Tim Duncan is gettin' it. (Getty Images)

Oh, Blake Griffin. You had no idea what kind of can of worms you were opening when you told UVO to play funk, did you?

Well, if you'd actually bothered to read the scouting report, you'd have known before the series that Tim Duncan has always been fueled by funk. But no, you just had to learn it the hard way, to the tune of 21 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists and two blocks per game on 59.4 percent from the floor and 80 percent from the line. Hope it was worth it. Maybe next year you'll be a little more careful.

Best caption wins some electrified funk for your Monday afternoon. Good luck.

In our last adventure: Dwyane Wade swears referee Tony Brothers to secrecy about his evil plan to play terribly in Game 3 before playing monstrously in Game 4. Pretty sneaky, Dwyane.

LeBron James is not sure who or what you are talking about at all. (Getty Images)

''Lance Stephenson? You want a quote about Lance Stephenson? I'm not even going to give him the time. Knock it off.'' -- LeBron James, donning his hater blockers on Saturday, according to Tom Withers of the Associated Press.

That's just textbook shoulder-brushing form by the Miami Heat star, who utterly dismissed the sideline choking gesture offered during Game 3 by Lance Stephenson (who has scored fewer points in his two-year NBA career than James has in his last five playoff games) before going out Sunday and producing one of the greatest playoff performances in recent memory to tie his Heat's Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Indiana Pacers at two games apiece. That James' performance came after Stephenson apologized for the gesture, and in a contest that saw the second-year reserve out of Louisville catch his sixth DNP-CD in Indy's nine postseason games, makes this all the more delicious.

Reached for comment on the matter, Stephenson said nothing, ever again, for the rest of his life.

Chris Paul had a fairly nightmarish three-game stretch to open the Western Conference semifinals against the San Antonio Spurs. He scored just 9.3 points per game on a paltry 30.8 percent shooting, earned just seven trips to the line (and, stunningly, made just two of his tries), and gave up a turnover for every 1.63 assists he dished, a cough-up rate more than 60 percent worse than the stellar 4.38-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio he managed during the regular season. Having a tough time with the Spurs isn't necessarily remarkable in and of itself; most players have had problems with the Spurs this year, which is they're 58-16 since the ball went up on Christmas Day.

But Chris Paul isn't most players, a fact of which he reminded us late in the fourth quarter Sunday, when he entered the lane, encountered three San Antonio defenders, absorbed the contact and flipped up some nonsense ... that took a couple of gentle bounces on the very top of the backboard (which is still in play) before bouncing back down through the hoop. It's a shot the most practiced H-O-R-S-E wizard wouldn't bet a nickel on, and it's something Chris Paul made to tie an elimination playoff game with 2 1/2 minutes left, before hitting the and-one freebie to give the Clips the lead.

Of course, it was an elimination game that the Clippers went on to lose. After scoring L.A.'s final seven points, Paul couldn't bring the Clips across the finish line by himself against a Spurs side that seems Marianas deep. The 102-99 loss sends San Antonio on to the Western Conference finals and Paul and his mates home after two rounds. Luckily for us, though, Game 4 also sent NBA fans off with a couple of other things.

Dwyane Wade seeks the counsel of official Tony Brothers. (Getty Images)

You're on the Basketball Internet today, so you know that NBA referee Tony Brothers is not wrong here. Dwyane Wade's awful Game 3, and his sideline showdown with Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, are dominating discussion on this Friday afternoon.

That's the kind of thing that tends to happen when you're playing terribly — through the first three games of Miami's Eastern Conference semifinal series, he has hit only 18 of 58 field-goal attempts (31 percent), missed all four 3-pointers he's taken, and just had the worst outing of his postseason career — and down 2-1 to the Indiana Pacers, which most of the world remains unsure is really the name of a basketball team.

But apparently, it also ate up some time between Wade and Brothers on the floor Thursday night. What words do you think passed between these two titans? Best caption wins an in-home performance by Brother and Brothers Entertainment. Good luck.

In our last adventure: James Harden turns the tables on Metta World Peace.

Of all the foes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has faced in his illustrious career as a basketball player, actor, author and ambassador, there's one he has yet to vanquish: Alex Trebek.

The NBA's all-time leading scorer appeared on an episode of "Celebrity Jeopardy!" back in October 2009 and famously flubbed a clue seeking the name of the former UCLA Bruins and Portland Trail Blazers big man whom pilot Roger Murdock said he dragged up and down the basketball court in a classic line from the 1980 comedy "Airplane!" The answer, of course, is Bill Walton. Despite having played the pilot and delivered the line himself, Kareem offered his own name. People laughed a lot.

[Related: Top 10 worst dressed NBA draft picks ever, featuring Jalen Rose]

Luckily, Kareem's not someone who takes offense at perceived slights or holds grudges, so it didn't become some whole big thing.

Still, when he was invited back to "Jeopardy!" to take part in the popular quiz show's "Power Players" Week — a five-night stand in Washington, D.C., featuring 15 celebrity contestants from the field of politics, literature, journalism and entertainment — you'd figure he had a measure of redemption on his mind. The Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers legend would not only defeat CNBC anchor David Faber and Fox News commentator Dana Perino in this competition for charity, but he'd look good doing it.

Well, about that ...

That answer + that bow tie + Faber coming away with the win = another couple years of stewing for Kareem, I suspect. Oh, well. At least we're all thinking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar watching pornography now. I'm sure he feels really good about that.

Video via retronewfoundland. Hat-tip to Jim Weber at Lost Letterman.

Steve Blake misses a potential go-ahead 3-pointer at the end of Game 2. (Getty Images)

After scoring 19 points and hitting five 3-pointers in a huge Game 7 performance to beat the Denver Nuggets, Steve Blake was lauded for shaking off a 12-for-33 mark in the first six games and coming up big when it counted. But after missing an open corner 3-pointer that would have given the Los Angeles Lakers a one-point lead in the closing seconds of Game 2 — a game that the Lakers led by seven with two minutes left, a game they gave away in a manner befitting Santa Claus, according to their center — some fickle fans changed their tune on the backup point guard and, disgustingly, brought his family into the mix.

From Dave McMenamin at ESPN Los Angeles:

After the game, both the Twitter feeds of Blake and his wife, Kristen, were inundated with criticism ranging from curse word-laden rants to threats.

"I hope your family gets murdered," read one tweet that Kristen Blake re-tweeted along with a single comment: "Wow." [...]

Steve Blake responded to the troublesome situation after Lakers practice on Thursday.

"It's pretty disappointing that there are a lot of hateful people out there, but you move on," Blake said. "I just don't appreciate it when it's toward my family. You can come at me all you want but when you say things about my wife and my kids, that makes me upset."

As horrendous and regrettable as this is, it's nothing new; as long as there have been sporting matches to lose, there have been goats blamed for losing them, and pockets of disgruntled, perspective-lacking fandom whose pursuit of doling that blame out ventures far beyond the pale of reason and decency. (And let's be clear about this: "Lakers fans" aren't to be blamed for death threats and hate speech lobbed uncaringly at the Blakes; "awful, lunatic-fringe idiots" are. Several bad apples don't spoil a gigantic, passionate bunch.)

What is relatively new, though, is how social media outlets — primarily Twitter, since more pros actually seem to use and manage Twitter accounts themselves than handle, say, their own Facebook pages or write their own blogs — and the immediate connections they afford fans to the objects of their obsession can factor into this mix.

Poor Tim Duncan. He's just trying to be a good San Antonio Spurs teammate, a real standup guy who helps his buddy Tiago Splitter when he's beat on the baseline by Caron Butler, and he gets punched in the face by a broken left hand and dunked on nastily. Not hard to see why that leads to some bummed-out walking away the likes of which I haven't seen since ...

Don't be sad, Tim. It's not all bad. As a matter of fact, things are, like, really good!

James Harden rattles Metta World Peace. (Getty Images)

So, we tried something a little bit different for Thursday's Create-a-Caption.

After Thursday morning's post on James Harden's inadvertent "remember me?" elbow on Metta World Peace during Wednesday night's Western Conference semifinal contest between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers drew a fair bit of interest, we decided to ask followers of the Yahoo! Sports Facebook page and @YahooSports Twitter account for their captions on the above photo of the aftermath, just to expand the C-a-C studio space a bit. And we got some good ones, too. Like, for example:

Ryan S.: ‎"Anything you can do, I CAN DO BETTER!"

Melissa S.: "And the Thunder rolls ... through a jaw or two!"

Alex B.: ‎"Damn, James, what's that nasty smell coming outta your beard?"

Thayer L.: "If you had a beard like mine, that wouldn't have hurt."

And so on.

Now, listen. I know some of you longtime C-a-C'ers, who have fought through my grading and layout changes and the capriciousness of the Y! commenting system, might find this untoward. Unfair. Unruly. Unkempt. Unclean. Unctuous. Uncy Herb.

BUT!

I know you guys have some ideas that you're just itching to let fly on this one. AND I know you're still driven by the thrill of victory and terrified by the agony of an elbow in the nose.

So let's hear it. How would you caption this photo, dear readers? Caption wins a beautiful tale on a lovely winter's night.

In our last adventure: Coach Del Negro can't even find the knobs on this Etch-a-Sketch.