The Miami Heat, sans LeBron James and Dwyane Wade celebrate their win (Getty Images)

The NBA has put its foot down, and the league is taking no mess. The Miami Heat sat both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade with relatively minor injuries on Sunday night, denying a national TV audience the chance to see a potential NBA Finals preview against the San Antonio Spurs. The league, which in November levied a $250,000 fine against the Spurs for sitting starters against the Heat, were clearly incensed at Miami’s transparent play to get their stars some rest, and responded on Monday forcefully with a … short comment indicating that they have no issue with what took place on Sunday.

[NBA Power Rankings: Heat in control]

All because Miami played by the technical rules, and the Spurs made no bones about why three of their stars were sitting in the team’s close loss to Miami last autumn. We’re not killing the NBA for its decision, here, because it’s perfectly understandable from all sides why the Spurs wanted rest for their vets in November, the Heat wanted a break for their stars in late March, and the NBA prefers that when you sit players in a long 82-game season designed to make fans of all 30 teams happy, you do it under the nebulous injury guidelines rather than brazenly admitting that it was just a night off. From Ira Winderman at the Sun-Sentinel:

By contrast, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra made a point pregame Sunday to mention that LeBron James was being held out with a hamstring issue, and that guards Dwyane Wade and Mario Chalmers were being held out with sprained ankles. Chalmers had missed the previous game, as well, due to the sprain.

Sunday's absence was the third in the past five games for Wade, but it was the first absence of the season for James.

“We have no plans to discipline," NBA Senior Vice President of Basketball Communications Tim Frank told the Sun Sentinel.

Kemba Walker thinks twice after seeing what Larry Sanders just did to the ref (Getty Images)

Last week we discussed the terrible, no-good March that Milwaukee Bucks forward Larry Sanders was working through. Though his production was admirable – 12 points, 11.5 rebounds, 2.3 blocks in only 31 minutes a contest – Sanders earned a series of ejections and fines for his back and forth with referees, leading us to wonder if he was turning into a hot-head along the lines of the notorious Rasheed Wallace. Wallace is wrapping up a fantastic career, but you always wondered what could have been with Sheed were he able to fully focus his efforts on his significant all-around gifts and stay away from collaborations with the referees.

To Sheed’s credit, though, he never elbowed a referee on the opening play of the game.

(We keed, we keed. It was clearly an accident when Sanders inadvertently knocked longtime ref Bill Kennedy with a stray elbow after going for the opening tip. Via The Point Forward, take a look at the carnage.)

John Amaechi in 2012 (Getty Images)

John Amaechi made his mark in the NBA by springing out of end-of-the-bench obscurity to play fantastic ball for the 1999-00 Orlando Magic. That Magic team was one of the first of the NBA’s kind to, as Chad Ford put it back then, burn the village in order to save it – the Magic front office willingly dismantled a third-seeded playoff squad in order to avert eventual mediocrity and start over with cap space in a 2000 summer that featured Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, and Tracy McGrady on the free agent block. Between then, the “rebuilding” Magic somehow fashioned a near-playoff run out of a cast of what appeared at the time to be throwaways, a motley crew led by coach Doc Rivers, and a 41-win squad that remains one of my favorite teams of the modern era.

Retired from the league and now back in his native England, Amaechi is having a terrible time trying to outfit the country’s basketball program with all the mod cons that Americans take for granted. The OBE-awarded former NBA center is attempting to turn London’s Olympic handball arena into a basketball-themed center designed to lure in players in what has proven at times to be a basketball-mad city. Amaechi runs a center in Manchester that already draws well amongst basketball-playing Britons, and he can’t understand why London won’t turn the handball courts over to those that want to suit up.

The usually-eloquent Amaechi, owner of one of the first Twitter feeds I followed, ramped up the language in frustration while talking to the Independent’s Tim Rich:

“The legacy has always been b******s,” said Amaechi, who was on the diversity board of the London Organising Committee and was an ambassador for the Games. “Legacy costs money, legacy takes forward planning. My centre in Manchester has 2,500 coming through its doors every week; that centre would have had 10,000 playing basketball.

Jonas Valanciunas and Amir Johnson are super in-step (Getty Images)

This is one of those posts that we’ll end up shielding our eyes before looking at the comment section, but before scrolling down there we strongly encourage you to take the blinders off before scoping out the brilliant and novel teamwork that Toronto Raptor big men Jonas Valunciunas and Amir Johnson came through with in the opening seconds of Sunday’s Toronto tilt with the Washington Wizards.

Via The Basketball Jones, watch:

It’s been joked for as long as LeBron James refers to his Miami Heat team as the Heatles that Mario Chalmers must be the group’s version of Ringo Starr. This is a comparison Chalmers should be pleased with – the ambidextrous Starr remains one of rock’s more imaginative drummers, and just because he doesn’t have an “All Things Must Pass,” “Imagine,” or “Ram” to his credit it doesn’t mean his talents aren’t profound – but two and a half years after the Heat acquired LeBron and Chris Bosh to pair with Dwyane Wade, it’s one he’s probably not keen on.

And it doesn’t hurt that he’s hardly getting (wait for it) such little help from his friends, including apparent Chalmers pal and New York Knick point guard Raymond Felton. Felton (currently riding high as the architect of the NBA's longest win streak) didn’t exactly put Chalmers on blast last week in discussing his merits in relation to the Heat’s Big Three, but he didn’t do his chum any favors with quotes like these:

“I’m not saying that’s a weak point [for the Heat] because [Mario] Chalmers has been great for Miami. He’s won a championship there and he’s a solid point guard,. But I think that’s one of the weaknesses of their team. Not saying that Chalmers is a bad player, because he’s not. He’s great. He’s won a championship. A lot of point guards in this league can’t say that. He has that. But if you look at LeBron, Bosh and D-Wade and then you look at Chalmers, you’re like, ‘OK, this is maybe where their weakness is at.’”

The NBA's fourth and fifth all-time leading scorers (Getty Images)

It took until the 8:50 mark of the second quarter for Kobe Bryant to score his first points on Saturday, as he missed his first five shots and first free-throw attempt before hitting a pair of freebies against the hapless Sacramento Kings. As is usually the case with scorers, though, seeing those shots go through the net worked wonders for Bryant. A possession later, Kobe (working the entire first half through a painful bone spur in his left foot) called off a Pau Gasol screen to take John Salmons off the dribble for the score. On the touch after that, Bryant crossed Salmons over to nail the pull-up jumper at the free-throw line, a perfect encapsulation of a far more efficient 2012-13 season (free throws, drives, short jumpers) that has turned Kobe Bryant into an offensive marvel even at the age of 34.

Also, on the last shot he passed the legendary Wilt Chamberlain to become the NBA’s fourth all-time leading scorer. With that jumper, he scored points number 31,420 and 31,421 in a brilliant career. Watch:

(It also didn’t hurt that the points came in the midst of an 11-2 run that pushed the Lakers back into the game, as they desperately try to keep pace with the Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks for the eighth and final playoff speed in the West. The Lakers entered the second quarter down 12 points after giving up an embarrassing 37 first-quarter points to the Kings, but came back to take the lead in that second 12-minute frame. The Lakers went on to win, 103-98.)

[More: Ex-Laker A.C. Green's NBA championship rings stolen from his home]

Seven years ago, Kobe Bryant fell short by 19 points when he scored the second-most amount of points in an NBA game, tossing in 81 against the Toronto Raptors in a win. Wilt famously went for 100 points in 1962, dominating a tiny New York Knicks front line in a dubious contest that saw his Philadelphia Warriors fouling New York down the stretch in order to get the ball back inside Wilt’s record-setting mitts. Nothing against Wilt, but Bryant’s difficulty and the iffy road that Chamberlain took toward his 100 points are why I rank Bryant’s 81 on the same level as The Big Dipper’s 100.

"Hey Mike, Kareem has more of these trophies than you do." (Getty Images)

Of course NBA commissioner David Stern has his tongue placed firmly in cheek when, in an interview with 92Y in New York that was thankfully transcribed by Gothamist, he mentioned calling up Charlotte Bobcat owner Michael Jordan to mock MJ’s last-place Bobcats.

It’s a small aside, but we still love to picture the “byron mullens lol srsly MJ?” texts Stern might be sending Jordan’s way. From Gothamist:

His relationship with Michael Jordan:

It's good. I call him up and bust his chops when his team is not doing well, which is a lot.

[Also: Kobe injury adds to Lakers woes as they hobble toward finish line]

(Admittedly, there’s not much to that quote, so we’ll toss in another aside about the league that Stern was given nearly 30 years ago.)

Ty Lawson stands out (Getty Images)

There’s no good time to attempt to work through and recover from a plantar fascia tear, but with less than three weeks left in the regular season this is exactly what Denver Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson will attempt to do. The potent Nugget waterbug was previously sidelined with a heel injury, and the team announced today that he is “day-to-day” with the same tear that knocked Pau Gasol out for five and a half weeks earlier this season.

The Nuggets sent out the news on Friday:

#Nuggets PG @tylawson3 has a plantar fascia tear in his right heel. No surgery required. Out tonight vs Brooklyn. Status day-to-day.

— Denver Nuggets (@denvernuggets) March 29, 2013

[Also: Allen Iverson returns to Philadelphia for bobblehead night]

Lawson missed three games earlier this month with the injury and attempted to come back against the Spurs on Wednesday, and it was an unsuccessful return. Ty missed six of seven shots, understandable considering what he’s working through, in 19 minutes of action.