Two unidentified Hawks fans watch Game 5 (Getty Images)

The Indiana Pacers/Atlanta Hawks first round series has been miserable to watch to an almost absurd degree. The teams have traded bouts of excellent play with swoons on both ends of the floor, pairing terrible timing all along the way in a series that has featured five mostly one-sided games. Neither club has explicitly slacked off for long stretches, the effort has been there, but sound decision making and clarity of purpose hasn’t been in long supply for either side.

Befitting this expectancy is the home record for each team: Indiana has taken all three in Indianapolis, while the Hawks took two games in Atlanta, extending the team’s home winning streak over the Pacers to 13 consecutive games.

Because of this streak, Pacer coach Frank Vogel has gone all out in the superstitious realm to guarantee that Friday night’s Game 6 will not be more of the same.

(The previous sentence was brought to you by Opposite Day, because Frank Vogel has just about guaranteed that the Pacers and Hawks will play a terrible Game 6 that will end in yet another Hawks win. Mike Wells at the Indianapolis Star has the story.)

Oprah Winfrey with Jason Collins in Los Angeles. (Chuck Hodes)

Jason Collins capped the whirlwind week that followed his groundbreaking Monday announcement that he is gay by sitting down for an extended chat with Oprah Winfrey set to air Sunday night.

In the interview, which will air during an expanded episode of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” on Winfrey's OWN channel, Collins, his twin brother Jarron and several other members of their family will discuss his decision to come out as the first openly gay active male athlete in one of the four major American professional sports. The wide-ranging conversation touches on issues like the global response to Collins' announcement and his hope that coming out will increase dialogue about tolerance and equality for homosexuals in (among other places) the African American community:

David Kahn at the 2010 NBA draft lottery (Getty Images)

When word filtered out on Thursday night that the long-rumored separation between David Kahn and the Minnesota Timberwolves was nigh, many of us giddily rubbed our hands in anticipation of how the outgoing Wolves general manager would somehow make a bad situation worse by talking his way out of it. Kahn has made an NBA career out of insulting others’ intelligence, and in an interview with the Associated Press’ John Krawczynski, he got the ball rolling exactly as you’d expect:

Kahn to AP: "I've taken a lot of bullets for the team and will continue to do so. I'm happy to do it. That's what we're hired to do."

— Jon Krawczynski (@APkrawczynski) May 2, 2013

Martyrdom … engaged!

Not content to sit on that potshot after a disastrous personnel choosing career that left the Timberwolves with the same top two assets (Kevin Love, and Nikola Pekovic, both drafted by Kevin McHale) that were on the team’s books when Kahn entered the fray, David took to the local Star Tribune for a massive four-part interview with Wolves beat writer Jerry Zgoda. The results are expected, sometimes infuriating, with the notable anecdotes too ridiculously to ably paraphrase.

Allow us to introduce you to some of Kahn’s finer, final, moments.

Important horse-racing information. (Getty Images)

I always feel a little dumb this time of year, because as someone who likes sports, I know I'm supposed to care (at least somewhat) about the annual running of the Kentucky Derby, because of tradition and mint juleps and fashion and the elusive Triple Crown and The Sport of Kings, and yet I pretty much never do. This year, though, I've got a slightly more vested interest, because there is a horse in the race that is named Palace Malice, which (as you probably know) has an NBA connection.

Sure, it's an awful NBA connection, relating as it does to the 2004 brawl between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers that spilled into the stands, set the Pacers organization back for several years and indelibly marked Ron Artest/Metta World Peace and Stephen Jackson as Bad Dudes in the eyes of many NBA fans, but still: it's an NBA connection all the same, and is therefore something I'm interested in. Go, Palace Malice. Run like a fast horse.

It is, of course, worth clarifying that Palace Malice was not named for the infamous brawl, a question the horse addressed on "his" Twitter account:

@simmonsclass My name andnickname for the brawl come from3 stooges short called Malice in the Palace. My mother is named Palace Rumor.

— Palace Malice (@PalaceMalice) May 3, 2013

("... a question the horse addressed on 'his' Twitter account." I love my job.)

After the Golden State Warriors just barely held on to knock off the Denver Nuggets and move on to a Western Conference semifinals showdown with the San Antonio Spurs, Hall of Famer Reggie Miller (who called the game with Kevin Harlan for TNT) made his way down to the Warriors locker room to congratulate head coach Mark Jackson, his longtime friend and former Indiana Pacers teammate, and his upstart Warriors for toppling the West's No. 3 seed.

But while Miller praised the effort put forth by Jackson's charges, he couldn't very well ignore the Warriors' disastrous fourth-quarter play, especially in the final minutes of the game, which nearly allowed the Nuggets to erase an 18-point Warriors lead. And true to his form as the self-described "devil" to Jackson's "angel," Miller worked a little bit blue in the process, which was captured by TNT's cameras (NOTE: PG-13 language ahead):

Amazingly enough, this is, like, the least objectionable thing Reggie Miller has said in his time on TNT.

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Phil Jackson's back. Sort of. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)Hey, everybody: Phil Jackson's back in the NBA! Well, sort of.

Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores announced Thursday that he's tapped Jackson, the legendary head coach who won 11 championships on the sidelines with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, to serve in "an advisory capacity" to help find the Pistons' next head coach. The team fired former bench boss Lawrence Frank two weeks ago following consecutive disappointing seasons that saw Detroit go 54-94, fail to consistently show meaningful improvement and never really sniff postseason contention.

The Pistons are looking for something better from their next hire, and billionaire businessman Gores figured the team's search for coaching talent might benefit from the input of arguably the greatest coach in NBA history. From Keith Langlois of Pistons.com:

“Phil Jackson is a friend and one of the best minds in the business,” Gores said. “We are thrilled to have him as an adviser as we make some very important decisions for this franchise. Joe [Dumars] and I discussed this and he and I are in full agreement that this is a great opportunity.” [...]

“Phil Jackson and Tom Gores are friends,” said Mark Barnhill, a partner in Platinum Equity, Gores’ California-based private equity firm. “Based on that relationship, Phil has agreed to provide advice and counsel on the coaching search and immediate basketball needs. He will be in Detroit next week as a resource to Joe Dumars, who is leading the search.

It's nice to have friends. Especially friends with enough rings to make typing troublesome.

After the Houston Rockets went into Chesapeake Energy Arena and confidently took down the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 5 on Wednesday, CSN Houston brought gleeful Rockets fans all the relevant news and notes from the big series-extending road win — James Harden's fantastic shooting performance, the Thunder's failed "Hack-a-Whatever-His-Name-Is" strategy, the eighth-seeded Rockets' chances of forcing a winner-take-all Game 7 back in OKC ... and, of course, most importantly, the baby with its pants down wandering out into the middle of the camera shot.

Wait, what?

I'm going to guess that wasn't included in the pre-show production meeting.

The Golden State Warriors entered the fourth quarter of Game 6 against the Denver Nuggets poised to complete an inspirational closeout win over the third-seeded team in the West. After struggling to a 42-40 halftime deficit, the Warriors turned things around to take the third quarter 33-20 on the strength of four 3-pointers from star shooter Stephen Curry. The Nuggets looked slow to loose balls and without momentum — in other words, defeated.

Then pretty much the exact opposite happened. After taking an 80-62 lead with 9:11 on the clock, Golden State went scoreless for 4:43 to allow the Nuggets to cut the lead to five points. And while the Warriors did manage to score 12 more points the rest of the way, they did so in the least impressive way imaginable, having trouble completing basic basketball tasks like inbounding the ball and passing out of traps to turn it over nine times in the final eight minutes.

[Related: Bulls, Nets going to Game 7]

The good news for the Warriors is that they held on, making just enough plays in the final minutes to come away with a 92-88 win to knock the Nuggets out of the playoffs in six games. Yet, while a series win is supposed to feel triumphant, the exact form of the moment gave considerable reason for concern.