"Thanks so much, Blake Griffin. No, seriously — we really appreciate you hustling like that in the first quarter of a Sunday matinee against the Pistons. Just knowing that a single possession means enough to you to chance getting injured by careening into the front row ... well, that alone is worth the exorbitant price of floor seats plus around $65 worth of popcorn, drinks and nachos. Thanks for showing us you care! Love you!" — These ladies, probably.

After the mess was cleaned up and Griffin had toweled off, he and Chris Paul "walked over to the woman who was struck and shook her hand," according to Melissa Rohlin of the Los Angeles Times. That's nice manners and all, but I think I'd still be pretty bummed about feeling kind of gross for the next three-plus quarters. Being sticky is the worst.

Actually, no. I'm wrong. Being sticky is the second-worst; this could have ended worse for these ladies. Just ask Phoenix Suns vice chairman Jahm Najafi. (How soon we forget.)

Hit the jump for more on Griffin's front-row excursion and more on Sunday's top sports stories from our friends at the Yahoo! Sports Minute.

Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics share a laugh. (Getty Images)The Boston Celtics used a nice, clean, simple pick-and-pop action late in the fourth quarter to beat the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night. I wrote about the play, which Kevin Garnett finished by nailing a wide-open long-range jumper, yesterday as sort of a shout-out to the late-game execution and precision that have become Boston's calling cards in the Garnett/Paul Pierce/Ray Allen era.

ESPN Boston's Chris Forsberg asked Garnett, Pierce and Doc Rivers about the play, which Pierce says they've "run millions of times" and worked like a charm on Wednesday (albeit a little late in the shot clock for Rivers' taste). Turns out the C's have a pet name for it.

After the game, Garnett noted, "Whatever you want to call it. A simple play, kept it very simple. Paul had the one-on-one, he cut it off, came to me. We call it the Madison Square Garden."

Why MSG?

Maybe it has to do with all the game-winners Boston has produced there, including the same KG pick-and-pop with Pierce back in 2009.

Zing!

Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers and Jared Dudley of the Phoenix Suns. (AP)

I mean, for one thing, people put Jared Dudley in the corner a lot. Like, 12 percent of the time.

StatsCube + Jennifer Grey jokes = Happy St. Patrick's Day weekend, everyone! Be safe out there!

Best caption wins a Swayze serenade (which is the best kind). Good luck.

In our last adventure: Even Dwight Howard's kind of confused about what's going on. (Obviously.)

Offer Danny Ainge anything less than two first-rounders and get popped in the Chiclets. (Getty Images)With his Boston Celtics sitting in the seventh spot in the Eastern Conference on Thursday morning, team president of basketball operations Danny Ainge told Boston radio station WEEI that there was a 50-50 chance that he'd make a trade later that day. (Classic troll move.) Yahoo! Sports' own Adrian Wojnarowski, among other reporters, heard that the Celtics were involved in serious talks about moving stars Ray Allen and Paul Pierce before Thursday afternoon's trade deadline.

By the time the clock struck 3 p.m. on the East Coast, though, nothing had materialized, leaving Doc Rivers' squad intact moving forward. (For what it's worth, Ainge was emphatic after the deadline that the team "never, ever tried to trade [Rajon Rondo]," according to the Boston Herald's Steve Bulpett.)

Ainge told reporters Thursday that nothing lined up just so, with no bowl of porridge the right temperature and no bed quite comfy enough, according to Bill Doyle of the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette:

"There were deals," Ainge said during a conference call [Thursday] night, "that we wanted to do that we couldn't get a taker, and there were deals that other teams wanted to do that we just couldn't bite on." [...]

"We were close," he said, "to a handful of different types of trades from small to bigger that just couldn't be resolved. That happens often."

Sounds like a real Hall and Oates situation. That's one way to put it. Another, less genteel way was offered to Fox Sports Ohio's Sam Amico by a fellow general manager:

Not to put too fine a point on it or anything. (Screencap via @SamAmicoFSO)

Thursday was all about hot NBA trade deadline takes. Strong opinions, off-the-cuff reactions and instant analysis of deals made right up to 3 p.m. ET deadline, preferably delivered across multiple platforms and through social media channels. Very Twitter, very Pinterest, very Weibo. You get it.

Unfortunately, everyone who worked very hard to offer the best, hottest takes on the NBA trade deadline lost, because this 7-year-old girl reacting to NBA trade news delivered by an off-camera woman won. (I don't want to presume that it is her mom; perhaps it is her aunt, or her co-executive producer.) I just wish that winning made her feel better.

Things start off swell enough with a bit of misdirection. Upon hearing that the Los Angeles Lakers have made a trade, the girl prepares for epic sadness ... and then she hears that Luke Walton is on the way out in the Ramon Sessions deal, which makes her very happy. That's not very nice to Luke, but it's classic comedy — build tension, then release with the punchline. (Sharp timing by the kid, too.)

Like many Laker fans, she gets bummed about seeing Derek Fisher moved to the Houston Rockets, but hearing that Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum will be staying in forum blue and gold cheers her up pretty quickly.

And then, when it's time to talk about the Portland Trail Blazers ... things get heavy.

Dwight Howard is at a press conference. (AP)

It's OK, Dwight Howard. We didn't really know what the hell was going on, either.

Best caption wins a "jump to conclusions" mat, to help you make the tough decisions. Good luck.

In our last adventure: DeMarcus Cousins is pretty sure he is a dainty guard and not a 6-foot-11, 270-pound holy terror.

The Boston Celtics had the ball with 30 seconds left and the score knotted at 103 at the Oracle Arena on Wednesday night, needing a play that would get them a clean look at an open shot to take the lead over the Golden State Warriors. Luckily for the Celtics, they are coached by Doc Rivers, their roster features Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo, and even missing key contributors due to injury, Boston's business is grown-man business.

After stringing the possession out until late in the shot clock, the Celtics run a high screen, which the Warriors switch on the perimeter, putting center Andris Biedrins in the unenviable position of having to guard Pierce 25 feet away from the basket. Pierce makes his move with about five seconds left on the shot clock, driving left and gaining the paint with relative ease. Brandon Rush collapses to double Pierce as he picks up the dribble with 2.4 seconds left on the shot clock, which would make life super hard on "The Truth" ... if he was planning on shooting.

The problem is, that high-screen switch left Rush guarding Garnett, who was left wide-open when Rush doubled. (Seriously, run that clip back; there's like nine feet of space all around Garnett when Rush goes airborne on Pierce.) Pierce, wisely and just as it was likely drawn up, fires a pass right into Garnett's hands. Utterly unencumbered by defenders, Garnett raises up with that just-inside-the-line look — the one he loves so much, the one he makes so well — and lets it fly.

The result? String music, a 105-103 Boston lead with 5.1 seconds left that would stand as the final margin in a Celtics win, and yet another round of ruthless, precise late-game execution in the Big Three era.

Shortly after the New York Knicks had kicked off the post-Mike D'Antoni era by putting a 121-79 thumping on a catatonic Portland Trail Blazers team that might be moments away from its own shuffling of sideline bosses, Stephon Marbury decided to weigh in via Twitter from China, where he has plied his trade for the past three years, to share his thoughts on the reported resignation of the man who coached him with both the Knicks and the Phoenix Suns.

Those thoughts, in a nutshell: I told you so.

So it begins. (Screencap via Stephon Marbury's Twitter account)

In fairness to Steph, whether or not you share his opinion that D'Antoni is a fraud, he did tell us the coach's exit was just "a matter of time." So, well done, Steph. Your powers of prognostication are strong. Please forward me any and all stock tips/Powerball number suggestions.

Not content to merely bask in the inner peace and light that comes with making sure everyone knows you were right, though, Steph decided to have an open and frank dialogue with his Twitter followers regarding his feelings on the D'Antoni situation. For about the next 8 1/2 hours. (Steph has a lot of feelings.)