LeBron James appears to be handling this well (Getty Images)

LeBron James seemed like the perfect candidate to not only win the NBA’s MVP award for 2012-13, but become the first unanimously-voted MVP winner in the award’s history. Not only would James had deserved the unanimous vote, based on his brilliant season, but the process would have served as a reification of sorts for the massive mistake former CNN anchor Fred Hickman made in 2000, when he cast a lone vote for Allen Iverson in the year that Shaquille O’Neal dominated the NBA.

The votes are in. LeBron has won the MVP, and he didn’t win in unanimous fashion. Because some voter, as yet unnamed, thought that Carmelo Anthony had a better year than LeBron James did this season.

[Related: Knicks drop Game 1 at home to Pacers | Highlights]

Anthony received one second-place vote, out of the 121 possible votes cast. We’re not sure what sort of TV and/or radio personality NBA analyst cast the vote, but it seems a ridiculous notion in the face of a season that LeBron James proved superior to Carmelo Anthony in every aspect of professional basketball. James trumped the brilliant Kevin Durant in the same way; though Kevin produced an MVP-level season, he finished a rightful second in the voting. Anthony, most should deduce, had a fine but not MVP season.

Other goofball nods?

Marc Gasol after an entertaining Grizzlies victory over the Thunder in March (Getty Images)

Somehow, the NBA survived its regular season and first round of the postseason with enough players to field eight teams, so we’re just going to go ahead and begin the conference semifinals. The minds behind Ball Don’t Lie are going to preview each second-round series, with Kelly Dwyer going against character for a more genial take, Dan Devine bringing his inimitable mixture of both order and bedlam, along with Eric Freeman’s legendary look inside the reputations of some of the series’ key fixtures.

We continue with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies.

Which team do you think will win the series, and in how many games? Vote here to let us know what you think.

NEW YORK — With the sold-out crowd all but gone from the Barclays Center in the minutes after Saturday's final buzzer, a lone female voice rang out from the landing above Section 212. Her plaintive cry:

"How could they lose? How could they loooooooooooose?"

Well, ma'am, there were a bunch of reasons — plenty of missed shots, missed rotations, missteps and mistakes along the way — but to a large extent, it boils down to a simple answer: The Chicago Bulls had Joakim Noah, and the Brooklyn Nets didn't.

Sure, the Bulls didn't have Luol Deng, who just left a Chicago hospital after an awful ordeal following a spinal tap to test for viral meningitis (which, thankfully, he doesn't have). They didn't have Kirk Hinrich, ruled out by Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau a little over an hour before tipoff with his badly bruised left calf. And, for the 89th time this season, they didn't have Derrick Rose, who said earlier Saturday his estimated time of arrival is "still up in the air." But they did have Noah, the brand of player who was made for Game 7s and for whom Game 7s were made, and on Saturday, that was enough.

Nets center Brook Lopez had been the best player in this series through six games, but Noah — who once played high school ball at Poly Prep, just a 15- or 20-minute drive away from the Barclays Center (depending on traffic) — was the best player in the billion-dollar building on Saturday night, pacing his shorthanded and overworked squad to a 99-93 win over the Nets that sealed a 4-3 victory in their best-of-seven series.

[Related: Luol Deng released from hospital after spinal tap complications]

"Joakim Noah played probably the best game of the season at the right time," Bulls guard Nate Robinson said.

Noah attacked the glass, attacked Nets drivers penetrating the paint and, time and again, attacked fellow 2013 All-Star Lopez off the dribble, scoring 24 points on 12 for 17 shooting, pulling down 14 rebounds, blocking six shots, dishing two assists and snagging one steal in 41 peerless minutes.

"I'll remember this for the rest of my life," said Noah, who climbed over the baseline seats to hug his mother after the final buzzer sounded.

The Knicks and Pacers tip off on Sunday (Getty Images)

Somehow, the NBA survived its regular season and first round of the postseason with enough players to field eight teams, so we’re just going to go ahead and begin the conference semifinals. The minds behind Ball Don’t Lie are going to preview each second-round series, with Kelly Dwyer going against character for a more genial take, Dan Devine bringing his inimitable mixture of both order and bedlam, along with Eric Freeman’s legendary look inside the reputations of some of the series’ key fixtures.

We begin with the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers.

Which team do you think will win the series, and in how many games? Vote here to let us know what you think.

Nate Robinson in the final minute of Game 6 (Getty Images)

The Chicago Bulls aren’t ones to rest on their laurels — neither their coaching staff nor their locker-room influences would allow for that — but it is worth noting that Chicago never was supposed to be playing an important game on May 4. This is a team that very few (mostly locals) had pegged to win more than 45 games even with the assumption that Derrick Rose would return sometime in late winter or early spring (in Chicago, it’s hard to tell the two apart). Rose sat out the entire season, though. All-Star center Joakim Noah has been playing on one wheel since January, and all manner of injury and now illness have hit these Bulls like a Tom Boerwinkle-sized punch to the gut.

And yet, here they are. Suiting up for one more try to overcome it all. Different day, different starting lineup, different “it all” left to overcome.

Chicago should be the massive underdog for Saturday night’s Game 7 against the Brooklyn Nets. The Nets were the better team entering this series, they’ve played Chicago to three close losses prior to Chicago losing Kirk Hinrich and Luol Deng, and they’ve done well to grow and adjust against a Bulls team that seemed to have every answer for its $83 million offense. Not only has talent on paper resulted in three strong wins against Chicago, but these Nets have earned their Game 7 opportunity. You may not respect some of the shot-taking decisions these Nets make, or the way the team was put together, but Brooklyn hasn’t backed into this.

[Also: Kobe Bryant in lawsuit against his mom]

Still, you can’t scout for the ridiculous. And as crazy a notion as it seems, the Bulls could actually take Game 7. They could play beyond May 4. They could fool us. Again.

Noted hard-screen enthusiast Kendrick Perkins opened the Oklahoma City Thunder's Game 6 visit to Toyota Center on Friday by getting all up in the grill of Houston Rockets wing Francisco Garcia, who'd spent most of Games 3 through 5 hustling to make life difficult on Kevin Durant:

Walking away and doing pushups is, of course, the most reasonable response in this situation. Perkins and Garcia both received technical fouls, Perkins was slapped with an offensive foul, the Thunder turned it over and Houston continued its 15-0 first-quarter run. Veteran leadership!

The tide later turned, though, as OKC fought back from a 10-point third-quarter deficit to rip off a pair of huge runs (16-2 late in the third, 19-5 for about half of the fourth) and finally stamp down the eighth-seeded Rockets, 103-94. The victory gave them a 4-2 series win and passage to a matchup with the also-victorious Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference semifinals.

When the team returned home early Saturday, Thunder fans turned out to greet them at Will Rogers World Airport, a neat "welcome back" tradition that's developed among OKC faithful over the years. Upon de-planing, Perkins — still fresh as a daisy after playing less than 4 1/2 minutes in the clincher, as coach Scott Brooks went smaller earlier and more often (nice to see you again, Nick Collison!) — treated the crowd to some jetway-concrete calisthenics:

Confusion! Confusion in the ring! (Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

Through its first five games, the Western Conference rematch between the Memphis Grizzlies and Los Angeles Clippers had lived up to expectations as the most physical series of the first round of the 2013 postseason. With the Clippers facing elimination at FedEx Forum in Memphis on Friday, we anticipated more of the same — and man, oh man, did we get it.

Game 6 featured 59 personal fouls, 71 free throws, seven technical fouls and one flagrant foul (Chauncey Billups' third-quarter around-the-neck takedown of Mike Conley) ... and that doesn't even cover the really good stuff from the Grizzlies' 118-105 win, which earned Memphis a 4-2 win in their best-of-seven series, punched the Grizzlies' ticket for a Western Conference semifinals showdown with the also-victorious-on-Friday top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and sent the Clippers to a long summer full of questions, headlined by whether unrestricted-free-agent-to-be Chris Paul will elect to re-up with L.A. or look to ply his trade elsewhere.

But that's enough looking forward for the moment — for now, let's take a quick look back at some of the nuttier stuff from the second half of a very wild and eminently watchable Game 6.

Raymond Felton and Pablo Prigioni celebrate during the Knicks' Game 6 win. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

For 38 1/2 minutes on Friday, the New York Knicks handcuffed and hamstrung a tired, old, injured and shorthanded Boston Celtics squad, holding them to 49 points on 30.6 percent shooting and leading by 26 points with 9 1/2 minutes to go.

Naturally, the Celtics had the Knicks right where they wanted them.

Over the next six minutes, Boston ripped off a 26-4 run — remember, Boston scored 27 points in the first half of Game 6 — behind out-of-nowhere-furious play from Jeff Green (a Boston-high 21 in the game) and Avery Bradley (all 10 of his points, all three of his steals), two young guns unwilling to let the Celtics, and their veterans, go out without one last run.

That run, however, would bring Boston no closer than four points. No matter how hard the Knicks tried to lose at the TD Garden on Friday night — and boy, oh boy, did they try, posting six turnovers that led to 15 Celtics points and shooting 1 for 9 from the floor (mostly on pound-the-rock isolations by Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith) in that six-minute stretch — they'd built too big a cushion and forced the Celtics to expend too much energy deflating it.

[Related: Kobe Bryant in lawsuit against his mom]

An Anthony pull-up with 3:10 left pushed the lead back to six. A top-of-the-key Anthony 3-pointer at the 1:43 mark off a pick-and-roll action with Raymond Felton extended it to nine. An Anthony block of a Paul Pierce layup snuffed out the Celtics' last offensive chance, and a Smith driving and-one layup restored the lead to double digits with less than 90 seconds remaining.

In spite of one last Celtics stand — and, really, in spite of themselves — the Knicks moved on to the Eastern Conference semifinals on Friday, beating Boston 88-80 to notch a 4-2 win of their best-of-seven series. Anthony led the Knicks with 21 points (albeit on 7 for 23 shooting), seven rebounds and five assists in 40 minutes. His late 3-pointer was his first made long ball since the 3:32 mark of the fourth quarter in Game 3; he had missed his previous 17.