Dirk Nowitzki pretends not to notice the referee behind him (Danny Bollinger/ Getty).

With only two games (at most) left in the NBA season, basketball fans everywhere have ramped up the intensity of their cries against flopping. These are the most important games on the league's schedule, and any attempt to gain favor by nefarious subterfuge is seen as a crime against the sport. There have been several suggestions on how to stop it, from increasing the severity of penalties to handing out technical fouls or other forms of punishment on the court. No matter the proposed fix, it's a common belief that something must be done.

At least one high-profile player does not believe flopping is such a glaring issue. According to Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA can never get rid of flopping entirely, because it has a place in the game. From Eddie Sefko for The Dallas Morning News (via PBT):

Danny Green has all day. (Noah Graham/NBAE/Getty Images)

A look around the league and the Web that covers it. It's also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren't always listed in order of importance. That's for you, dear reader, to figure out.

C: SB Nation, Eye on Basketball and The Point Forward. Maybe, like Tony Parker, you're wondering how Danny Green keeps getting such wide-open looks from 3-point range this late in his record-setting NBA Finals. Mike Prada, Zach Harper and Rob Mahoney each went back over Green's shots in search of the answer.

PF: TrueHoop. I dug this riff on how randomness, luck and the unforeseen have impacted, are impacting and will impact the NBA Finals, and not just because I personally have no idea what the hell's going to happen from night to night when the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat play (which, incidentally, is what's making this so fun).

SF: HoopSpeak. With Monta Ellis reportedly (and unsurprisingly) poised to opt out of the final year of his contract with the Milwaukee Bucks to pursue greener pastures in unrestricted free agency, let's revisit this fun thought experiment Ryan Weisert explored last week — what if, instead of being determined to "have it all," Monta just stopped shooting 3-pointers entirely?

Allen Iverson is introduced before a March 2013 76ers-Bobcats game. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty)The messy post-NBA life of Allen Iverson continues to get more and more difficult to parse and read about without feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach.

According to TMZ, his ex-wife, Tawanna Iverson, has filed court documents accusing the former Philadelphia 76ers star of refusing to return their five children, of whom she has sole legal custody, after a planned vacation that might never have actually happened:

Tawanna Iverson just filed legal docs claiming Allen recently asked for permission to take their five kids on a short vacation to Charlotte, N.C., from May 22nd-May 26th (and Tawanna agreed) but when May 26th rolled around, the children hadn't been returned.

The kids range in age from 3 to 16 years old.

In the docs, Tawanna says she tried to set up an exchange on June 4th at a neutral location — a nearby Target store — but A.I. never showed up.

Tawanna — who has sole legal and primary physical custody of their children — now believes Allen never took their kids to Charlotte at all ... and is currently keeping them at a Sheraton hotel in Georgia. [...] She now wants the court to force him to return the kids ... and punish him as well, even suggesting the judge lock him up in jail.

TMZ also reports that Allen Iverson has filed his own documents denying his ex-wife's claims.

Nate Robinson peers into your soul as Joakim Noah, uh, looks on (Getty Images)

Much-traveled NBA guard Nate Robinson won the hearts and minds of many during the 2013 playoffs by keeping his plucky Chicago Bulls in game after game of their unlikely postseason run. The 5-9 guard may disappoint some of those new followers, though, with his recent conversion to the dark arts. That's right, Nate Robinson is a sorcerer, now. Able to shape-shift his way through glass at any number of fast food burger joints.

Watch:

'I don't care.' (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images)

"I don't care. [...] Cool. Cool." — Miami Heat center Chris Andersen describes his style in a brief chat with All Ball's Lang Whitaker.

Fellow big man Brad Miller surely agrees; others, however, might not.

'Moi?' (Screengrab via @Jose3030)

No, for real, Boris Diaw — you just logged more than 27 minutes for the first time in 2 1/2 months, you kicked in four rebounds, three assists, a block and some very good defense on LeBron James, and played a pretty important role in a 114-104 Game 5 win that puts your San Antonio Spurs just 48 minutes away from raising the O'Brien. We kind of can't believe it, either, but here we are.

Sure, we all know for real that Boris was protesting a foul call, but let's be blog game Willy Wonkas and entrench ourselves in a world of pure imagination. What do you think Diaw's so distraught about? Best caption wins a metric ton of Everlasting Gobstoppers (not really). Good luck.

In our last adventure: Chris Bosh is forever twirling, twirling, twirling his finger toward freedom.

Maurice Cheeks and Joe Dumars say "hey!" to Detroit (Getty Images)

Coaching introductions don’t come much more inauspicious than this. The Detroit Pistons have been flailing as a franchise since dealing away Chauncey Billups in 2008, and general manager Joe Dumars has been through five head coaches since that year. As a response to five straight dreary and ultimately losing seasons, and with his job possibly in danger under new’ish owner Tom Gores, Dumars had to make a splash with someone that could be his final coaching hire.

He decided to go with former Trail Blazers and 76ers coach Maurice Cheeks. First, the internet yawned. Then it set to digging in to research, and it didn’t like what it found.

Cheeks was second in command at Oklahoma City, working for a team that made the Finals last year while appearing well on its way toward defending its Western Conference crown this year before an injury to Russell Westbrook got in the way. This sort of status usually serves to align for a successful hiring, what with types like Tom Thibodeau doing so well after working next to Doc Rivers in Boston, and San Antonio’s Mike Budenholzer recently taking to Atlanta in what was a well-regarded hire.

The Thunder coaching staff has earned its fair share of criticism over the years, though, and while nobody will be able to tell just how much influence Cheeks had over those decisions gone awry (to say nothing of the ones that went well), at least he has his coaching past to lean on.

That might not be a good thing.

Manu Ginobili's second-half shotmaking was critical in Game 5. (D. Clarke Evans/NBAE/Getty Images)

Since Tony Parker's final-seconds heroics in Game 1, every game of the 2013 NBA Finals has been decided by a monster second-half run. In Game 2, it was the 33-5 (or 35-9, if you prefer) bolt that gave the Miami Heat a series-evening blowout. In Game 3, it was four separate post-intermission spurts — 7-0, 11-0, 13-0 and 11-0 — fueled by historic 3-point shooting that put the San Antonio Spurs back on top.

In Game 4, it was a Dwyane Wade-and-Chris Bosh-led 14-4 fourth-quarter rip that turned a tight game into a breezy 16-point win. And in Game 5, it was a monstrous 21-2 storm that saw the Spurs hit eight of 12 tries while the Heat missed eight straight shots to turn what had been a 75-74 Spurs lead with 3:05 left in the third quarter into a 96-76 San Antonio advantage with 8:51 remaining in the fourth.

"Once we got it back to one, we felt that we had weathered the storm," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the game. "Then we missed a couple of shots that we normally are accustomed to making, and then it just snowballed down the hill from there. And we couldn't control it."

So what happened during that six-minute, 28-second stretch? Here, in no particular order, are five pretty big reasons why the game tilted entirely in San Antonio's direction and sent the Heat back to Miami in need of elusive back-to-back wins — which is pretty funny, when you think about it — to save their season and win the title: