We've seen other established teams do this consistently in other years past. New, young, and unproven teams tend to push themselves throughout the regular season while established, older, successful teams often do not approach 82 games the same way.

San Antonio was a pleasant anomaly this year - however, one could argue that the combination of the past few season's downturn in success coupled with the infusion of a heavy dose of younger, less established players (Hill, Splitter, Blair, Neal) into the main rotation also helped to re-install meaning into high regular season performance.

It will be interesting to see if how the playoff efficiencies and scoring differentials balance out in the playoffs, where things like desire, determination, and sense of urgency suddenly become paramount.

Their offense has been awful in the last month. They do not rebound.

But the Knicks don't like to play defense. And their best big doesn't mind a stat line with 2 or 4 rebounds in it (Amare).

The Knicks could be very forgiving of all of the Celtics' weaknesses.