Ivan Johnson tweets at a Boston Celtics fan on Thursday night (Photo work courtesy twitter.com/YourManDevine)

Atlanta Hawks forward Ivan Johnson enjoyed a solid rookie season this year, working with good touch on the interior and a low center of gravity to average 6.5 points and four rebounds a night with his team, playing 16.7 minutes per game. That production fell off quite a bit in the postseason, as the 28-year-old rookie missed 11 of 16 shots in five games before registering a "Did Not Play — Coach's Decision" in Atlanta's series-deciding Game 6 loss on Thursday. And, as you can see above, the rookie with the veteran's age did not take the mature veteran's approach in responding to the effusive nature of your typically rambunctious Celtics fan.

That is to say, "he flipped a dude off."

Luol Deng received stitches after taking an elbow to the nose in Chicago's loss on Thursday (Getty Images)

Of course, none of this was supposed to happen, but even before none of this was supposed to happen, even fewer of these things were supposed to happen to the Chicago Bulls. And before even that, none of this was supposed to happen. All the way back to 2009, none of this was supposed to happen. In a way, the most dependable, hardest-working team in the NBA is the most unreliable, mercurial and flighty outfit of them all. Chicago didn't think its season would end on May 10. It didn't think it would miss out on seeing Derrick Rose until possibly 2013, and it didn't anticipate wondering whether Luol Deng would start his 2012-13 season on the wrong foot after playing hurt through the Olympics, and then having surgery.

None of this was supposed to happen. But before we get too maudlin over a season gone terribly wrong in just the span of 12 days, understand that these Bulls were never supposed to put in a place to disappoint their fans. Derrick Rose wasn't supposed to land in Chicago, with those lottery odds. The Bulls weren't supposed to luck into Tom Thibodeau after other teams (including Chicago) passed on hiring him. They weren't supposed to dash to the league's best record last year with Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah missing a combined 57 games. They weren't supposed to improve their winning percentage this year with Derrick Rose and Luol Deng combining to miss 39 contests, and Rip Hamilton missing half the season.

And they weren't supposed to go out this early this year, with Rose tearing his ACL, Noah hideously spraining his ankle,and 2011 Coach of the Year Thibodeau making some odd playoff missteps along the way. The NBA's most cerebral and just-about best defensive team isn't supposed to blow what would have been another underdog win with a bad decision from C.J. Watson on one end that led to a defensive breakdown on the other. Nothing ever makes sense with Chicago, even if the team's style is as one-note (you play, hard) as they come.

Denver Nuggets 113, Los Angeles Lakers 96 (Series tied, 3-3)

Yell at these Lakers all you want. Get frustrated at Andrew Bynum's sleepy play, Pau Gasol's inability to do anything in the post and the squad's refusal to take advantage of a clearly flu-ridden Kobe Bryant's gutty 31 points on 23 shots. Still, please give these Denver Nuggets credit. The Nuggets are good enough to play in the second round out West, and they're good enough to beat a Lakers team that obviously has championship potential.

And Los Angeles will have to fight to fulfill that potential. That was always going to be the case against Denver because the Nuggets are too deep and too good to dismiss.  And when Denver starts the game on a 13-0 run and then peels out of the second half just as effectively and dominant, the Nuggets just aren't going to lose. Credit George Karl for having his men ready.

Do we discredit Mike Brown for clearly not having the same running for Los Angeles? I think you can. He's had weeks to ring Bynum's ears. He's had months to figure out how to make Gasol a more consistent mainstay of this team's offense. But at some point Bynum has to act like a leader, and Gasol has to hit more than 1 of 10 shots. And at some point we need to stop talking about the Lakers so much and pay more attention to the team that has won two in a row to force a Game 7 on Saturday night.

You'll hear more later from Our Fearless Leader about the Philadelphia 76ers' 79-78 Game 6 win over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday night, a series-clinching victory that marks just the fifth time in NBA history that a No. 8 seed has taken out its conference's top-ranked squad. For now, though, let's hear from Andre Iguodala, who scored a game-high 20 points in the win, dished out a team-high seven assists without a turnover and made Philly's biggest play of the game.

After Omer Asik missed the second of two potential game-icing free throws with Chicago up 78-77 and seven seconds left in the fourth quarter, Iguodala grabbed the rebound and barreled down the center of the floor, an arrow pointing straight at both Asik and the rim. Asik fouled Iguodala on his layup attempt, putting him on the foul line with 2.2 seconds left and a chance to win the game and the series. He hit 'em both, Philadelphia celebrated its first trip to the second round since 2003, and he got to have a postgame chat with NBA TV's Cheryl Miller.

After telling Miller about his thought process as the Bulls big man stepped to the line ("Well, Asik's a bad shooter; I knew I'd have a chance to get the rebound") and on his end-to-end push, Iguodala — a 73.7 percent career free-throw shooter who has seen his stroke fall off over the past two years and posted a career-low 61.7 percent from the stripe this year — talked about stepping to the line himself with a chance to win it, and how a teammate's words stuck in his head.

[Slideshow: The best NBA shots of Thursday's playoff games]

"On the free throws, Tony Battie gave me some advice," Iguodala said. "He said, 'Think of something that you love when you're shooting free throws,' because I've been struggling all year. I thought of my son, and it was easy after that."

Chris Andersen (Noah Graham/ Getty)On Thursday night, the Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 to tie their first-round playoff series, and did so without Chris "Birdman" Andersen, who is dealing with an issue greater than basketball.

Thursday afternoon, Douglas County sheriff's deputies entered and searched Andersen's home in an investigation related to their Internet Crimes Against Children unit. The Nuggets, in turn, have excused Andersen indefinitely from all team functions. P. Solomon Banda of the Associated Press has more details:

With 4:48 remaining in the New York Knicks' season-ending loss to the Miami Heat on Wednesday night, Amar'e Stoudemire fouled out. As a joke, Miami Heat public address announcer Michael Baiamonte made a little joke and said that Stoudemire had been "extinguished" from the game. In case you've been living under a virtual rock for the last week, that's a reference to Stoudemire's incident punching a fire extinguisher after the Knicks' Game 2 loss. You can watch Baiamonte's zinger above, courtesy of our friends at the Yahoo! Sports Minute.

Baiamonte has gotten a lot of attention for the joke, and not all of it has been positive. So, in response, the Heat have issued an apology. Ira Winderman of the Miami Sun-Sentinel has the text (via PBT):

There's an expectation in all sports that home fans won't boo when an opposing player gets injured. It's common courtesy, really, and an affirmation of the values that drive athletic competition. We might get crazy between the lines, but when real-life issues like health come into play we worry about a person's long-term health.

During Wednesday night's 92-80 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin fell and hurt his knee. At first, it looked fairly serious (although, to be fair, Griffin falls down and winces in pain a lot). Yet, instead of waiting to see if he was OK and cheering him as he left the court, the Memphis fans booed. And while there was some question as to whether they were booing Griffin or the questionable foul call on the replay, the whole scene was a little unfortunate.

Griffin turned out to be fine — he stayed in the game after being checked out, though not without discomfort, and was later diagnosed with a sprained left knee. Yet that wasn't the only big injury for the Clippers on the night: Chris Paul reaggravated his groin during a defensive possession in the fourth quarter and looked noticeably limited for the rest of the game (video after the jump). The Grizz fans' reaction wasn't quite as strong as that to Griffin, it wasn't exactly filled with sportsmanship. So why, exactly, did Grizzlies fans react in this way to both injuries?

James Harden is thrilled to receive this award. (Getty Images)

Oklahoma City Thunder game-changer James Harden is going to be named the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year, and that's entirely reasonable, because of all the players in the league who come off the bench, he was by far the best this season. Sometimes these awards actually work out.

Talk began to fly early Thursday that the Thunder had scheduled a Thursday afternoon news conference to make an undisclosed major announcement, according to multiple outlets, and that pretty much left nothing to the imagination, since basically everyone who watched the NBA this season knew that this award was Harden's. The third-year pro, drafted No. 3 overall out of Arizona State in the 2009 NBA draft, eliminated all mystery Thursday afternoon, taking to Twitter to thank his supporters for their, um, support:

(Screencap via @JHarden13)

Again, this is only surprising if you did not watch basketball this year or are almost entirely unfamiliar with the term "awesome."

Harden had already established himself as one of the league's premiere second-unit contributors with his stellar sophomore turn for a Thunder team that ran all the way to the Western Conference finals in 2011 before falling to the eventual champion Dallas Mavericks. He took a great leap forward in his third NBA season, leading all NBA bench-mobbers in scoring and producing at a staggering level that has led some observers to wonder whether the Thunder's sixth man might actually find himself receiving max-contract offers when he's eligible for free agency after next season. He needn't wonder; if the Thunder know what's good for them, he'll receive one before that.