Well, the Isiah Thomas Era is over.

To be honest, as a Knicks fan, I am not sure how to feel about this. Where there should be laughter and rejoicing in my basketball soul, I feel strangely… disappointed. Over the past four and a half seasons, I’ve grown accustomed and oddly attached to rooting against Isiah. Watching the Knicks dig themselves such an enormous hole year after year was very entertaining—just like a classic Stephen Segal movie, you watched just to see how bad it could get.

Now that Zeke’s gone (Almost. He still has a position with the Knicks, but he is barred by his new contract from interacting with the players. You know you’ve done a bad job when you are not only fired, but issued a restraining order from your former team…), I don’t know what I’m supposed to do as a Knicks fan… I kinda thought the whole point was to boo and wear one of those ‘Fire Isiah’ t-shirts..

Actually, as much as much as I’d like to keep talking about the Knicks, there are far more exciting topics in the sports world, and even in the NBA, right now.

The other day, for example, the Sixers just beat the Pistons in Detroit, kicking off what will hopefully be an upset filled postseason. This NBA playoffs promises to be one of the best ever– at least in the West, where eight teams separated by just a few games have generated an almost NCAA tournament-like atmosphere. Playing the NIT to the West’s March Madness, the Eastern Conference Playoffs will likely be low on excitement, but, as the Sixers showed us, there could always be some interesting shakeups. Actually, Philadelphia’s surprise performance got me thinking about an often discussed theme come this time of year: playoff experience.

Given Chris Paul and the young Hornets emergence this season, evaluating the impact of individual’s playoff experience is particularly important right now. As you might guess from last week’s article, I personally find the whole concept of experience kind of silly.

First off, the NBA playoffs are absolutely huge. More teams make it then not, meaning that every year, more than half the league accumulates playoff experience. Secondly, the fact that each series goes seven games would seem to mitigate any ‘shock factor’ the playoffs might have on a young team. Even if an inexperienced player is somehow completely overwhelmed by playoff pressure, which I doubt, it’s probably not going to take more than 1 quarter for him to realize that neither the dimensions of the court nor the rules of the game have changed now that the playoffs have arrived.

The fact is, all of these guys do have so called ‘big game’ experience. They have all played in their respective high school or college playoff’s or tournaments and would probably not have made it to the NBA if they did not perform well in those situations. Recent history, as well as recent data, I think, tends to agree with me. We all saw how much playoff experience meant to LeBron last year, and several other young stars have dominated in the playoffs despite their supposed lack of experience. Last year’s Warriors, Deron Williams, Dwayne Wade, circa 2006, to name a few, come to mind.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at three random examples of ‘star’ players making their playoff debuts. In 2006, LeBron made his first NBA playoff start against the Wizards, whom Cleveland dispatched in 6. In 2 series, LeBron posted a 30.8/8.1/5.8 line, compared with 31.8/7.0/6.6 during the regular season. The previous year, his opponent, Gilbert Arenas averaged 23.6/5.2/6.2 over a similar span after putting up 25.5/4.7/5.1 (the slashes meaning point/rebounds/assists) during the year. Last season, Dwight Howard brought the Magic back to the playoff’s with his 17.6/12.3/1.8 season long effort. In a losing effort to the Pistons, he averaged 15.3/14.8/1.8 in four games.

Now obviously, this is incredibly low level analysis… but the point stands: in recent history, plenty of young NBA stars have done just fine come April, matching or surpassing their basic contributions, all without an iota of ‘playoff experience.’

The lesson is, don’t expect Chris Paul to collapse just because he is young or because the Mavs have been to the Finals before. Now, Dirk and the Mavericks (band name, perhaps?) are good in their own right, but if you are going to pick them, please don’t do it because of their experience…