In Ivan’ Johnson’s latest confession to the AJC:

“My thing is, I don’t really watch basketball so I don’t know who anybody is,” Johnson said after sinking two free throws with 4.6 seconds left to give the Hawks a 93-91 victory over the Timberwolves Saturday. “So when I match up against them, they are a regular player. I know the major players like LeBron [James], Kobe [Bryant], [Dwyane] Wade but all the extra ones I don’t know. Even if I did know them, I’m not going to be afraid. We are playing basketball.”

Yep, that’s right, he said that. Kevin Durant? Derrick Rose? Dirk Nowitzki? Typically, you’d think “NBA All-Star” or “MVP.” But nope; just another number to Ivan Johnson.

The Hawks came back with a strong second half to give the Heat their first loss of the season on Miami’s own court last night with a 100-92 victory. The Hawks were down by as many as 10 in the second quarter but came back to within three at the half.

Joe Johnson led the Hawks with 21 points. Al Horford also had a big night with 16 points and nine rebounds while Jeff Teague added 15 points and 5 assists of his own. But the clutch performance really came from newly acquired veteran T-Mac whose two 3-pointers late in the game sealed the deal for Atlanta.

Atlanta’s zone defense scheme worked well in keeping the Heat’s big three at bay– James had 28 points, Bosh had 19 and Wade was limited to only 12.

The two teams will tag up again this Thursday at Philips Arena.

Kevin Durant hit up Rucker Park. Kobe and LeBron took over the Drew League. And Hawks players have been practicing at a church in southeast Atlanta.

“We’ve been doing this long before we were getting paid,” Joe Johnson said. “It ain’t about that. It’s about staying in shape and enjoying the game.”

The NBA just canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, and David Stern’s gut tells him there probably won’t be games by Christmas.

But Hawks players are finding plenty of ways to stay in shape and keep their competitive edge.

“This is probably the best competition right here,” Josh Smith said. “I can get out there and bang bodies. It feels like a playoff game out there.”

The players union will hold a meeting on Friday, and talks between the two sides are scheduled for Tuesday. But in the meantime, Hawks players are getting creative and finding ways around their locked out state.

It’s almost time for lockout season, NBA fans! Tomorrow marks the highly anticipated expiration date for the current CBA, and the owners and players are so far apart that, well… let’s just say things aren’t looking good.

While day-to-day operations will almost surely be affected, and there might even be a shortened season, I’m still hopeful there will be a season.

I mean, honestly, guys like Kobe and LeBron weren’t meant to play in European leagues. What, where everything is so team oriented and structured? Where if you don’t practice, you don’t play? What would AI have done?

“If I can’t practice, I can’t practice, man. If I’m hurt, I’m hurt. I supposed to be the franchise player, and we’re sitting here talking about practice? Not a game. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. We talkin’ about practice. I mean, how silly is that?”

What would iso-Joe do in an environment founded on passing and where set plays rule the day?

And that’s just the basketball side of things.

Greece’s economy is going to pieces and citizens are rioting; a new IMF president was finally appointed after the former one was charged with sexual assault; Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is up to his elbows in corruption schemes.

Economic crises, sexual misconduct by high-ranking politicians, and corruption? How can we expose our players to such uncivilized, indecent atrocities? Because I mean, we don’t have any of those things here in the good ol’ United States ever… … …

So you see? Owners and players must come to their senses. We just can’t have a lockout and relegate our NBA stars to the European leagues.

After months of speculation and wondering, Magic center and Atlanta native Dwight Howard has stated he will enter the free agent market at the end of the 2011-2012 season. Howard claimed he would not sign a two-year contract extension to remain with Orlando– the longest deal he could sign under the current CBA.

“I want to win a championship,” Howard told NBA.com “I think the owners have to really know that. That’s been my goal and my mission since I’ve been in the NBA– to win a championship. I don’t have side goals or agendas. My main goal is to win a championship. I want to have 14 other guys who feel the same way.”

While Howard concedes that the team’s current mix of players has shown a similar intensity at times, he also says:

“It’s off and on. Sometimes guys are there whole-heartedly and then sometimes I’ve had teammates allow people getting in their ears and things like that effect [sic.] the way that they play and approach the game.”

Howard has played with the Magic for the entirety of his six-year career after being drafted in 2004. Could Howard be following in LeBron’s footsteps as yet another franchise player choosing personal glory over loyalty to a team? LeBron’s come under a lot of heat for it (hah, no pun intended) and is quite possibly the most hated person in Cleveland, but it’s kind of hard to blame him for his ultimate Decision. Besides, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for someone like Allen Iverson who had to have felt frustrated wasting away for years in Philadelphia without a title.

But maybe Orlando will make some major moves and build a championship-caliber team around their superstar. I mean hey, it worked for the Mavs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8xlyp3vP7s

Scottie Pippen got in a lot of trouble a few weeks ago for making the ludicrous statement that LeBron might be better than Michael Jordan. And by “a lot of trouble,” I mean the over-sensationalized, melodramatic, yell-about-it-on-PTI kind of trouble from the media. How dare he compare an indecisive, disloyal, cocky 26-year-old to a 6-time champion, 5-time MVP and 14-time All-Star?

I’ll admit, the devil’s advocate in me impulsively jumped to defend Pippen. Not that I originally thought LeBron was better than MJ necessarily; I just thought it was a case of “too soon to tell” and a little unfair to immediately bash Scottie. I was all, “How can you really compare two players when one is still in the league and has likely 10+ years left in him? Who’s to say that LeBron won’t one day win more rings and MVP awards? Who’s to say that he’s reached his full potential? What’s your basis for comparison anyways?”

Then I actually thought about it. I read Joe Posnanski’s “Point After” piece on it in this week’s Sports Illustrated. As a high school kid in North Carolina, Joe idolized and emulated MJ when he played at UNC. He bought the shoes and has personal tug-at-the-heartstrings memories of Jordan’s glory days. LeBron doesn’t have the MVP awards (and probably won’t if he stays in Miami with Wade and Bosh) and the championship rings.

But more than that, LeBron doesn’t bring the competitive intensity MJ had. He doesn’t have the heart. The “chip-on-your-shoulder” attitude. (And this was evident even before his Game 4 8-point performance.) LeBron didn’t have to. He was blessed with natural athleticism. Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Told that he was too weak, not cut out for it, would never make it. And that instilled in MJ a unique kind of stick-to-itiveness that eventually led him to greatness.

LeBron will have his moments. He’ll make incredible plays MJ was never physically capable of and he’ll win all kinds of awards. But when push comes to shove, he won’t show the same level of determination as MJ. He won’t push through in the face of adversity.

And so I’ve finally come around to the mainstream view: MJ > LeBron for sure. But not because of the rings or number of points or rebounds he had. MJ didn’t have LeBron’s natural talent to rely on. And the fierce intensity this bred will always make MJ greater than LeBron in my mind. Even if LeBron wins 7 championships, 6 MVPs and goes to the All-Star game 15 times.

Ever wonder if, financially speaking, the Hawks could trade Josh Smith for Chris Paul? Or what players they would have to give up to get Kobe Bryant? What about how to create the “Atlanta Heat” and what players it would take to get Dwayne Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh?

There are a number of rules, regulations, exceptions, and exemptions embedded in the CBA that make certain trades financially feasible based on player salaries, team payrolls and contract restrictions.

I recently discovered ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine, a tool that allows you to play GM. You can see what trades are possible based on a team’s payroll and players’ current salaries. The tool also provides the rationale for why a trade is not feasible based on the CBA and what would need to happen to make it work. Some of  Hollinger’s stats are also incorporated to determine the likely affect of the trade on wins and losses.

So for example, the Hawks could trade Kirk Hinrich and Zaza Pachulia for Dwight Howard for an increase in 17 wins.

If the Hawks wanted to get LeBron, Wade and Bosh (but still keep Joe Johnson), they’d have to give up Horford, Smith, Hinrich, Pachulia, and Williams. This would give them +26 wins according to Hollinger’s formula.

However, trading Josh Smith for Chris Paul would not work: the trade would put the Hawks over the salary cap, their incoming salaries are greater than 125% plus $100,000 of their outgoing salaries. The Hawks would need to cut $215,153 from the incoming value to make this trade possible.

Of course, this is all based purely on the contracts and economics rather than an owner or GM’s desires. And it’s all based on the current CBA, for that matter. Who knows what will happen with all the negotiations in the air? Or even if there will be an NBA season next year? But at least I’ve found a new toy to keep myself entertained with the “what-could-be’s” in the meantime.

The NBA Finals begin tomorrow night with the Miami Heat taking on the Dallas Mavericks. My heart’s with Dallas, but my head is leaning towards Miami.

It’d be great to see Dirk finally take home a ring, but a one-man team is going to have its work cut out for itself in a seven game series. Not that I don’t think highly of Kidd, Chandler, et. al., but the Big Three are The Big Three for a reason, and they’ve managed to live up to the hype thus far during these playoffs.

Former Hawks superstar Dominique Wilkins appeared less impressed with the potential of the Wade-Bosh-James trio, however, and had actually picked the Bulls over the Heat:

“(The Heat) has two superstars and a very good player in Chris Bosh, but they’re not that strong on their bench so I think it will be tough for them to beat Chicago.”

[Sidenote: I think poor Chris Bosh might forever be relegated to his place in the shadows of Wade and LeBron.]

And Wilkins probably would be against contraction in the NBA, preferring that superstars play against rather than with one another:

“We didn’t want to play with one another. We wanted to kick each other’s butt. Basically, that’s the way it was. I didn’t want to team up with (Larry) Bird or team up with Magic (Johnson) or (Michael) Jordan. I wanted to play against those guys.”

So we’ll soon see if Dirk and Wilkins-style basketball can overcome the Heat and this new-fangled contraction trend.

“Flopping.” The act of over-exaggerating the impact of a foul to get a call in your favor. It’s most often associated with soccer, and today’s Champions League championship match between Barcelona and Man U was no exception.

I couldn’t help but remember Rajon Rondo’s comeback against the Heat in which he dislocated an elbow, had it popped back into place and came back to play with essentially one arm. In one case, a player grimaces and rolls around as if his life is over after a slight shove; in another, a player shrugs off a dislocated elbow and returns with his game face on.

The NBA isn’t exactly void of its own floppers either, and players have been increasingly called out for it of late. LeBron James gave what was called the “greatest flop of all time” in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdvwepbKG9E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

You do what it takes to win. In basketball, sometimes that means falling over for a 250-lbs. center when a 185-lbs. guard runs into you, and sometimes that just means sucking it up and popping that elbow back into place.

But somehow it seems like that gap is that much greater in the NBA. Admittedly, this could be because my familiarity with great moments in soccer is dwarfed by my memory of NBA comeback stories. But it just seems like there aren’t as many of those instances in soccer, whereas basketball is full of them (Rondo, Willis Reed, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, etc.).

They are two different kind of games that entail different styles of play– quick sprints down the court in three to five minute increments versus long 45-minute stretches. You could also make a cultural argument– those Europeans and Latin Americans always have a flair for the dramatic. And of course, it’s about the incentive structure and the kind of behavior is rewarded and punished with free throw, free kicks, fouls and penalties. And what about “taking one for the team” in baseball? The hitter who inches up a little to get brushed by a ball inside?

This is a rather inconclusive thought. Not a value judgment one way or another, just some recent event-inspired musings. And maybe a shout out to any more knowledgeable soccer fans out there that might be able to shed some light on the issue!

The Heat had their second chance to knock the Sixers out, and they didn’t miss it this time. Back in front of a hometown crowd, Miami beat Philadelphia 97-91 in Game 5 to advance to Round 2 of the playoffs.

Philadelphia didn’t make it easy for them and stayed in the game refusing to back down. The younger and less experienced Sixers team fought hard to keep their postseason hopes alive. They kept the game close throughout and managed to came within one with 30 seconds left, but Dwayne Wade pretty much put this one to rest with a free throw that put the Heat ahead with nine seconds left.

Prior to the game, LeBron James was asked for his thoughts on the Heat and trying to move on. He responded by saying the team was “just finishing our breakfast” to quote Jay-Z.

Well, it looked like James choked a little on his breakfast with only 16 points– and only 3 in the first half– and 10 rebounds. Luckily for him, his teammates made up for it. Wade and Bosh had 26 and 22 points, respectively, and Chalmers made a huge contribution with 20 points off the bench. Miami didn’t shoot well from the field as a whole (40%) but managed to protect their lead by knocking down free throws (21-for-25, 84%) and getting a lot of second-chance points (18).

For the Sixers, Elton Brand and Andre Iguodala led with 22 points each, and Thaddeus Young’s hustle and 13 points off the bench helped keep the Sixers in the game. But the team struggled behind the arc going 2-for-10 from 3-point range.

The Heat will now shift their focus to the Celtics who knocked off the Knicks in four straight. This budding rivalry in the East should make for a great match-up in Round 2. The Heat have struggled against the Celtics, losing 3 of the 4 games in the regular season, but the one win was a 100-77 blowout at the end of the season. Game 1 will take place this Sunday at 3:30 PM EST.