/Michael is dead. Time moves so fast. Soon, Scottie/Michael will be dead, too. Wow." Every time you see the guy, you would have to think about it that grim un-twinning, and that future. I admire them for putting all that dread aside and smiling and hugging together for one second.

Speaking of which, who WILL die first? Pippen is still a workout freak while Jordan is famously a connoisseur of dangerous delights, be they cigars, harrowingly bad jeans, or the long, hard needle of pressure, and so the lifestyle factors bode well/poorly for Scottie. Jordan has even done some fatalistic rapping about believing he would die young.

But Michael Jordan also has literally a billion dollars, and even accounting for many unwise bets between now and then, he will have even more money by the time his whole physical thing shuts down. Biotech may also have progressed to a point where he can slowly have his whole body replaced by robot parts. Maybe, someday, he can even use them to play basketball again, in a nationwide barnstorming tour where RoboJordan and like eight CBA-level players take on a local NAIA College Squad. They use the '90's Bulls intro, give away some Jordan products, sell merch—t-shirts reading "RARE AIR: RoboJordan American Tour 2029"—play a bunch of Michael's greatest moments on the jumbotron. It will be great so see him back out there, cheating death for all us poor suckers!

RATING: TWO DOOMED MEN

If I'm being honest, I wasn't really able to conjure any lengthy insights or high concept jokes regarding this mix of Paul Millsap thundering down on the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of Atlanta's first round series with the Hawks. I just think it's totally awesome and I want you to watch it. Millsap is one of the NBA's more taken-for-granted players, a second round pick from a mid-major school who has become an undeniable do-everything forward in the NBA while maintaining a impenetrable, Duncan-lite demeanor on and off the court.

Anyway, Millsap is certainly not the kind of dude that comes to mind when you think of multi-faceted, all-phase, all-type scoring. But here he is, making midrange isos, spot-up threes, personally grinding Celtics into dust, packing them to the rim, and smokin' 'em up. Six perfect minutes of Reggie Miller-tinged on court destruction, undersized and overachieving Paul Millsap is reborn to us as an unstoppable force of nature.

Generally, when less-than-immaculate-talents have a big game and you sit down and take in the highlights, they just seem like beneficiaries of variance—the same dude, having a big game. It's fun, but not transporting. But here, Milsap appears possessed by the very spirit of dominance, some intangible force of excellence that has lived in the hearts of so many NBA ULTRASTARS but was previously undetectable in this particular vessel. It's like watching a desperate and hardened Paul Millsap from the future that journeyed back to our present to stomp a mudhole in the Celtics and presumably also stop World War Three.

Unfortunately, the Hawks lost on some kooky bullshit and a terrible overtime period. The mission is not complete, no matter what Paul did. All he can do is sit and wait and hope the series win ends up being enough to keep Earth on the rail of order. Lord knows he did his part.

RATING: A PLUS

What a sequence of events… — NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT)May 3, 2016

Joe Flynn wrote very beautifully about the absurdist ending of Spurs/Thunder Game 2 in this space, so I won't regale you with extensive thoughts on what has fast become an iconic play in the history of NBA maleficence. All I need say is that moments like this, when the last play of a game is botched so severely, on so many levels, by so many parties, are both beautiful and valuable.

Basketball games that are merely won or lost on the merits of performance enter into our minds as ones and zeroes. Sure, in the immediate aftermath, we might explore the space of the game, looking for some switch or trigger or unhappened coincidence that could have altered the outcome. But, for the most part, we accept what happened and move on, assigning victory to the victors and trouble and failure to the loser. It's easier that way.

But when a game's ending, through one play or an entire batshit quarter, consigns the outcome to the irrational space of referee meltdown? Ah, then its madness will reverberate through the ages. The game itself is forever tainted by a perception that victory was not suitably earned, but gifted to the winners by an irrational universe.

A deep enough examination would probably reveal that all athletic competition in the history of time is built upon these quantum spasms. But we ignore it, because setting the universe in order is, simply, what humans are designed to do. Still, we should value these uncomfortable moments during which we simply cannot construct a comfortable space in which to place the game. Let the nonsense massage your brain, and open your soul.

RATING: A

The NBA tide has turned, and public perception of LeBron James as a golden basketball god amongst sweaty mortals is on the wane. "Steph Curry This," speaks the rabble, "Steph Curry That." Because LeBron has continued to be blazingly, crazily great in Golden State's supernova shadow, we will explore one quality Lebron highlight a week:

LeBron with the PERFECT pass to Jefferson! — NBA (@NBA)May 2, 2016

LeBron puts on his Leopard Spotted Draymond Green Fedora for this nifty midcourt assist on the break. It's hard not to love a good two-handed overhand throw, just to release stress. Personally, I like to sit in a piping hot bathtub and just overhand throw bars of soap at the wall. Reminds me that I'm in control.

It's too bad Lebron's wonderful pass had to end up in the hands of Richard Jefferson, of all people. No one wants to watch Richard Jefferson dunk. When Richard Jefferson first dunked, he went up to his mother and told her and she grabbed his shoulder and looked into his eyes and said "Richard, I don't care, and no one else will. There is no funk in your game. You are cursed to serve a functionary purpose on NBA teams of varying quality for the length of your life. Please, Richard, you are a good basketball player, but seek validation elsewhere, because you will not get it from the aesthetic quality of your dunks, ever."

He was 13, then. In the immediate aftermath of that speech, Jefferson defiantly got a stick and point tattoo of his initials, rendered in a cartoonish 3D font, on his right shoulder. But soon after that bizarre mistake, a very stupid rebellion with which he must live the rest of his life, he took his mother's sage advice and never looked back. His dunks are all totally dorky now and he's cool with it.

RATING: C+

The bear in a wood

Refracts rainbows with paws.

A distracted bee.

Thank you for joining me on the journey this week. Now go stand outside in the brisk spring air and absorb the magic nature has to offer you.