One play in the second quarter of Game 3 is the perfect visual sequence to describe the Mavericks’ series against the Celtics: Doncic delivered the pretty alley-oop pass to a waiting Derek Lively, whose slam dunk attempt hit the back of the rim and bounced to the floor.

For such a copycat league, NBA teams use different terminologies for the same concepts. When a player is traded, understanding a new playbook is more like learning a new language, another dialect, for the same actions and ideas his previous employer described differently.