Open Thread: Indy and San Antonio kick off the regular season - and Indy gets to even the score vs. the Miami Heat in Game 2 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals

San Antonio Silver Stars vs. Indiana Fever, 8 PM ET

In addition to being on LiveAccess (which is $14.99 this season OR $12.99 with a discount if you had it last season), you can also watch this on NBA TV. In San Antonio, turn on Fox Sports Southwest.

With San Antonio losing two key players due to injury, being Sophia Young and Becky Hammon, it will be an uphill climb for the Stars as they start the season. For Indiana, the Fever also has reserve players who are out due to injury, being Jeanette Pohlen who had a knee injury last year, Erin Phillips who had a meniscus tear and surgery to fix that, and Jessica Davenport has a tibia stress fracture.

Indiana Pacers at Miami Heat for Game 2 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals at 8:30 PM on TNT

Safe to say that people who are Pacers and Fever fans will have two TV's on at the same time tonight.

Miami leads this 1 game to zippy, because of .... LeBron James making an uncontested layup as the buzzer expired. I don't even know how that can happen! LeBron is averaging 24.6 points on over 50% shooting, 7.6 assists, and 7.6 rebounds a game. He had a triple double of 30 points, 10 assists and rebounds each in Game 1 of the series.

I don't like Miami that much, so I'm rooting for Indiana here. They have no superstar talent there and are sorely lacking a score first player with Danny Granger out for basically the entire 2012-2013 season, but the defense there is legit with guys like Paul George and Roy Hibbert.

We enjoy comments, especially during these threads. So here are some reasons why Swish Appeal is so.... Swish Appeal, which means awesome in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1. Random songs come to mind at the right time. Last year Gangnam Style defined much of the latter half.

2. Our best memes seem to come while games are on. See a list of last year's by going here.

3. You can see writers go from "where we can seamlessly move between rational and purely biased fan passion," in the words of Nate.

4. Tons of puns. After all this is the only place where "where Tayler and Taylor can be mentioned logically in the same sentence." Two puns were in the last two sentences.

5. We have a habit of throwing in our hometowns and teams we support even if they're not the main subject of the post. Queenie supports her St. John's team even well after the Red Storm was eliminated in the Dance; Nate doesn't mind noting that the Spurs lost to the Warriors when the team practiced at the University of San Francisco with former Stars player and now USF head coach Jennifer Azzi; and Sue Bird and Robert Griffin III both show examples of what knee injuries can mean to their teams.

6. Nate always says "Go Blue" at every opportunity with college basketball and so does my sister, who's also a Michigan alumna. But he didn't let maize and blue bias taint his mock draft. He was the only one in the Phoenix Mercury's roundtable of mock drafters to select a Buckeye of ALL PLAYERS instead of a Terp or an Aggie where at the Mystics' spot. That means that Tayler Hill has to be THAT GOOD. It HAS TO BE TRUE especially when he calls her a "plus one" player in the draft!

He also is the only person that I know of who nailed the Top eight picks IN ORDER. and NINE of the TWELVE PICKS IN THEIR ACTUAL POSITIONS. Not bad!

7. This is also the one place where we are required to tell you that the song isn't called "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida. It's "Something's Got a Hold on Me" by Etta James.

This list isn't exhaustive by any means, but it's all good reason for you not to lurk and to feel free to comment things as you see them, but I was extorted by, I mean informed by the higher ups about this:

Have fun at tonight's open thread @swishappeal because I'm ALWAYS WATCHING!

— Supreme Overlord (@SwishAppealAdmn) May 24, 2013

(Yeah, Big Brother wasn't too pleased that @SwishAppealAdmin would be one character too many for Twitter's guidelines.)

So yes, keep it civil. We enjoy great commentary and emotion as it comes along, but as we've noticed no personal attacks on other users and the like. No one wants to see Swish Appeal Admin unleash His form of "the Nasty" on anyone.

In other words and in plain English, don't do anything to get yourself banned.

Open Threads Require Open Music Choices!

I've been hogging the SB Nation jukebox lately with songs I wanted. But now you can pick the song in tomorrow's open thread when NY heads to the Casino, and when the Tulsa Shock goes to its new east coast home in Georgia. I'll embed something based on the consensus from tonight. Some choices are below, but they aren't the only ones since there's a catch-all too.

So that's it!

Enjoy the basketball tonight everyone!