The lasting, even impacting impression from the NBA playoffs so far is not of Kevin Garnett exhorting his teammates from the bench during overtime, nor Tracy McGrady swooping toward the basket, nor Allen Iverson dropping a double-nickel on the Hornets. It’s the unforgettable sight of Maurice Cheeks leaving his team’s bench in Portland to put his arm around 13-year-old Natalie Gilbert as she stood at mid-court holding a microphone, having fumbled the words to our national anthem, all alone and visibly in despair.

For 20 years, Marvin Gaye’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has been, for my money, the most compelling rendition ever. But now, I’ve got a new favorite, the duet of Gilbert & Cheeks, impromptu, off-key, slapped together as it was. I get goose bumps every time I see the clip of Cheeks hugging Gilbert, telling her everything is going to be OK. People forget the lyrics to the national anthem every single night at a sporting event somewhere.

But when have you ever seen someone moved to the point of walking over to comfort the embarrassed singer, in this case somebody’s scared little girl singing the national anthem in public for the first time? How often, in a sports setting, do we ever see such a demonstration of human kindness?

And how ironic that the hero in this story, and I use the word “hero” literally and intentionally, is the coach of a team that stays in the news for one thuggish incident after another, from marijuana possession citations to charges of spousal abuse to a modified guilty plea for attempted rape.

Cheeks is exactly what the doctor ordered for the dysfunctional Trail Blazers. If he can get that little girl to finish the national anthem he must be a pretty good coach. More important, his decency and humanity are needed in that locker room more than perhaps anywhere in the NBA. And if you feel like applauding Cheeks, do it quick because his team, down 3-1, is about to be eliminated by the Mavericks in Game 5 Wednesday in Dallas.

Cheeks’s act is the best story of these playoffs so far, but not the only one.

If the MVP award included the postseason, Garnett would have it wrapped up through four games of the first round. He’s irresistible. His 30-point, 17-rebound, six-assist average sounds like a playoff line from Wilt in the ’60s or Kareem in the early ’70s. Because an entire team of Timberwolves is playing with Garnett’s passion and purpose and because the Lakers, after all these playoff games over the past three years, appear to be worn out, Los Angeles is in trouble. It’s no certainty the champs are going to win two of the next three games, with Games 5 and 7 scheduled for Minneapolis. The Timberwolves absolutely believe they can win.

The top seed in the east, Detroit, is about to be taken out by McGrady, whose 36 points a night in these playoffs are downright Jordanesque. The third seed in the east, Indiana, is about to be taken out by an incredibly flawed but clutch Celtics team. Paul Pierce deserves a bushel full of credit, especially for carrying his team late in games.

The playoffs, still in the first round, have given us the kind of individual performances that spoiled us in the 1980s, from Dirk Nowitzki to Pierce to Iverson to McGrady to Shaq. They’ve played to levels that don’t leave us longing for Bird and Magic and Michael quite as much as we used to. But they’ve all been upstaged to this point by a man who had both the empathy and the presence of mind to reach out to a little girl.