100 Things We Learned This Season

1. Sometimes TV cameras do capture the torch being passed. 

2. President Obama knows how to pick a good head coach.

3. Commercials dealing with time travel are really tough to execute. It mainly has to do with the eyelines not matching.

4. Jalen Rose has strong feelings about Duke players. That's all we can say... because we're pretty sure we're not supposed to use that phrase.

5. Jalen Rose played beer pong in college, but he did not sell crack. But he knew where you could get crack.



6. Blake Griffin can dunk easily over cars and Europeans.

7. Greg Oden is far more tragic than we had originally thought.

8. It's possible to lead the NBA in scoring and not be one of the 10 most talked about players in the league.

9. Chris Bosh really sets awful picks.

10. Kendrick Perkins sets wonderful picks. And many of them.

11. Serge Ibaka is actually going to be a very good two-way player in this league, and not just a cult hero.

12. Shitloads of trades in Febuary make pretty much all 2,460 games intriguing.

13. Rudy Gay may really be worth that max contract he got.

14. Games should be reffed by robots.

15. Knick fans are the John Kerry of NBA fans.

16. Jerry Sloan is disturbed by indifference originating specifically from Deron Williams.

17. Terrible GMs make great analysts (See: Steve Kerr, Kevin McHale).

18. Former all-star power forwards make even better analysts (See: McHale, Chris Webber.

19. We just need to finally let Chuck have his solo cup out and about during All-Star weekend and every other TNT broadcast.

20. Andrew Bynum is the second best center in the world.

21. Dwight Howard is whiny and childish. Grow up Peter Pan.

22. LBJ creates fantastic movies, cartoon shows, books and commercials; buys soccer teams; and loves announcing his decisions on ESPN.

23. The Cleveland vs. Lebron rivalry will actually be fascinating for years to come.

24. Marcus Camby and Kurt Thomas are still playing solid, tough-guy, basketball. (You reading this Donnie Walsh?)

25. Free Nash!

26. Free Dirk!

27. Free the Golden State Warriors!

28. Free Luis Scola!

29. CP3 is no longer the King Tut of NBA point guards.

30. Melo is the best closer in the game, yep, even ahead of Mamba. And Kevin Martin.

31. Reincarnation is real. Just look at what Shawn Kemp turned into after he left this earth.

32. Sasha Vujacic hates Hoboken.

33. Avery Johnson doesn't know how to tie a tie or pick a suit jacket.

34. A season's worth of dumb teammates will make even John Wall punch a dude.

35. Kwame Brown is capable of putting the blinders on and playing decent basketball for the guy who routinely called him a pussy.

36. It takes more than one season on a decent team to learn anything of merit about Al Jefferson.

37. Tim Duncan had never lost six games in a row before this season.

38. Despite four championships and 13 50-win seasons in the past 14 years (only missing 50 wins in the lockout-shortened season of 1998-99), Tim Duncan, Greg Popovich and the entire Spurs organization continue to be underrated.

39. Big Z has a temper (and a pretty solid dodgeball arm).

40. JaVale McGee is absolutely as goofy as we all thought.

41. Rajon Rondo cares more about Kendrick Perkins than he does pretty much anything else.

42. Scott Skiles is exactly who we thought he was.

43. Derrick Rose has the characteristics of a serial killer, which makes for breathtaking basketball.

44. Even after four years and career averages of 2.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.9 and 0.1 assists, a player can have trade value as long as he's 7'3" and was drafted second overall.

45. DeMar DeRozan is staunch anti-prop activist.

46. Sometimes Leandro Barbosa just wants to hold a hand.

47. It takes more than an extraordinarily passionate and outspoken fanbase to save a franchise from two millionaire brothers.

48. DeMarcus Cousins is good with babies.

49. David Stern remains painfully smug.

50. Kobe still hates Smush Parker.

51. The bigger the head, the better the commercial.

52. Mixing a poor, pushover of a coach with surly veterans Rip Hamilton, Ben Wallace, Tracy McGrady and Tayshaun Prince makes for a volatile cocktail.

53. Paul Milsap can drop 46 points and carry a team to victory on any given night in November; the rest of the season, who knows.

54. Kevin Durant thinks there are a lot of fake tough guys in this league; he also thinks Chris Bosh is one of them.

55. One of Grant Hill's daughters is a picky eater when it comes to breakfast food.

56. Vinsanity is really going to limp out of this league, whether we like it or not. (We don't like it.)

57. T-Mac actually could exit gracefully as a long, lithe point guard, as long as he knocks off that intra-team, anti-coach political nonsense.

58. If you doubt Marcin Gortat, he will move to the southwest and make you regret it.

59. There are few things better than watching NBA players giggle on the bench.

60. Redheads seem to be, across the board, pretty wet behind the arc.

61. People who purchase ad space on Basketball-Reference.com are the best.

62. Middle names are fun.

63. Mike Bibby will play for free.

64. Mike Bibby is refreshingly candid.

65. Mike Bibby plays drinking games with his kid.

66. Mike Bibby does pilates.

67. Mike Bibby accidentally ate cat food once.

68. Rick Carlisle does a pretty great Bryan Cranston impression.

69. Andres Nocioni doesn't exist anymore.

70. Elton Brand, surprisingly, does still exist.

71. Josh Howard may never have existed at all.

72. Crying is OK when it's about trading away the fifth best player on to your team, but so NOT OK when it's about a losing streak.

73. Kevin Garnett loves strawberry jelly.

74. Michael Beasley can show us all how a resurrection really feels.

75. If a player gets bought out or waived by one team, be it Corey Brewer, Carlos Arroyo or even Sparta native Troy Murphy, that player will not make an impact on whatever team signs him.

76. Both the Prudential Center and MSG play the "Addams Family" theme song during NBA games, the latter a little more lively than the former.

77. Walt Frazier rhymes, at the very least, one out of every five sentences. And they are a lot more fun to listen to when the Knicks are winning.

78. Lawrence Frank was born to hold a clipboard and serve as an assistant coach.

79. Judging by what happened to both the Melo-era Knicks and the post-Melo Nuggets, "having to make a trade" can mean two very different things.

80. Ty Lawson and Ray Felton can play together as long as powder blue is involved.

81. The Heat with Lebron are worse than the Cavs with Lebron; that's a numerical fact.

82. As long as you're white, publicly pursuing individual statistical records during your team's 17-win season is seen as admirable.

83. Kobe's got a mouth on him something awful.

84. Tony Allen gets gnarlier with each passing year.

85. Trevor Ariza has been in the league for one more season than Chris Paul.

86. Brian Scalabrine has been in the league for three more seasons than Luol Deng.

87. Rookie Greg Monroe came to play.

88. If the vapid and flamboyant trades he orchestrated this season are any indication, Magic GM Otis Smith thinks he's managing a fantasy team.

89. A Monta Ellis-Steph Curry backcourt is just the kind of devilish tandem one would imagine it to be.

90. Nick Young is trying to become the most inefficiently hollow player to ever have a signature move.

91. LaMarcus Aldridge is trying to become the most efficiently talented player ever to not have a signature move.

92. Judging from his poor shot selection and refusal to recognize and heed his own shortcomings, Chauncey Billups doesn't know what year it is.

93. There doesn't seem to be a team out there willing to give Jerryd Bayless a chance, perhaps because of that rouge "y" in his first name.

94. Jeff Green doesn't take nearly enough contested threes to live up to that Celtic jersey number of his; Employee #8 he is not.

95. Peja Stojakovic can still contribute to a playoff-caliber team, but we're not sure if that says more about him or the 2010-2011 Dallas mavericks.

 96. If you ask Keith Bogans to start every game of the season, he'll get out there and run around for a few minutes for 82 games, no problem.

97. Rockets GM Daryl Morey sure knows how to leverage advanced stats into a mediocre team.

98. Nets GM Billy King has a weird, but kind of effective fetish for Lakers bench players.

99. Nets coach Avery Johnson has a weird, but kind of effective fetish for hard-nosed, scrappy, unskilled backup point guards, which Sundiata Gaines, Orien Greene and Mario West all really appreciate.

100. In certain cases, expecting one of the greatest regular seasons in NBA history really does pay off.