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Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Stop it. That thing you're doing. You're thinking about the end of the NBA season, aren't you? Yeah, that. Stop it.

Look, we get it. The conference finals are here. The fourth installment of the Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors championship epic is just weeks away. You know Klay Thompson has started conditioning his hair with champagne to prepare for the eventual title parade.

Everything seems inevitable. The end feels near. We'll have the draft and free agency and summer league and Kawhi Leoanrd trade rumors to get us by over the coming months, but it won't be the same. You'll miss actual basketball. All of us will.

But this is not the time for fears and tears. That comes later. Right now, we have conference finals player rankings to get through.

The ground rules haven't changed since we did this to tip off the playoffs. Players are being evaluated as if we're acquiring them for the rest of the postseason. That's it. Regular-season performances matter very little. Everything comes back to what we've seen in the playoffs and what we still expect to see in the games that have yet to be played.

Let's do this.