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Get to know your Eastern Conference second round subplots

Steve Mitchell / USA TODAY Sports

Every year's postseason brings with it a series of tasty subplots, some brand new and some echoes of old, to add spice and give context and make every single series its own unique snowflake. With the playoffs beginning this weekend, we wanted to catch you up to date on some of the most relevant storylines--and maybe a couple that aren't terribly pressing, but are fun anyway--bearing on this year's first round matchups. First up: The two Eastern Conference series.

INDIANA PACERS (1) VS. WASHINGTON WIZARDS (5) 

The First-Ever Second-Round NBA TV Series?

Washington-Indiana seems like a TNT exec's nightmare even for the first round--two medium-sized markets with medium-wattage star power, relatively little playoff history (and zero against one another) and grind-it-out styles that don't often lead to particularly scintillating television. To get a series like this in not-the-first-round is almost unprecedented; even that unwatchable Orlando-Atlanta second-rounder from 2010 had peak-era Dwight Howard to put on the marquee. The Turner people might resort to prodding Shaq to say xenophobic things about Marcin Gortat just to ensure casual fans have a reason to tune in; in the meantime, expect a lot of that Paul George commercial with "Slam" in it.

Points, Who Needs 'Em

Two top-ten defensive teams and bottom-half offensive teams, it's no surprise that Wizards-Pacers games this year have often looked like games of Rock, Paper, Scissors where both teams keep playing good ol' Rock over and over again. In three regular-season games this year, neither team scored more than 93 points, and in all three games the losing team failed to even crack 80. Despite neither team scoring much, none of the games were even all that close, either, with Washington's 91-78 victory in late March being the biggest nail-biter of the series. What do you think this is, the Western Conference? 

Coach Swap

The two lead sideline-patrolers in the series, Indiana's Frank Vogel and Washington's Randy Wittman, both have history with the other franchise. Early in his coaching career, Vogel served as an advance scout for the Gilbert Arenas-era Wizards, but that's nothing compared to Wittman, who has basically been Mr. Basketball in Indiana his whole life. Not only did Wittman play for the Pacers at the end of his pro career and get his coaching break as an assistant in Indiana during the early Reggie Miller years, but he also grew up in Indianapolis, playing for the Hoosiers in college and winning the 1981 title with them.

Wall vs. Turner

Remember the 2010 draft? For a couple years, the fact that John Wall and Evan Turner were taken with the top two picks in the draft meant that it was kind of a story whenever the two were pitted against one another, despite the fact that Wall badly outplayed Turner 95% of the time during his Philly days. It's unclear if they'll get much mano-a-mano time in this series, considering ET didn't even play in Indiana's Game Seven and Vogel might be keeping him too busy with full-time sideline cheerleading duty for him to get much floor burn, but if he does, expect some flashbacks to draft night four years ago. Paul George taken tenth in that round, by the by.

Hibbert's Homecoming

Indiana's All-Star center--we're pretty sure that was the same guy, anyway--wasn't exactly DC-bred, but he did grow up less than a half-hour out in Adelphia, MD, and of course attended both Georgetown Prep high school and Georgetown University undergrad, thus giving him definite Washington roots. Hibbert stayed for all four years as a Hoya, essentially learning how to play basketball over that timespan. Nothing like a little home cooking to turn the playoffs around for one of the biggest no-shows in NBA postseason history, right? Should hopefully get to cut the lines at Ben's Chili, at least.

Shared Players of Note

Wizards bench forward Al Harrington was a two-time Pacer, just missing the Melee years after being traded for Stephen Jackson, and current Pacers GM Kevin Pritchard ended his playing career with the Wizards. Not a ton of other contemporary players with stops at both teams--A.J. Price, anyone?--but a bunch of old vets have logged time in both cities when the Wizards were still known as the Bullets, including Gus Johnson, Phil Chenier, Dan Roundfield, Ron Anderson and Scott Skiles.

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(2) MIAMI HEAT VS. (6) BROOKLYN NETS)

Paul and KG vs. LeBron

Back in LBJ's Cleveland days, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were the primary reason LeBron kept falling short of the finals, and then once LeBron's ascension became complete with Miami--his free agency bolting partly inspired by Boston's own Big Three--he was the primary reason Pierce and Garnett could no longer get out of the East. By my count, it's Paul and KG 2 ('08 & '10), LeBron 2 ('11 & '12), thus making this something of a rubber-match for the long-time East rivals, albeit with none of the three on the team they were when the rivalry originally started. Has made for some pretty dynamite playoff basketball over the years, though:

Paul and KG vs. Ray-Ray

Of course, there was a third member of that Boston Big Three that moved LeBron so, and he currently serves as one of LBJ's lieutenants on the Heat. We were denied the Celtics-Heat series that we so badly craved in the preseason last year with Ray Allen pitted against his one-time brothers in Boston (at least one of whom claimed to have lost Allen's phone number in the interim and then memorably snubbed him in the season opener), but now with Pierce and Garnett on the Nets, they get to face off against their third wheel in a series with no Green involved whatsoever. Surreal, but fascinating nonetheless.

The Nickname Series

The Heat and Nets made history this regular season by being the first teams to wear all nickname jerseys in their nationally televised matchups, in which we got to see iconic nicknames like "J. Shuttlesworth," "The Truth," "King James," "Cole Train," and (personal favorite) "Sweet Lew" embroidered on the back of the two teams' threads. No way the NBA will be able to resist pulling these things out again at least once this series, right? We still haven't even figured out why the hell Toney Douglas is called "T-Dubs."

Nets, 4-0

Remarkably enough, the Nets became the first team in the Heat's Big Three era to sweep Miami in the regular season, winning all four regular-season contests--though three of them were only by a point, and the fourth took two overtimes. It was a pretty entertaining regular-season series, filled with priceless moments and down-to-the-wire finishes, the most memorable of which was provided by a rather unexpected contributor.

Expect a lot more of this in the playoffs. Exciting basketball, I mean, not Mason Plumlee blocking LeBron, you know that nonsense's never happening again. 

Heat, 2-0

These two teams have met in the playoffs twice, in consecutive years in the mid-'00s. The Wade-led Heat won both times, with the VC-era Nets winning just one game across the two series. If this matchup isn't significantly more entertaining and suspenseful than those two were, it would be suuuuuper disappointing for just about everyone.

Greg Oden and Shaun Livingston

The two best comeback stories of 2014 will be facing off in this series, although one appears headed for a much more satisfying ending to their season story than the other. Livingston was enormous in the Nets' first-round series win over the Raptors, not putting up huge numbers but hitting any number of momentum-killing shots and making a number of big defensive plays on the perimeter, while it looks like Oden might not be able to get off the bench for Miami this postseason after all, his balky back and knees perhaps ultimately proving too troublesome. 

If we could get both of them on the court at the same time for just a couple seconds in this series, though, it'd be a pretty big moment for the league, and for any other players currently fighting their damnedest to recover from devastating injury. 

Pat Riley and Mikhail Prokhorov

The two mafia dons of the NBA, one perhaps more figuratively than the other. If ESPN had the gumption to goad one of them into saying something provocative about the other, it could be an all-time bloodbath by the time the series was over. Frankly, even watching the two of them fight it out over who gets to pick up a bar tab would probably be more transfixing than anything that might actually happen on a basketball court this second round.

Shared Players of Note

Livingston actually got a very brief run with the Heat a couple years back, playing four games for them in '08-'09 after having missed the entirety of the '07-'08 season. Besides him, Jerry Stackhouse, Alonzo Mourning, P.J. Brown, Sherman Douglas and Jamaal Magloire all had moments with both franchises, though all but Stackhouse filtered through the Nets during their New Jersey years.

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