Ball Don’t Lie welcomes you back to the NBA (Ball Don’t Lie)

If you had better things to do last fall, we understand. If you spent most of winter obsessing over the NFL, we get it. If March Madness took up most of your time last month, we feel ya. We're about to move into the second week of April, and you're with the NBA now. Each team has but a few games left, the regular season has just eight days to go, the days are getting longer and it won't be long – won't be long until the playoffs hit. Thankfully, the minds at Ball Don't Lie have been paying attention since October, and we're here to catch you up on eight key storylines as the NBA's 2014-15 starts to get real. Dan Devine The Spurs' quest for a repeat After a sluggish-by-their-standards start to the season that had them just 2 1/2 games away from being out of the West's top eight in late February , the San Antonio Spurs have been a world-class wrecking crew (shouts to Dre ) for the past five weeks. San Antonio's 17-3 since Feb. 27, a stretch that's included signature stomp-outs of the East-leading Hawks and West-topping Warriors . The Spurs have outscored their opponents by 15.2 points per 100 possessions over the last 20 games, far and away the best mark in the league. They're cranking things up on both ends of the floor — their offensive and defensive efficiency marks during this run would each rank first in the league over the full season. Kawhi Leonard is arguably the most impressive and impactful two-way player in the NBA right now. Tim Duncan remains invaluable as a defensive anchor, space-creating screener and offensive fall-back option. Danny Green — shooting 49 percent from the floor, 49.6 percent from the 3-point arc and 93.5 percent from the foul line since the All-Star break while still playing exceptional defense — continues to make the case that he's less "'in this system' good" and more "'worthy of a giant new contract ' good." Facing a deep, talented, experienced Spurs team in a seven-game series with Gregg Popovich at the controls and Leonard wreaking havoc seems like a terrifying proposition for anyone out West. And that's even without several critical elements of San Antonio's 2014 title team — star point guard Tony Parker, key reserves Manu Ginobili, Boris Diaw and Patty Mills — resembling the dangerous playmakers who helped hoist the O'Brien last summer. It's scary to think about, but if Pop can get the rest of the Spurs' vets in sync over the next few weeks, the Spurs could soon look even better than they have over the past few. But that cuts both ways. What if Parker and Ginobili can't return to full speed after being struck by hamstring injuries this season? What if Mills can't get all the way back to last June's Microwave flow after having most of his season scuttled by shoulder surgery? What if Diaw can't consistently serve as the Swiss army knife matchup nightmare who gave the Thunder and Heat fits? In that scenario, San Antonio could find itself short of defense-unlocking answers against elite opponents that have the time and resources to properly prepare for them in a short series. Yes, Leonard and Green have proven capable of shouldering an increased load during the regular season. But are they ready to do the same in the crucible of the playoffs? Even if they are, will a Spurs team that currently sits in sixth place in the West and has so many miles on its collective tires — not just due to the mammoth burden that Duncan, Ginobili and Parker have borne over the years, but also due to having played 208 total games during their back-to-back NBA Finals appearances (about 2 1/2 regular seasons' worth of work in two years) — have enough left to win three straight series on the road just to get back to the Finals? History wouldn't be with them there — the last team to win it all without home-court advantage in any round was the 1994-95 Houston Rockets — but, as ever, you bet against the Spurs at your own peril. The Hawks' quest for validation For a while, we looked at Atlanta as the Spurs' heir apparent, a team whose many-hands-make-light-work approach to scoring and commitment to sharing the ball took the league by storm. Then LeBron James came back from his two-week siesta, David Griffin shuffled the deck and the Cleveland Cavaliers started incinerating opposing defenses. Then we remembered that, back in October, we expected Cleveland (or maybe the unicorn of a healthy Chicago Bulls team) to represent the East in the Finals, while the Hawks just kept puttering along to the middle of the pack and a week or two of NBA TV playoff games. But what about the 19-game winning streak? What about the big wins over the Warriors and Cavs ? What about the dynamite clutch-time numbers and Kyle Korver catching fire and "Nobody in the league can keep Jeff Teague in front of them?" What happened to all that? Well, it's tougher to sustain positive press when you play .500 ball for a month, as the Hawks have, going 8-7 since their win over the Cavs. It's a bit trickier to get buy-in when your defense falls from just outside the top five in points allowed per possession to barely clear of the bottom 10 . It's harder to believe that a non-superstar-based system makes you less vulnerable to the loss of one player when we watched Atlanta's offense fall apart without Korver in the "rematch" loss to Golden State . (We'll learn more about how Atlanta handles missing pieces this week, as the Hawks will be without All-Star power forward Paul Millsap for at least two games.) It's more difficult to consider you a true member of the championship elite after watching you lose three straight to the Warriors, Thunder and Spurs , all while watching Cleveland beat every Western playoff team except Houston (to whom they lost in overtime) in a two-month stretch. None of this means Atlanta can't win the whole flippin' thing. Millsap (probably) won't be sidelined for long. Korver, Thabo Sefolosha and Mike Scott are healthy and back in the fold, with Dennis Schröder reportedly set to join them . They've got a pair of pace-pushing point guards in Teague and Schröder, an interior game-changer in Al Horford, and shooters all over the place. They're deep, tough, smart and they don't often beat themselves. They've got a coach, Mike Budenholzer, who's regarded as one of the sharpest tactical minds in the game. There's enough here to stir the echoes of early-season dominance and remind the public why the East runs through Atlanta this spring. The Hawks have to prove it, though. They'll have to prove that this iffy month owed more to ill-timed injuries and a tough stretch of schedule than to cracks in their foundation. They'll have to prove they're not just a team aping San Antonio's style, but that they also have the sort of grit and sand that enables the Spurs to persevere, coming back from unthinkable pain to rise again . They'll have to prove that their defense can really stand up to the kind of heat this Cavs offense can bring, and the kind of individual brilliance LeBron and Kyrie are capable of authoring. They'll have to prove they're not just the rabbit on the rail who raced out ahead for the rest of the East to chase all season, but rather (if you'll permit a mixed metaphor) the tortoise who stayed steady as Cleveland has flashed-and-dashed through the last seven weeks, and will still cross the finish line first. Watching the Hawks try to do all that — to prove that they are who so many of us never seemed to think they were, despite nightly evidence to the contrary — ought to be fascinating.

Ball Don’t Lie welcomes you back to the NBA (Ball Don’t Lie)

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