Sort of what we have instead of God

GTA Spano Fotos ao vivo

Foi apresentado para mais de 2000 participantes o GTA Spano, o superesportivo espanhol.

O modelo foi desenvolvido em fibra da carbono visando ser um modelo único e atraente mas além de tudo eficiente nas pistas.

Serão produzidas apenas 99 unidades. O GTA oferece três tipos de caixas de velocidades para se adequar ao comprador: um seqüencial de 7 velocidades automática sequencial (sem pedal da embreagem) cam ao volante e, finalmente, uma mudança no tradicional H. As rodas dianteiras são 19 polegadas e traseira 20, com driveways e 335/30R20 pneus 255/35 R19, respectivamente.

Se utilizar com álcool a potência do motor pode ser de até 840 cv a 6.250 rpm. O torque máximo é 920 nm.

2009 Porsche Cayman Pictures

2009 Porsche Cayman Pictures

Porsche Cayman 2009

Porsche Cayman Interior

Base price	$61,150
Price as tested	$71,250(est)
Vehicle layout	Mid-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door hatchback
Engine	3.4L/320-hp/273-lb-ft DOHC, 24-valve flat-6
Transmission	7-speed dual-clutch automatic
Curb weight	3000 lb (mfr)
Wheelbase	95.1 in
Length x width x height	171.1 x 70.9 x 51.4 in
0-60 mph	4.5 sec
EPA city/hwy fuel econ	21/28 mpg (est)
CO2 emissions	0.82 lb/mile (est)

2009 Porsche Boxster Pictures

2009 Porsche Boxster Pictures

Porsche Boxster 2009

Porsche Boxster Interior

Base price	$47,550-$57,650
Vehicle layout	Mid-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door convertible
Engines	2.9L/255-hp/214-lb-ft DOHC 24-valve flat-6; 3.4L/310-hp/266-lb-ft DOHC 24-valve flat-6
Transmissions	6-sp man, 7-sp twin-clutch auto
Curb weight	2950-3050 lb (mfr)
Wheelbase	95.1 in
Length x width x height	172.1 x 70.9 x 50.9 in
0-60 mph	4.9-5.6 sec (mfr est)
EPA city/hwy fuel econ	19-20 / 26-29 mpg
CO2 emissions	0.83-0.90 lb/mile

Pontiac Solstice 2009 Pictures

Pontiac Solstice red

Pontiac Solstice 2009 Pictures

Pontiac Solstice 2009 interior

Base Price	$30,995
Price as tested	$33,630 (est)
Vehicle layout	Front engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe
Engine	2.0L/260-hp/260-lb-ft turbcharged DOHC 16-valve I-4
Transmission	5-speed manual
Curb weight (dist f/r)	3054 lb (52/48%)
Wheelbase	95.1 in
Length x width x height	157.2 x 71.3 x 50.9 in
0-60 mph	5.4 sec
Quarter mile	14.0 sec @ 100.0 mph
Braking, 60-0 mph	119 ft
Lateral acceleration	0.89 g (avg)
EPA city/hwy fuel econ	19/28 mpg
CO2 emissions	0.87 lb/mile

Peas in a Podcast!

Read our heartfelt examination of My Bloody Valentine. Then listen to this week's episode of FreeDarko Presents the Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast, complete with what was supposed to be "a very sexy playoffs preview." By the ladies, for everyone!



(Other methods: iTunes and the XML feed.)

Concept Car : Peugeot Stylight

Another entry from the Peugeot Design Competition is the Stylight, a 3-seater city hybrid car with a small 1.6-liter engine and an electric motor placed above the rear wheels. Ognyan Bozhilov, the designer, said that this arrangement “improves weight distribution, gets rid of the complex, heavy mechanics for power transmission and makes the unique, aerodynamic body possible.” The Stylelight also offers unique safety features: an expansive windscreen for maximum visibility, and LED tail lights designed so the harder you press, the more lights turn on.

Concept Car : MDI Air-Powered AirPod

The folks from MDI are holding firm to their ideas for an air-powered car—using electricity to compress huge amounts of air in small tanks, and then slowly releasing that air to drive pistons. The latest iteration from MDI is the AirPod, which seats three passengers, one facing backward. The AirPod uses a pair of wheels mounted side by side in the front to turn the vehicle—operated by the driver with a joystick—while the rear wheels provide power to the ground. The Airpod delivers about six horsepower of performance.

Concept Car : Peugeot Omni

The Peugeot Omni gets its name from the uncanny omnidirectional abilities of the car’s wheels. But it’s the electric motors in each of those four wheels that give the Omni its green credentials. Those are powered by lithium ion batteries charged, in part, by solar cells on the roof. The amount of energy required is reduced due to the lightweight carbon fiber body, the teardrop-shaped aerodynamic design, structural elements made of aluminum and titanium, and super efficient organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting.

Concept Car : Hinterland Aeronautic EcoVan

At highway speeds, drag resistance can account for 75 percent of fuel consumption. Therefore, designers in Canada put better aerodynamics on the top of their list in the design of a long-range electric vehicle. They aimed for a drag coefficient of less than 0.25, which would beat out the Toyota Prius and the original Honda Insight. Designers want to see the design—something like an aeronautical fuselage on wheels—turned into the ultimate eco-friendly six-seater carpooling machine.

Concept Car : BamGoo Electric Bamboo

The body of the BamGoo is made out of bamboo. Designers from Kyoto University, and the City of Kyoto (home to the famous environmental protocols), demonstrated how organic material like bamboo—which is light, very strong and grows very fast—might be incorporated into car design. The single-seat all-electric car weighs on 130 pounds and can travel 30 miles on a charge.

Concept Car : The Helios Lizard

Kim Gu-Han of Universitat Dulsburg-Essen, Germany, wants to build a solar-powered car that can charge itself entirely from the sun. The problem is the limited space for photovoltaic panels on a car’s roof. The Helios overcomes that limitation by acting like a frill-neck lizard. When stationary, the off-road vehicle can unfurl a large set of photovoltaic cells to produce enough energy to run the car, with excess energy for home power. The Helios won Best Use of Technology category at the Interior Motives Design Awards 2008.

Concept Car : Peugeot E-motion French Super Car

Peugeot E-motion French Super Car

Concept Car : T-Rex

T-Rex Concept car by Johnathan Cote 2008

Concept Car : Eco Transportation Phoenix

Future transportation concepts give the world hopes to deliver eco-friendly vehicles that will be far better both in technology and looks. However, all this exists conceptually and we are still not near any such technology that could provide high-speed sporty vehicles with zero emission electric engines. Phoenix is another such conceptual design for American urban life. This machine is in itself a try to blend freedom, strength, and flexibility, with a special concern to our gradually deteriorating environment. Design seems to be inspired from American muscle cars and pick-up trucks. This two-seater car derives power from Flexi-Fuel V8 engine. Not only engine but the bio-composite material and recycled aluminum used in body are other important aspects that make it soft toward the environment.

The tough and agile design incorporates a safety cell made from reinforced bio-polymers with roll-bars behind each seat to provide additional protection. An Orbital Omni-directional four-wheel-drive system makes it capable of rotating around its own axis and sideways. All this sounds fantastic and do go with its name that is inspired by an ancient mythical bird, except that it can’t fly.

Concept Car : Angel Car gives you an unbelievable driving experience

Angel is a concept car inspired by the fairy angels at a minimal and very pure design manner. Peugeot Angel is specially designed for city use that will give the users an unbelievable driving experience. This concept car has a futuristic look with a little bit of retro charm. All the front wheels have a standard car like look but the rear wheels are functioning on idea of circulation of opposite magnetic fields and this movement actually develops magnetic field that aloes this superb car to be levitated in its back. With this process the Angel car is lighter than traditional cars and requires less power to perform smooth drive.

Concept Car : Ford Airstream

The fuck is this thing!? It's like a god damn van from space!

Concept Car : Ford Firebird

Now what the hell is this? It's like a rocket turned into a car

It's After the End of the World

Periodically, and without any fair warning, FreeDarko turns into a music blog. Like when the Recluse and myself joined hands in celebration of ancestral favorites Polvo. Or today, roughly 24 hours after I became the last person to stand before My Bloody Valentine's reunion tour. What follows is an exchange between myself and Zac Crain, senior editor at D Magazine and author of the forthcoming Dimebag Darrell bio, Black Tooth Grin

Bethlehem Shoals: You know how everyone talks about the new Terminator movie, or The Dark Knight, as a franchise "reboot?" That's what this show was like for me. And others, I think. One friend just said to me "I feel like the band is entirely different to me now." It's true—I tried to listen to Loveless afterward to figure out the setlist, and there was zero familiarity with the music on my part. And this is a record I've listened to thousands of times. I also believe, or want to believe, that the MBVocaust was especially deadly. The sound crew were going nuts, especially some bald guy who appeared to be in charge. They were all taping it, and these dudes had been on the road with them through the whole tour (last date was tonight). I won't go into any great detail over what parts of my body were affected and how, or how satisfying it was to watch "fans" around us who wouldn't shut up before leave after five minutes. Like motherfuckers, what did you think you were getting into? Don't you know shit about their live show?

Zac Crain: Someone offered me what he termed "the best mushrooms ever" pre-show, and I wisely declined. Because I think it might have ended up looking like the opening of the ark scene from Raiders. And I can't imagine playing that shit while intoxicated in any way. I also like the fact that, of a few thousand, maybe a handful of people had seen them before, and maybe one of those people saw them back in the day. So it was totally different than seeing, say, the Pixies, where everyone had a memory to stack it up against, or you really felt you were getting less than you might have back in the day. Totally fresh. I think reboot more or less nails it, because it was new. You weren't seeing the old band, or the the band on the record, but you weren't getting a rehash necessarily either.

BS: A friend of mine feels that Loveless once and for all destroyed the possibility of album-live performance correlation. I'd take it even further—that album's vastly human, but who ever thinks it was made by people with bodies? Even the erotics of them are soft-focus: sleeping, dreaming, bathing in sound without any punk-like penetration. Or emotions that go past the womb or certain altered states. It's like ghosts' wet dreams. Live, though, they're the polar opposite: Rock performance at its most raw and elemental. The ballad-ic songs barely existed in that context (at all, or when they were played). Then the onslaught at the end, which was like stripping their live ethos down to the bare essence. And look what you get. So basically, they're the end of rock on two different extremes of the spectrum.



ZC: I listened to Loveless the next day, and it's sort of like a tape loop of the echo of the show in my head as I was driving home, but not as pejorative as that probably sounds. But, yeah, it's not the same. It's like the difference between a jet stream and an actual jet. The MBVocaust, to me, is sort of the combine harvester of rock shows, separating the people who were there for the music and the people who were there just to be there. I was about maybe 30 feet back. People were streaming past me to leave, but just as many were streaming past me to get closer. I enjoyed that. I can't, even in my mind, completely recreate what it felt/sounded like, but I did notice when I was leaving that I felt it physically way more than anything I can remember.

BS: To me, it wasn't a question of there for the music vs. there for the event, but more "there to hear Loveless really fucking loud" vs. "people who have really spent time with this music."

ZC: Weird thing for me is I grew up in intensely small town Texas. So I had no idea about them until they were well and truly dead, or it seemed so. And then there was so much catching up to do with other stuff, I really didn't listen to MBV until really really late. And then that's all I listened to, for a time. So this wasn't really ancient to me. It was more like a band that hadn't toured in like, maybe, six or seven years. (I kind of did everything backwards or mixed up or something: hip-hop was my high school punk rock, then punk rock was my punk rock, then Britpop, then nothing but Stax/Volt, and somewhere in that game of Twister I spun "left hand, MBV.") So last Wednesday I expected to be monumental, then I was worried it wouldn't be, then it was way more than I thought it would be originally.

BS: One thing I thought halfway through is "wait, what exactly makes for an MBV 'fan'?" There's so little music. Like three CD-R's of rarities. And I don't think your experience with them (which sounds a lot like mine) is uncommon, or somehow lesser than . . . that one guy who saw them in 1991? If anything, there's a way in which you can listen to them as a totally dated band; getting into them later, when they've taken on legendary status, and realizing how easy/essential it is to do so, emphasizes just how colossal they are. Like, who says "you weren't listening to Coltrane in 1965!" God doesn't belong to anyone in particular, does he? Or some people more than others?

ZC: That's a good point. There's really not as much to grab onto, musically, as with other bands that have that stature, though I guess someone like the Stone Roses would have a similar situation should they ever get back together. It's funny looking back -- because that's mostly what I have to do with the bands I really like -- and they 1) weren't together as long as you think and 2) didn't record as much either. The deal with MBV is that part of what they did has been so bastardized -- by bands, and by critics describing those bands -- that until they started playing again, it was less a band than an idea, but an idea no one really remembered anymore, or remembered really imprecisely. Sort of like a scene from a movie you talk about with your friends all the time but never actually watch, and so, the dialogue gets botched, and then screwed up even more, and on and on. When you actually watch the movie, the scene is as great as you remembered, but not anything at all how you remembered it, if that makes any sense.



BS: I would almost say that the "I saw them in 1991" dudes become part of that hazy past. So someone says that to your face and they automatically start to dissipate a little. They become part of the legend: "those fans that heard the sound." Weird that the sheer physicality of their past live shows had become as elusive, as much of an idea, as "Loveless" was the day it was released. As opposed to, say, the time I went to Sonic Youth in 1996 and some middle-aged black dude with a Confusion is Sex tee tucked into acid-washed jeans just kept glaring at everyone.

ZC: Elusive is a good word because I can't remember the last time I went to a show where so many people didn't know exactly what to expect. At best you have someone who went to a show in another city, but they don't give you much. The sense beforehand was more than nervousness, less than fear. "Can I handle this?" was part of it, but more than that it was "How do I want to handle this? What are they/am I capable of?" Can't think of anyone else that can do that. There are bands that are sort of wildly different from record to stage and back, but even those bands, like I suppose people would consider Radiohead to be one, are wildly different in kind of predictable ways. I think MBV is permanently other. It's whatever you want it to be, but it is also none of those things exactly, and probably never will be.

BS: This goes back, as do all things in life, to the MBVocaust. If some noise band had just come out swinging with that, I would've left. But to have that as the culmination of a set that contained so many emotions, and contrasts, and history, made it well-earned. Wait, that's such a dispassionate way of looking at it. It was both laying all that to waste and boiling it down to its essence. Like the world ending so it could start over again. I really have no idea how something so stupid and obvious could be so profound. Actually, I do: If a band of unparalleled artistic excellence did it after a great set that came after almost twenty years of build-up. Catharsis shouldn't be complicated, just the circumstances surrounding it.



As a bonus, here's David Wingo's "Macrophenomenal Anthem," which only really began to take shape when MBV-mania swept New York last fall.

McLaren SLR 999 Red Gold Dream

Antes de começar a resposta é sim, este carro que ficou até estranho de tantos detalhes em ouro, é de Dubai o lugar onde os supercarros não são exóticos o suficiente, por isso eles tem que apelar.

Esta SLR foi personalizada em uma empresa Suiça chamada Ueli Anliker Design que não economizou no ouro 24 quilates e muitos rubis.

Veja as fotos da SLR , de gosto duvidoso, abaixo:

Vídeo primeiro teste do Zenvo ST1

Mostrado aqui em dezembro de 2008, o Zenvo ST1, o superesportivo dinamarquês com 1104 cv, reaparece agora prontinho para estrear em LeMans este ano.

Veja o vídeo do primeiro teste do Zenvo ST1:

Ferrari Fiorano 599XX

Um dos destaque do salão de Genebra, o Ferrari Fiorano 599XX, vem com uma potência de 700 cv a 9.000 rpm.

Aerodinamicamente feito para grudar no chão em altas velocidades o 599XX tem um downforce de 280 kg a 200 km/h e de 630 kg quando o atinge 300 km/h.

A transmissão tem o intervalo de trocas de 60 milésimos de segundos. Os discos e pastilhas de freios são feitos de fibra de carbono. Em testes na pista de Fiorano fechou a marca de 1 minuto e 17 segundos.

O carro só tem permissão de rodar em pistas.

Veja as fotos do Ferrari Fiorano 599XX (clique nas fotos para ampliar)

I'm from Barcelona

And now, a look overseas, courtesy of Bricko. For some NBA, try my post on the Bulls and Celtics finding themselves.

There's a band composed of 29 musicians whose lead singer looks like a young Kurt Rambis minus the googles. They're « I'm from Barcelona » though they're actually from a small town in Sweden. Joan Mirò was from Barcelona, Scarlett Johansson kissed Penelope Cruz in Barcelona. Even Ricky Rubio is from Barcelona. His hometown stands 10 miles away from Plaça de Catalunya. By the time you read this, maybe more people will claim they're from Barcelona as the city continues to be synonymous with excellence. “I’m from Barcelona” as a post-modern “Ich bin ein Berliner” for sports. Today Barcelona's main artists do not paint cubic faces or melted watches, they play on a football pitch or a basketball court. For the first time in European sports history, one team could get a European crown in both football and basketball over the same season. Tomorrow night the football section will host Chelsea FC in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semi finals. The basketball section? They will head to Berlin to play CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague Final Four on Friday.

We may have the same old VHS starring Marv Albert and Frank Layden. I remember them joking about how the Dream Teamers enjoyed the local specialities during the 1992 Olympics while showing footage of players entering a McDonald’s restaurant. Well maybe that’s the thing: Larry Bird peeing his large Sprite at the local McDo’s thus fertilizing the soil of Barcelona. Being responsible for an array of talent in the area 17 years later. But that of course would be an offense to people who know history and would come up with names like Johan Cruyff, Juan Antonio San Epifanio and Diego Maradona. Barcelona’s basketball team is no Dream Team. It took them all 5 games to overcome Spanish rivals Tau Vitoria in the Quarter Finals. They do not have this sense of perfection the football section has. Twice these last few weeks – Leo Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta put on a show in the UEFA Champions League – claiming 5-1 and 5-2 wins against Bayern Munich and Olympique Lyonnais. Those 2 nights, this team played close to perfection. It was like listening to Catalonia’s Isaac Albeniz.



For most experts FC Barcelona however plays the best basketball in Europe today. Like their pals from the football pitch, they emphasise ball movement and knocks down their outside shots. At 38%, Barça ranks third in Europe this season in 3 point percentage. With Italian sharpshooter Gianluca Basile netting over 50% of his long-range bombs. I remember running an interview with Basile back in the days and blaming my cell phone for bad connection. It took me 10 long minutes to understand he was a stammerer. And I found it so antinomic for a guy who can arm so quickly to face shot clock violation whenever he answers a question. While Basile is solid, Barcelona’s main asset is to be found on the other wing with Juan Carlos Navarro being back in business after an ambivalent year in Memphis (11 ppg though). “La Bomba” is arguably the most talented player heading to this Final Four with a skillset made of long with little rotation three points shots and floaters that he trademarked long before the TP9s and the CP3s. But Barcelona’s biggest strength might as well be its depth, especially down the lane. With 4 big men being starting 5 - worthy for any contender. All 4 were drafted. NBA geeks may be familiar with names like Fran Vasquez, Daniel Santiago, Ersan Ilyasova and David Andersen. The first two provide an intimidating force in the paint while the other two bring a deadly outside touch. A very deep team I said – strangely enough without any American contributor.

First hurdle on the road to the Euroleague title, a certain Ettore Messina. Who’s been heralded as the future first European head coach in the NBA forever. He did win the European trophy twice in 3 years with CSKA Moscow and forged a reputation as one of the biggest brains in the business. He did lose a couple of bets with his summer signings but can still rely on his vets including 2008 Euroleague MVP Ramunas Šiškauskas, who’s the closest thing to Brandon Roy this side of the ocean. Second hurdle will be the result of a Greek tragedy. Bitter enemies Panathinaikos and Olympiacos meet one more time and for once in a long long time, the latter have a shot at getting away with the win. Hence they even broke the record for the best winning percentage in the Greek League history (they only lost one game all season). Josh Childress’ fro might draw the attention though his… 9 ppg have been anything but spectacular – in the eye of the beholder (ask the defender on the poster).



FC Barcelona’s quest for a triumph in European sports starts tomorrow before 90,000 something Blaugrana fans against Chelsea FC, the 2008 UEFA Champions League runners up. The proud metropolis - home of close to 5,000,000 sports fans - is not even the capital of its own country yet it has a chance to become the center of Europe - at least on the sports map. And many could soon climb on the Barcelona bandwagon as the team looks like the last defense against British imperialism in European football and the Orthodox dominance in European basketball. With Leo Messi and Juan Carlos Navarro as the best ambassadors of a game where creativity wins games. So who's from Barcelona?

The Day They All Changed

Make sure you ready Joey's post on the trajectory of the league, and get used to seeing him here regularly. Also, I've updated the Amazon widget, but am not going to beat over the head with the reasoning behind the recommendations.

I mentioned this point already on my TSB weekend review, but it's so important it deserves its own post. On the last FDPDOCNBAPC (the podcast), Dan, Shoefly, and myself decided that the "putting it all together for the playoff run" cliche is largely specious. It's almost always the result of injured players coming back and getting into the swing of things at the right time, or the team trading for someone huge at the deadline. It just doesn't make sense that the onset of "real" basketball would suddenly cause a mediocre team to transform into something mighty. Yes, it happens in some other sports; this just proves how random and unconvincing their postseasons are.

Well, I'm here this morning to tell you that we were wrong. Sort of. I'd assumed, like most people, that the KG-less Garnett would be just that: the Celtics, minus their best player, plus everyone else trying to pick up the slack in slightly embarrassing (or at least paltry) fashion. What I certainly didn't count on was seeing a team in the playoffs that, while maybe not as good as the team that equation yielded, is fresh and exciting in new ways. Quite simply, this is a very different Celtics team. For one, the unquestioned star and center of attention is Rajon Rondo, a longtime FD favorite who in these playoffs has asserted himself as part of the "point guards now win games" movement (even if it took the media a few days, and Mark Jackson till overtime on Sunday, to figure this out). I've written at length about the strangeness of Rondo's game, even if I neglected to really break his signature move/nervous tic—the behind-the-back fake that, in effect, feigns the element of surprise in an attempt to gain the element of surprise (a double-negative? net result, zero? the key to Rondo's everywhere/nowhere style?). Suffice it to say that in this series, Rondo's used the playoffs as a platform to expose his most potent essence.

But this isn't only about Rondo's welcome-here parade. It's fascinating to watch the overall dynamic of the team develop, as something quite different from the previous (incarnation of) The Big Three (minus one) gives way to, well, a team for the future. Pierce has been far less conspicious, functioning not as someone who would brag he could take Kobe, but a wily veteran whose scoring is deployed selectively and attracts a lot of defensive attention. Allen has been thus pigeon-holed the whole time he's been in Boston—disastrously the first season, to far better effect this year. These playoffs, Ray Ray's not being asked to hit too many stand-still jumpers (he hates those, I've realized) or create for himself (not clear he can do that these days). Instead, he's coming off of screens like a champ, staying in motion so he gets the kind of shot he thrives on: An eye-blink clear look, for a split-second, from an absolutely exact spot on the floor.



In short, the older dudes, while still key producers—ironically, Allen more so than Pierce—are beginning to gracefully recede from the foreground, or at least play in a way that's not going to fall off a cliff one day. At the same time, Big Baby and Perkins, while hardly anyone's idea of a formidable front court, are playing solid, well-rounded basketball that makes it possible to imagine life without Garnett. The Celtics are, for lack of a better word, pulling a Dumars without even meaning to (by the logic of a TSB post last week, would this make Rondo into Bias?). The team's different, but they have less rigid, more malleable identity that serves them well going forward. Damn you, Danny Ainge!

The Bulls, I feel even worse for maligning going into the playoffs. Maybe that's because they've tried to rebuild three times in a row now, and have a roster that reads like a geological cross-section of failed recent history. There's also just something really unseemly about this year's additions: Pull the ROY out of a hat, and then tack on two vets way late just for the hell of it. This team seemed like glimpses at several different philosophies, held together with glue and mud, with a non-coach coaching it all. And then somehow, everyone (and what they stand for) ended up facing the same direction. We need not speak much of Derrick Rose, except to say that as a 20 year-old, he's solidified his standing as somewhere between that Game One juggernaut and the off-nights we saw throughout the season (and elsewhere in this series).

Now, as if by miracle, suddenly this patchwork team makes perfect sense. Ben Gordon, possibly the most boring enigma in basketball history, was perfect as the fearless scorer who, for the most part, realizes there's a time and place for his would-be heroic. Hinrich, too, is a role player extraordinaire: Expert defender, long-range option, scraggly grit monster, can handle the ball. Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah are far more mercurial than Davis and Perkins, but they can finally take the floor together as a big man tandemn of tomorrow. Noah's all hustle (real, these days) and elegant effort, Thomas has that jumper to go with his arsenal of general havoc-wreaking. Backed up by Miller and Salmons, vets perfectly content to occasionally remind us that they were once capable of star-caliber play, insurance policies willing to come in to steady or bring order to this tenuous assemblage. The Bulls, rather than looking like the unrelated wreckage of front office chicanery, are instead a real team. If just for this series.

I don't see this like last year's Hawks, or the Warriors of 2007. There's not the sense that these teams are living on the edge, or betting the farm on something outlandish. And maybe this does fall under my original rubric of players discovering their limits, for better or worse, in the playoffs (I would say that last year, Iguodala experienced the latter; this year, the former). I think we can say, however, that we're seeing off-season concerns seamlessly dealt with at the most high-pressure part of the season. Maybe you could call it a fluke, except these teams just keep honing these new models, and the whole things just makes too much sense. The individual/team key might be thus: When one or two key guys outstrip themselves, all of a sudden it's contagious. Boston's was brought about by necessity; Chicago's, on the other hand, is almost inexplicable, especially in the way it caps off an entire season of muddle. It begins with Derrick Rose, but you've got to give everyone on the team credit, one-by-one. And that's how a team puts it all together: By everyone involved catching some individual inspiration.