There are certain events that render sports largely irrelevant, to the point where simply playing games seems like an ill-fitting response to tragedy. The explosions, deaths, and injuries at Monday's Boston Marathon undoubtedly qualify. The city and its sports fans are focused on more important matters at this moment.

The NBA has recognized this situation and acted accordingly. As announced on Monday night, the league has canceled Tuesday night's game between the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers at TD Garden. Here's the full text:

The National Basketball Association game scheduled for Tuesday, April 16 between the Indiana Pacers and the Boston Celtics at TD Garden has been canceled. The game will not be rescheduled.

The NBA expresses its sympathy to all those affected by the tragedy in Boston earlier today.

This news follows the NHL's postponement of Monday night's Boston Bruins home game against the Ottawa Senators, also to be held at TD Garden.

As the Los Angeles Lakers strive to grab the West's final spot in the postseason, longtime franchise icon Kobe Bryant has taken on an even greater burden. In two games earlier this week, Kobe did to do whatever necessary to take his team to victory, dominating the fourth quarter against the New Orleans Hornets on Tuesday night and scoring a season-high 47 points against the Portland Trail Blazers a day later. Like he's done many times during his career, the fiercely competitive Bryant did whatever he felt he needed to do to win.

On Friday night against the Golden State Warriors, Bryant pushed himself hard enough to suffer what appears to be the most serious injury of his career. With 42 seconds left in the game and the Lakers up 117-116, Bryant was fouled by Warriors wing Klay Thompson on a drive to the basket. He returned to the game to shoot his two free throws, but then walked very slowly into the locker room to receive treatment. You can watch the video above (via @cjzero).

[Related photos: Kobe's tough night on the court]

After the game, the Lakers announced that the injury looks to be quite serious:

Lakers PR team saying Kobe Bryant suffered a probable torn Achilles in tonight’s game. He’ll have a MRI tomorrow to confirm.

— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) April 13, 2013

Everyone involved with the team, including Bryant, is acting in public as if the injury is a torn Achilles tendon. Kobe is well known for playing while hobbled, but it's impossible to play through an Achilles tear, which typically requires a year of rehabilitation. If anything, it's a wonder that Bryant was even able to shoot his free throws and walk around immediately after the injury. Improbably, the tear followed two more lower-body injuries suffered earlier in the game.

Marv Albert discusses the Raptor's mother issues (Garrett Ellwood/ Getty).

TNT announcer Marv Albert is a international basketball treasure, the man and voice who has carried several generations of fans through some of the most memorable moments in NBA history. He's a part of our lives, someone we can depend on for guidance and knowledge. That's an emotional relationship, and it's not shocking to feel that someone could feel a special connection to Albert even if they'd never met.

Aside from pure goofiness, this mindset informs a recent "Shouts & Murmurs" piece in the venerable New Yorker magazine from actor and occasional writer Jesse Eisenberg, best known for playing Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network." Eisenberg presents a dialogue between Albert as a therapist and a patient with fairly typical problems. The joke is that Albert only responds with exclamations from his basketball broadcasts.

The article is fairly short and worth a few laughs for anyone familiar with Albert's work. But it pales in comparison to the recently recorded reading of the

Kobe Bryant performs at his first solo live show in 2000 (Steve W. Grayson/ Getty).

Kobe Bryant has a well-earned reputation as an exceedingly serious basketball player, the sort of guy who would eschew normal levels of human contact to train and ensure he would not see the drop in production that typically comes with age. These are exaggerations, clearly, but there is always a sense that Kobe is fanatically focused on basketball. The cliched distractions of celebrity don't seem to infect his determination to remain relevant on the court.

It can be difficult to remember, then, that Mr. Bryant was once a rapper. Best remembered for the 2000 single "K.O.B.E." (featuring Tyra Banks, of all people), Kobe's recording output is largely a footnote to his time in the NBA.

But there is much more to the story, including a love of battle rap and a stint as a member of a collective named CHEIZAW. In a new piece for Grantland, Thomas Golianopoulos delves into the history of Kobe's life in music:

Derrick Rose stretches until his leg cannot be stretched any more (Dan Lippitt/ Getty).

It is no great secret that Chicago Bulls star point guard Derrick Rose has been medically cleared to play for quite a while as he rehabs the ACL tear he suffered in the first game of the 2012 playoffs. Despite several indications that Rose might return soon, from reporters and rappers alike, he's chosen not to due to the psychological barrier of coming back at full strength after a long layoff. That's a rare admission in a league where players push themselves beyond acceptable human limits to return from injury and often get bitterly criticized if they're seen to shy away from playing through pain. Yet, if Rose has benefited from a double standard, it's also broadly true that his choice should probably be the new standard.

The most peculiar thing about Rose's absence hasn't been his reasoning, but the fact that he has refused to make a decision on his status for the full season and playoffs. With less than a week remaining in the regular season, it would seem imprudent to attempt to integrate Rose back into the team in time for him to have an optimal impact in the playoffs.

[Also: Devastating injury likely ends Kobe Bryant's season, puts career in peril | Photos]

Perhaps this lack of a timetable has not been as big of an issue for the Bulls as it might initially seem. According to a report from K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, the team is planning as if Rose will not come back until next fall's training camp:

There's a long history in pro sports of veterans hazing rookies, and the NBA proves no exception. While players are certainly apt to indulge in making youngsters carry backpacks made for little girls, the league's most popular prank is filling a teammate's automobile with popcorn. The Cleveland Cavaliers did it to rookie Dion Waiters back on April Fools' Day, and it's enough of a tradition that Patrick Cassidy of Dime was able to collect several of them for a special post. At this point, rookies should just expect it.

Regardless of any opinion that the prank may be played out, the Golden State Warriors deemed it appropriate to get popcorn-happy on the white sedan of celebratory bench wing Kent Bazemore. They put together a video of it, too, and you can watch it above.

In all honesty, I am not particularly interested in the video for its humor — we know what this scene looks like, and it's not even the first popcorn-prank viral video in franchise history. Instead, I'm here to talk about the humor of the incident.

LeBron James tosses his chalk in January 2012 (Ezra Shaw/ Getty).

Back before he became an omnipresent destroyer of worlds, LeBron James would come onto the court after pregame introductions with the somewhat imposing, largely unnecessary routine of throwing a handful of chalk in the air at the scorer's table. It was a sign to herald the arrival of the man to whom we were all to be witnesses. It was a little ridiculous, but also somewhat fitting on the nights when LeBron justified every superlative ever lavished upon him.

[Also: Devastating injury likely ends Kobe Bryant's season, puts career in peril | Photos]

Since joining the Miami Heat, James has slowly moved away from the chalk toss, dumping it for the 2011 playoffs, bringing it back the next season, and largely eschewing it since. It's been absent from his pregame routine for much of his historically great 2012-13 season, and it looks as if he's left it in the past. These days, his mere presence announces itself.

However, the chalk toss is not absent from the Heat's routine. In the past few weeks, with LeBron sitting out many games in anticipation of the playoffs, several Heat reserves have picked up his chalk slack. From Ethan Skolnick for The Palm Beach Post (via TBJ):

The Los Angeles Lakers are fighting to grab the West's last spot in the playoffs and rescue their season from utter disaster. After Kobe Bryant's fourth-quarter heroics in Tuesday night's win over the New Orleans Hornets, the Lakers were faced with a road game against the Portland Trail Blazers on the second night of a back-to-back. A win would push them a game ahead of the Utah Jazz — a loss would drop them back into a tie for eighth place (which means missing out on the playoffs, because the Jazz hold the tiebreaker advantage). That's a stiff challenge for an aging team, particularly given the heavy minutes logged by Bryant and others in this final push towards the postseason.

In true Kobe fashion, the Lakers star simply pushed himself farther and took on an even bigger burden to lift his team to a 113-106 win. Playing the full 48 minutes, Bryant scored a season-high 47 points on 14 of 27 shooting from the floor and a perfect 18 of 18 mark from the free-throw line. In addition to setting a new personal high for 2012-13, Kobe set the all-time record for an opponent at the Rose Garden, topping a 44-point performance in January 2011 by LeBron James.

[Also: Top recruits say they would beat Michael Jordan one-on-one in his prime]

Bryant also added eight rebounds, five assists (against a single turnover), four blocks, and three steals to fill out the stat sheet. It's hard to imagine anyone other than LeBron himself doing more to help his team win, and Kobe just happens to be a 34-year-old playing a position at which players typically don't age gracefully.