As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Samuel Dalembert, Jason Smith, and DeShawn Stevenson.

• • •

_Follow Samuel Dalembert on Twitter at __@sammyd76erz.___

I've never been a huge fan of Samuel Dalembert's game. It's not any personal failing of his -- it's mainly just his skillset, which I've always found a bit of an ill mesh. When it comes to passing, he's got hands of stone and has never in his career been able to master the art of passing. Whether that's a dump-down, a post entry play to pass out to the open option, or even just a simple inbounds pass... Dalembert isn't great at it. If Boris Diaw is one side of the spectrum (blatant and unnecessary overpassing due to significant underlying talent), Dalembert is decidedly the opposite, and not for lack of trying. He does try to throw passes every now and again, but it rarely works and it's rarely pretty. Additionally, while he's a large man, he's no overwhelming force of nature a la Shaq or Bynum. This leads him to often settle his post-ups for shots that are a bit too far out -- he takes more 3-9 foot chippies and 10-15 foot midrange shots than almost every big man in the game, and while he produces an admirably above-average percentage from those ranges, that still means he's only shooting about 40% on his offense with absolutely marginal spacing gains. Not totally what you like seeing from your center, offensively. He's a very good free throw shooter who never draws contact. A decent post player who's rarely tied to the post. A phenomenal rebounder who... no caveats needed, really -- he's just a phenomenal rebounder, let's be honest.

Defensively, Dalembert is good but a bit overrated. He puts up gaudy block totals, but he fouls quite a lot and subjectively doesn't get great post position against bigger guys. Which isn't that common, it's worth noting -- he's 6'11", and he does an excellent job of swallowing up players smaller than he is. But when a true 7'0" comes to call he tends to be a bit of a poor cover, and his rotations often seemed more focused on following the ball for a highlight-reel block rather than a fundamentally sound defensive attack. His size, length, and general fluidity make him a valuable defender, but watching him you tend to get the sense that he's leaving a bit on the table by being so focused on the blocks rather than the whole picture. He's still good, just not quite as good as he could be, and that bugs me at times. On the other hand, Dalembert is essentially the embodiment of all NBA players that are far better people than they are NBA players. Really, really great guy. He's from Haiti, and was intimately involved -- through both financial contributions and trips out to Haiti to help out -- in the cleanup from the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake that most people have inexplicably forgotten about. He seems like a great guy from all accounts.

I don't have much else to say, other than register my personal confusion that Skiles has yanked around Dalembert's minutes so much. The Bucks picked him up for a reason, and while he's getting up there in the years, he's still been a rather effective player for them. With the exception of the Bucks' win against Chicago a few weeks back, I haven't watched Bucks games with the thought Dalembert really looked actively bad -- he's doing his job, certainly. But he's still getting his minutes yanked around as though he's playing like absolute crap. Which I think I've mentioned on five to six Bucks players in a row. For reasons unknown to me. So, yeah. I don't understand Skiles' rotations. At all. Even before this excellent Point Forward highlight of the ridiculously changing rotations, I was wondering what was going on -- the animation just made it all the more befuddling. Perhaps he's just thinking about basketball on a plane of thought far beyond that which I am capable of. But it makes no sense to me whatsoever. Alas.

• • •

Follow Jason Smith by seeing things that happened, things that will h--wait, that's the Dead Zone.

Jason Smith is a classic example of a player whose status as a lesser offensive player on a very bad team gave him a shot to improve a few facets of his game on the sly with none the wiser. I refer to his at-rim game, something that had been exceedingly below-average for the majority of his career but completely blew up last season. Smith shot a startling 80% at the rim last year, exceeding his previous career high by almost 15 percentage points. Several reasons that happened. First, he went 27/27 on dunks in 40 games last season -- in the previous 133 games combined, Smith had only taken 24 dunk attempts. He showed a better adeptness at cutting to the rim and a better general understanding of space last season, which is sort of funny if only because it's incredibly silly that he shows this sort of versatility right after Chris Paul left. Still. Fun stuff. More important than the heightened incidence of dunks, though, was the heightened conversion of layups -- he was simply getting himself into slightly better position and getting a lot more of those benefit-of-the-doubt rolls than he used to. He shot 70% on layups last season after 50% the season before and 57% the season before that. Combine those two things -- which started in last year's preseason and maintained all year -- and you have a player mixing up a bit of previously absent offensive value.

The key problem to keep in mind with Smith's advancement is the same one that dogs every player who has a quantum leap in one area of their game -- it may be sustainable in a vacuum, but the NBA isn't a vacuum. Subjectively, most teams didn't really make much of an effort to guard Smith much at the rim. He's traditionally been a floor-spacing midrange-type player, and when you're that kind of a guy, teams don't exactly make a strong show of running you out of the post. In fact, they often get lost on you when you enter too closely, almost as though they're assuming you can't really finish -- now that Smith has shown he can, scouting reports will begin to adjust to that reality. Last season, the Hornets were a pretty bad team. Bad enough that you can't subjectively see teams guarding Smith all that differently. That's because teams don't scout every team exogenous to the quality of the team -- if you're playing the five win Hornets, your coaching staff isn't going to get quite as deep-in-the-weeds into scouting your opponent and digging out nuggets like Smith's improving at-rim game as you would be if you were scouting a very good team with the same player. This is (incidentally) one of the reasons it's so hard for rookies on good teams to play well -- other teams simply spend more ink and tears scouting the better teams in the league, and when you have a weak link like a rookie, they're much better scouted on a night-to-night basis and they aren't usually allowed more than 6 or 7 games before scouting starts to catch up with short-lived trends. On terrible teams, the scouting is less prominent and the rookie doesn't necessarily need to contend with micromanaged adjustments meant to completely change the way they're playing the game. Hence why they're a bit better.

For the first few years of his career, Smith played tentative and boneheaded basketball on the defensive end of the court. He finally seemed to make strides to that end last season, when he heavily bought in to Monty's rotations and defensive philosophy. He made himself genuinely useful on the defensive end. He became sharper on his rotations, as Coach Williams gave him a more direct and set series of areas he wanted Smith to focus on defensively. Additionally, he stopped backpedaling quite so much and learned to move laterally to cut guys off -- this helped him cut down his previously-quite-high foul rate, which also helped him stay on the court and get into a better rhythm with the players around him. He isn't anything to write home about, necessarily -- a bit slight for his height, a bit slow, a bit lacking at rebounding -- but he certainly isn't bad. Which is essentially all you can say for Smith as a whole. He's decent. Nothing revolutionary, nothing amazing, but not bad at all. And on his current contract, he's a steal -- the Hornets locked him up at $7.5 million over three years in the 2011 offseason, which seemed like a possible reach at the time but increasingly looks like one of the best contracts in the league. He's putting up midlevel production on less than $3 million dollars a year right now. Crazy nice stuff. A good trade chip, too, if the Hornets choose to go that route. Nice finagling, Demps.

• • •

Follow DeShawn Stevenson to the club using his ATM machine.

Last season, DeShawn Stevenson may have been the worst player in the league. It's been coming for a while, honestly, and although he was just a lockout removed from being a contributing piece on an excellent title team, he's been on the verge of toppling over for a while. His perimeter defense has always been decent, but it's been falling off somewhat poorly for years, as his mobility leaves him and his strength turns brittle. He still takes charges with the best of them and tries to stay with his man, but it's not all that difficult to simply run him off a screen or fool him with an awkward pump fake. Offensively, though? Lord almighty. A few facts about DeShawn Stevenson's 2012 horror-show.

• DeShawn Stevenson took 7 layup attempts in the entirety of last year's 66 game season. He made two. (The five missed layups were all hilarious, by the way. If you have Synergy access, go look at them. Wish I had the video know-how to share it.)

• DeShawn Stevenson has not even attempted a dunk since March 8th, 2010. This... this is only scarcely related to 2012, but it's still sort of hilarious. He's small, but he's strong. The man simply doesn't have a vertical anymore. Not "a small" vertical. He does not have one.

• DeShawn Stevenson shot three 3-pointers per night in the 2012 season. He made 28% of them. That's barely one in four, which would stand to reason that the man had several games of zero-three-pointers made. Turns out to be a true story. DeShawn Stevenson had 28 games (out of 51 games played) where he didn't make a single three. He's a 3-and-D player. That... that is not very optimal, I do not believe.

All that said, this year he hasn't been nearly as bad as last season. Sort of damning with faint praise, but there you go. He's been a passable three point shooter (currently at 42% on the year), and he's been staying out of the within-arc region of the floor on offense. Which is good. In fact, to that end, Stevenson has taken just 12 shots within the three point line over his 16 games this year. He's only made 4-of-12, but when you're cutting back that severely, you can live with percentages like that. His defense has been useful too, helping the Hawks replace Joe Johnson by-committee. He's 31, and it's unlikely he stays in the league for that much time after this season ends. But one has to respect the fact that he's still grinding at it and doing a passable job of it.

Off the court, Stevenson is much more interesting. Most people know roughly about his feud with LeBron James, which ranks to me as one of the most hilarious feuds in the history of the league. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, and point out the obvious -- how delightfully absurd it is that DeShawn Stevenson considers LeBron James his basketball rival. That would be much akin to me considering Usain Bolt my sprinting rival, or Cliff Lee my pitching rival. It's just so remarkably incongruous with reality and their skillsets it boggles the mind. He's also a funny guy off the court. Smarter than most people assume -- everyone thought the ATM machine was for his own use, but it was actually just so he could skim off the top when his NBA buddies needed cash to burn. And it worked! His business model, insofar as it is one, makes sense. He probably makes a nominal profit on it, assuming it's used often enough for the fees to cover maintenance costs. He's able to increase the surcharge because he can j-- ... Okay. Gonna stop myself here. I don't think anyone ACTUALLY wants to know the mechanics of how he can make a profit out of his ATM machine. But I do know how ATM machines work and why he is profiting off of it. Just saying, TBJ Army. Totally open to being an expert witness on the subject. I know a guy, and the guy is myself.

Mamba out.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Good work on a 3/3 guess from Andrew Kieser.

• Player #343 is the most underrated star in the NBA. He's on a brilliant value contract and he's one of the best 3 players at his position. And nobody seems to notice. It's not easy being red and white. Player Capsule Plus, most likely.

• Player #344 has a pet named Yams and a heart the size of ten goliaths. Wait, that's Trey Kerby. Sorry. They look the same.

• "Return of the [Player #345]. / Once again, Return of the [Player #345] / Top of the world, Return of the [Player #345] / Here I go."

I am on Day #7 of this year's "no soda, no caffeine" purge that I started on a complete whim for no reason whatsoever. It's been... a thing. This morning I saw doughnuts with names that sound like prostitutes and feel like my brain is being whipped with razors. That said, I am near the end of this particular sonic journey. And perhaps when it ends I'll be able to sleep, perchance to dream.

Godspeed, hoops populi.

• • •

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Greetings, my fellow Small Marketeers! Small Market Mondays is back! Today I'll be subbing in for Other Alex, who is currently lecturing about the evils of big markets at several prominent small-market universities. I'm told they're receiving him well, which is right and proper considering it's the gospel truth. Now, I'm a little bit different from Other Alex. Not in our approach, for we are both supreme craftsman with an eye to the hustle of scrappers and the grift of hustlers. No, we differ only in our ideologies, and even then, only slightly. But let's talk about it. See, whereas Other Alex wants as life mission to call attention to the wonders of basketball, the miracles of chessboxing, and the pleasurable communal experience of being a small market fan, I yearn for more, brothers and sisters.

I yearn for more than is coded in the San Antonio passes and their gradual, graceful struggle with age. I yearn for more than Marc Gasol's passing or Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and his amazing length to block centers at the rim. I crave for more than Kevin Durant's sparkling offensive efficiency and always remembering to thank his teammates. I crave more than Boris Diaw and Ricky Rubio playing the passing equivalent of Starcraft against one another with the other 8 players to the scent of puppy breath and cinnamon crepes with Andorra at stake. I need more.

Unfortunately, unlike many sports fans content to fill in the void with large-market spectacle and crowd-sourced, manufactured large-market hype and debacle for the sake of itself, I must look inward, for more, and it is terrifying what I find. There are more things than are dreamt of in your philosophies, Horatio, but bless you sincerely for trying! Have you ever seen a shog'goth?

Anyway, one day several years ago, I looked inward in this manner. And then outward. And then shivered! Because I had walked into the rain while I wasn't paying attention. A hard rain was falling outside, and I beheld in a raindrop falling into my hand, for the tiniest instant, the smallest market. It was adorable, guys. Anyway, as is my wont, I immediately went to my Victorian-era loom and reproduced from memory all the jerseys and franchise history I had seen in this rain drop. 18-foot-tall centers. Point guards smaller than the transom above my door at Miskatonic. Small forwards with such a vertical that they actually went into geosynchronous orbit, never to return. I had discovered the Miskatonic Hard Rain Droplet Rainy Day Humans, Part #85 and #96. The franchise had won so many championships, you guys, but David Stern evaporated all of that with mean-spirited, chemical precision. I know they had attendance issues, I know a rain drop is barely bigger or more populous than Sleep Train Arena. I get that. But tradition, man! Apparently we can talk about Willis Reed, but before we can even get into Schiller Freed (real; played for Babylon in 8080 B.C.) we have to wade through all sorts of conspiracy theories. And that's just sad. All I'm saying.

I say this all much to my friend Other Alex's chagrin. He doesn't believe me about the franchise in the raindrops, the markets smaller than quarks, the markets larger than continents with untold aeons of tradition (and my hipster garment company's steady, perfunctory commodification of every drop of this tradition) . But no matter, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus, and he's an oversized power forward from one of the Baltic States. Other Alex doesn't believe me. But for this one week, I took over his column. I proverbially drank the oil of his content production, diagonally. I lord over all that I see. And besides, if I were just making all of this up, I wouldn't have been made a professor at Miskatonic University. Anyway, the game of the week is, oh, let's say, San Antonio and OKC tonight. That's pretty cool, especially if you only know about the traditionally-recognized franchises. All this is to emphasize something The Other Alex pointed out last week.

Chris Duhon: Not even once.

• • •

~ Lakers Talk ~

Anyway, my dyed-in-the-wool small-market heart almost (almost) feels a tug of sympathy for the drama unfolding in Laker-land. But then I remember that Los Angeles is such a large market that it can easily support not one, but two NBA teams. And the market's economic draw constantly threatens to drain even a third team from scrappy locales like Sacramento into the sinful clutches of the Anaheim (which I, unfamiliar, picture as marauding stampede of wild horses of metal and diamonds arranged in a horrifying Platinum Triangle of horse-flesh, a gigantic neo-urban redevelopment district that exists to surround Angel Stadium and host the siren Gwen Stefani who will sing the world to sleep one day, a redevelopment planned to be populated with mixed-use streets and high-rises that stretch to the infinite sky.) There are no Angels left on earth, no Mighty Ducks, no Kings or Fisher Kings left in Los Angeles. Go, all pretense of justice! Go, all sense of community deprived from the world! Go and let us make a large market for the sake of a large market!

But I digress slightly. To put it more bluntly, Steve Nash, a Canadian (for Canada is the ultimate small market) is literally the only thing redeeming about Southern California right now. I cannot pity the Lakers and their horrifying 11-14 start, I have trouble sympathizing for the people of Los Angeles. And the Lakers aren't even bad, they're just mediocre! Welcome to a fun season for the vast majority of the league! The Nuggets may not be thrilled with their 50-win course, but I somehow doubt Andre Miller is right now silently weeping blood into an empty cistern as an oblation to Cthulhu like Kobe Bryant surely is at this very second. Because Dre gets that there are worse situations than 50 wins, even for the perpetually unsatisfied professional athlete. Andre Miller is having none of these blood-weeping ceremonies. Andre Miller is just sitting in a comfy chair, chilling out and finding his favorite old cartoons on YouTube, ostensibly clad in loose-fitting clothes, a night-cap, and his perpetual, terminal case of bedhead. Andre Miller is chilling out. He will have none of your temper tantrums to the media.

What's more, even though the Lakers aren't great, the second team from Los Angeles is: thriving, exciting, and clearly in contention, the Clippers almost make you forget that they were forged from pure evil by Donald Sterling from the gigantic husk of the last Buffalo. So forget how sad the lowly Lakers' situation is: Even this season, it's unfair that one market can be doing so well. Even when the Lakers are mediocre, the Clippers seem to pick up the slack, and for that reason I have trouble feeling anything for the Lakers. All this is to emphasize something The Other Alex pointed out last week.

Chris Duhon: Not even once.

Thank you for reading.

• • •

[Ed. Note: ALEX ARNON COME HOME SOON WHAT IS THIS HELL]

Everyone of them knew that as time went by they'd
Get a little bit older and a little bit slower but...

"Revolution #9" The Beatles

Ultimately this season has been a cautionary tale for the Lakers so far on what it actually means to get older. We don't know just what the season has in store for the Lakers, and later in this piece we're going to take a long look at their schedule. But given that there have been so many unbelievable twists and turns, I decided it might be nice to get this moment, possibly the Lakers' nadir as a franchise, in amber (you know, like from that episode of House), for posterity. Okay, so it's December 14th, and I've gone through about four stages of feelings with the Lakers this season, as a Spurs fan and as a basketball fan in general.

1. Abject Sports Horror - "They did it again! How did they do it! ..." I have used the ellipsis to omit several unpublishable 8000-word rants. The Los Angeles Lakers had acquired Dwight Howard and Steve Nash. Their starting five looked legendary. Not much to say.

2. Schadenfreude - 1-4, they fired Mike Brown, and didn't hire Phil Jackson. Kobe made public comments. Hack-A-Howard worked. Twice. Glorious swoon.

3. Abject Sports Horror 2: Electric Boogaloo - Fun fact: I hadn't at all considered the idea that a bad season might be more horrifying than a good season. For all the fear I had of what the Lakers could do, I hadn't realized how awful a flop would actually be. Not in some big picture "It's fun to hate the Lakers and the league suffers when they aren't a dynasty" sense. I mean in the small-picture. "Wait, I like Steve Nash! I might root against him, but he make the game a lot more fun for everyone, myself included! I also like Kobe, Gasol, and Dwight, as players! It's fascinating to watch each of the four and they are all amazing players." The schadenfreude wears off. You start to laugh at Kobe's vintage season being wasted... but then you think about it for five seconds and realize that Kobe is having a vintage season that's being completely wasted. Dwight Howard can't make a weakside play to save his life. Pau Gasol looks about 48 years old. Steve Nash looks about 38, which is 10 years old than he's ever looked. Four generational talents. Four wasted seasons. Steve Nash might never play another full season. Quite distressing.

4. Overriding Curiosity - We have to lower our expectations for this team, if not in terms of potential than in terms of record. Every loss will not be made up in March. A recalibration is inevitable. Even those of us (Aaron and myself included) who had huge questions about age and the bench need to recalibrate: Aaron did his thesis on aging and I was in close contact with him, he was absolutely concerned about the Lakers entering the season. And even before that, I've long held to Bill James' principle that aging happens much more quickly than any of us are generally willing to admit. But neither of us saw this. Hence our recalibration, in which an impulse akin to leadership emerges, and I start to wonder just what the heck this team would look like at full strength again. The Spurs and Celtics from the last couple of years and the 2011 Mavericks were pretty long in the tooth, after all, and those teams were a lot of fun to watch (okay, not the Celtics, but they've had their moments). Heck, the previous iteration of the Lakers (Bynum-Odom-Gasol-Kobe) was pretty darn old and that team's offense was awesome at times. The Lakers could still be scary.

Okay, thanks for indulging me. Now, let's move from what the Lakers_ have done_ to what the Lakers can do, in terms of what that would mean for their remaining schedule.

• • •

Here's Dave McMenamin, laying out the template:

In the NBA's past three full seasons, the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference has averaged 48 wins. After Thursday, the Lakers need to go 39-20 to reach that mark, basically win two out of every three remaining games. Up to this point this season, they've been winning only two out of every five.

39-20. 39 wins, 20 losses. Keep that in mind, it's the bench-mark I'll be using for this article. Anyway, now that the Lakers have to be a good team just to make the playoffs and a great team just to get first-round home-court, they are truly in a playoff mode, by no choice of their own. Having to avoid 21 losses in 59 games? That's not a grinding NBA season, that's a win-or-go-home mentality more at home in an NFL season than an NBA grind. They might not need 48 wins total, but the Western Conference is pretty darn good, and every loss chips further away at the Lakers' margin of error, subtly shifting the odds away from a thriving season.

I can't help but be reminded of the 2010 Spurs. Beset by injuries to Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili and a suddenly aging Tim Duncan, the 2010 Spurs went only 50-32 and were pigeonholed into a three-way tie for the bottom of the playoff heap. It was easily their worst regular season of the Tim Duncan era, and Tim Duncan had the first losing month in the regular season of his career in January 2010. And yet, because of the immense amount of struggle, finding their identity nightly, and actually having to get good (not just shore things up) on the Rodeo Road Trip? In the end, one could make a good case that the season's slog helped them, and they dominated the Mavericks in the first-round 2-7 matchup with a six-game win. In fact, Popovich inarguably tanked Game 5. Unless you want to argue that Gregg Popovich, one of the greatest coaches of all time, really thought literally playing Roger Mason 27:36 was actually his best option for winning that game. Heh.

All this to say that while home-court obviously helps (and to use an example straight from the depths of Tinseltown, it's hard to argue HCA didn't swing the 2010 Finals), even more important than home court is putting out the best basketball product you can. The Lakers are going to find that basketball product or they're not going to make the playoffs. That's the tall and short of it. Thrive or die. No other options. True dichotomy. Yes, yes, the Lakers of recent memory may be the masters of the 54-win season that tells you nothing about their playoff readiness, and it'll take a prorated 54-win season (39/59) to clinch the playoffs.

But well, let's look at the Lakers' season so far.

First, note that they've had a fine point differential (prior to the games of December 14). They're +2.17 in 23 games, which is good for 10th overall. They've dramatically underperformed in their record (Basketball-Reference has them at 13-10 Pythagorean wins; they sit 4 games behind expectation at 9-14). Yes, middling, and yes, they've destroyed lesser teams and gotten close to good ones only after the outcome had been decided. But their differential is still 5th in the West behind the Thunder (9.27!), Clippers (7.59), Spurs (7.46), and Grizz (6.53). So the Lakers aren't bad, per se. Just misunderstood?

Let's delve into the Lakers' remaining schedule briefly (Ed. Note: by briefly he means exhaustively) to see how they could get those 39 wins.

(Very technical note: I use point differentials to separate contenders from pretenders because point differentials are less subject to random chance than records, and predict future records better. On the other hand, this isn't inherently true: Thanks to Dirk's unique skillset in late-game situations, the Mavs seem to systematically overperform their differential and dominate in the clutch. Something like Dwight Howard's free throws and Kobe's complex clutch skillset may similarly mean that the Lakers are systematically underperforming their differential. And also, let's note that because the Lakers may have underperformed does NOT mean they will overperform their differential in the future. That's not how conditional probability works.)

• • •

Because the Lakers indeed have a decent differential, most of the teams in the league are worse (even far worse) than the Lakers. And of the Lakers' 59 remaining games, the Lakers play fully 41 of those remaining games against teams with point differentials that are currently worse (even marginally). The home-away breakdown for these 41 games is 19 home, 22 away. Now, despite their differential, the Lakers are actually 8-9 against these teams so far. They're 6-4 at home, and 2-5 away, in a 10 to 7 home-away breakdown that should favor the Lakers heavily.

It's pretty amazing they have a losing record, actually.

If the Lakers go 20-21 in these games, as you might project from their dismal performance thus far? They will have 35 losses right there, and even if they beat the Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Knicks, Grizzlies, Hawks, Heat, Bulls, and Nets in every remaining matchup, they'll have a 47-win season. The takeaway here is that Lakers must dominate worse teams, must win nearly every game they're supposed to win. They must dominate much worse teams on road. Morris must dominate Fisher. Yes, the Lakers won't likely lose to the Bobcats or Wizards (whom they're playing tonight!). But keep in mind the home-road split of 19 to 22, and keep in mind that "worse teams" includes a core of bubble teams in the West. A road game against the Nuggets or Jazz is historically no picnic.

Looking at the field, the caramel-filled core of teams that should most concern the Lakers are the bundle of mediocre Western teams including the Warriors, Jazz, T'Wolves, Mavs, Nuggets, and Rockets. All of these teams have worse differential than the Lakers; the Jazz are the only ones especially close. These games I'd like to highlight because the teams involved are a) possible head-to-head tiebreakers for the Lakers b) crucial challenge games that should provide litmus tests between pretenders and contenders. Now that the Lakers know these are important games, we can look at these games more accurately as the crucial leverage points they represent. Win or lose, Lakers must show they are generally better than these teams and can beat them in a playoff-type atmosphere. No, they don't have to win every game in this core. You fully expect them to lose a few of these games on road trips. But you have to see if they will compete, if they'll get better relative to these teams, and so on. That's what we're looking for, and it's why Lakers fans should have these games circled.

This group of bubble games accounts for 14 of their remaining games (6 home, 8 away). So far the Lakers have actually had a good sample of these games. They've had eight so far, and gone 4-4 (not impressive, but not insanely bad, either. Yes, this is a theme, the Lakers look like the quintessential 45-win Rockets/Grizz squad right now, statistically). Of these 8 games, 5 have been at home (3-2) and 3 away (1-2). Not much to say; it's a small sample from an injured team. But it's interesting that they haven't managed any separation.

In any case, 14 games against the bubble teams means that the rest of the 41 against worse teams are basically 27 games against a) significantly worse teams in the West like Portland and Sacramento, b) significantly worse teams in the East like Charlotte and Washington, c) decent teams like Boston and Indiana and Milwaukee that have looked middling on average (for Indiana, "middling" is the average of "horrifying" and "very good"). These 27 games, the Lakers should (and must!) dominate. Being quite serious, if the Lakers drop 9 of these 27, they have to go 21-11 against their direct opponents and (right now) their superiors in the East and West just to hit 48 wins. The Lakers must take these games against (for the most part) obviously inferior opponents. Not kidding, if the Lakers don't beat the Bobcats and Wizards twice, they will legitimately have trouble getting to the playoffs. This is the world we're living in, in 2012. Blah blah blah: Mayans were right.

• • •

Finally, we've broken down their games against inferior teams, let's look at the statement games facing the Lakers, in which they can really show they belong among the pack. Talent-wise they've clearly proved this over the years, but health is a serious question. And the heights they reached last year they may not reach again. These are the games in which they can make that case. These are the Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Knicks, Grizzlies, Hawks, Heat, Bulls, and Nets. So far they've gone 1-5 against these teams, and their only win was a 5-point takedown of Brooklyn. At home. Yes, Virginia -- the Lakers don't currently have any staple wins on the road. They're 0-3 on the road against teams with a better point differential than them. And even at home they're only 1-2.

Luckily, they have plenty of chances to prove themselves. They have 18 remaining games with better differential, 9 home, 9 away. If they go 3-15? That's the season, basically. I don't think they will do quite this poorly. But they have to get some statement wins, and they have to at least get a winning record at home, in my opinion. If they go 3-6 on the road? No big deal if they manage to pull even at home. The road games? Not necessarily the games you're not supposed to dominate. Schedule losses, games you're happy if you can come out alive from. Tom Thibodeau, Gregg Popovich, Chris Paul, Horford-Smith, Z-Bo-Gasol-Gay. LeBron. Et cetera. Teams that can run the Lakers out of the gym but the Lakers with a healthy Nash and Gasol should easily win from time to time. And if the Lakers can find a way to make the road games tough, and make their home court once again something where teams fear to tread? Yeah, they could make the playoffs and make a strong case for themselves as worthy contenders.

It's their season to make it happen. They play the Wizards tonight. Every loss matters, saps them of just a little more strength. But every win exults them and sets them on that fertile path to the championship, though right now that must seem miles away to a middling team in a city by the ocean.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with DeJuan Blair, Bill Walker, and Goran Dragic.

• • •

_Follow DeJuan Blair on Twitter at __@DeJuan45.___

Good ol' DeJuan Blair. Let's not bury the lede -- it's pretty cool that he's still playing basketball at all, let alone having a relatively decent career. A lot of people forget or tend to overlook this given that he's been in the league 3 full seasons and has enough experience that he's essentially a veteran at this point, but DeJuan Blair has no ACLs. None whatsoever. The real knock on Blair coming out of college was that his lack of ACLs was going to eventually turn him into a useless NBA player, a man whose body would break down halfway through his rookie year and who'd whittle away the rest of his minutes an injury-tattered bust throughout the duration of a short and meaningless NBA career. And, well. No. That didn't happen. In fact, Blair has been almost preternaturally healthy in his time in the league -- no real knee problems of any note have resulted from his lack of ACLs, and his only injuries that I can remember include a nose injury from an errant Hibbert elbow late last season and his recent sprained ankle. That's it.

In over 3 seasons of play, as a nominal big man? That's insanely healthy, and while he's registered some DNP-CDs in there (three so far, in the regular season), it's really rather remarkable that Blair was able to put together over three seasons a bill of health that clean. A credit to him and a credit to San Antonio's medical staff. Good show, all. As for the pick itself, a lot of people praise the Spurs endlessly for it. That's never made much sense to me. Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, George Hill, Kawhi Leonard -- those are good picks. Those are ones where they found something others weren't paying attention to. Blair, though? He was one of the most obvious picks the Spurs have ever made. As long as you as a franchise had any faith in your medical staff, he was a no-brainer pick from about #20 onwards. Apparently, of all the franchises in that duration, only San Antonio really had any faith in their medical staff. It was an obvious choice that virtually every other team in the league simply refused to make. Simple as that. There are a lot of examples of the Spurs as an excellent drafting team. DeJuan Blair -- the obvious choice to end all obvious choices -- is not that example, even if it's the easiest story to remember and retell.

On the court, Blair is quite the mixed bag. He's got a lot of hustle, but the man's a poor defender in every respect and needs to learn to use his weight to set proper screens. That's one of the keys, to me. He's never in his NBA career been able to consistently set good screens and I don't really see why -- he's short, sure, but he's an emphatic widebody. Look at Diaw's screens, when Diaw's locked in. Look at Chuck Hayes. Look at ANY slightly tubby-but-short center -- there are ways to set your weight to make the screen formidable even if you aren't a great defender. It's a skill he needs to master. He's a value big with the length of a Barkley-type and an insane amount of rebounding talent, although that talent seems to have been scouted better by other teams throughout the years. His passing game is extraordinarily underdeveloped for a guy with arms and strength like he has, but his post game is a bit underrated and he has the exact skillset needed to make tall and lanky defenders look foolish -- he pushes against them with his weight, uses his low center of gravity to get them wobbling, then creates enough space to create a layup with his wide reach. Which is nice, offensively, and makes him a useful offensive player against lineups like Oklahoma City (where Ibaka and Perkins trade off on him, both of whom are susceptible to his offensive moves) and Los Angeles (where Gasol is exactly the sort of defender he always goes off on).

The big problem with Blair is that he gives most of it back at the other end, where he's a remarkably bad defender. Doesn't maintain position, barely rotates, fouls a lot. As his rebounding has slowly fallen off, his defensive value (formerly higher when he'd vastly improve the Spurs' ability to rebound every miss) withers away and leaves him with nothing. Which is bad. I'd like to think Blair's endgame is going to be a far less talented Barkley-type with less-than-Barkley-but-more-than-nonextant defensive chops, but he has yet to really show me what I feel he needs to on the defensive end. Can't really pencil him in for any defensive talents if he doesn't show any off, you know? Most likely, he'll end up a bench player now-and-forever. Which isn't the end of the world, although it's annoying that his size is just small enough to make defense so difficult for him. He's a nice dude, no doubt, even if following him on twitter is a bit confusing. Mentions of "P.O.P." abound, with all-caps LOLs after virtually every tweet. Funny at first, eventually becomes tiring and confusing, but alas. He also has an incredibly hot girlfriend who once did semi-pornographic shots of her in a painted-on DeJuan Blair jersey that I refuse to link to. (Speaking of which, when taken in context of some of the personal drama that's surrounded the Spurs the past few years -- Blair's girlfriend posing semi-nude in Spurs garb, the Crawford photo, the public Pop/Stern feud, Tony and Eva, Pop's feud with team USA, Stephen Jackson doing anything, etc... aren't the Spurs actually becoming oddly counterculture? This is strange to consider. I'm just going to leave this thought here and abandon it for a bit.)

Anyway. I like Blair. Don't think he has much more upside than "decent rotation guy", but I'm emphatically sure he can be that. And that's a pretty big accomplishment, all things considered, given his knees and the expectations -- which is a fact that absolutely shouldn't get lost when Spurs fans get disappointed he's nothing more.

• • •

_Follow Bill Walker on Twitter at __@sky12walker.___

Bill Walker's an interesting one, and just between you and me, I'm a bit sad that he hasn't found his way back into the NBA yet. He's one of those NBA disappointments whose career's foibles are neither his fault in any way nor really under his control -- he's a victim of circumstance and timing, and both may have conspired to end his NBA career before it really had a chance to begin. A long time back, he and O.J. Mayo were two of the top prospects in the country. Many actually thought Walker the superior of the two. It was like the Leon Powe & LeBron James dynamic, actually. Walker teamed up with Michael Beasley at Kansas State during his college years, leading the Wildcats to their best season in school history and generally making mincemeat of the undersized mess the NCAA sent out to oppose them. Unfortunately, Walker suffered injury problems even in college (including a nasty ruptured ACL his freshman year, which is a terrifying thing to recover from that young), and he ended up dropping from a definite lottery pick all the way to #47 after suffering yet another knee injury in a workout with the Warriors.

Walker's not a bad player, although he's never been anything phenomenal in the NBA. He started his career with the Celtics and didn't show much, finally escaping Beantown in mid-2010 as a skid-greaser in the trade for Nate Robinson. Funny enough, he might've been the best player moved in the deal -- he had a breakout of sorts in New York, proving himself to be a relatively decent rotation player with a neat blend of not-completely-incompetent defense and excellent spot-up three point shooting. He had a few good years with the Knicks, alternating haphazardly between moments of sublime quintessence and baffling incompetence. One minute he'd be draining threes like he had no other care in the world -- the next, he'd be shanking easy dunks and getting lost behind a set of extremely simple screens. I don't quite agree with the supposition made by Ryan O'Hanlon at The Classical earlier this year -- that is, the idea that Bill Walker "never learned how to play basketball." He makes his threes, he rebounds well, he hustles. Yes, he has his problems. He turns the ball over obscenely much for a non-ball-dominant tertiary player, and his passing is remarkably poor. He barely ever draws fouls and he barely ever does anything beyond rim-rocking dunks and well-timed three point shots. Which made him an excellent target for Jeremy Lin during the height of Linsanity -- he got about a bucket-per-game from Lin's hand while Lin and Walker were together, and they seemed to have a nice touch of on-court chemistry.

Still. I find it hard not to root for the guy. He has a lot of work ethic. Nice guy, pretty funny, and seems pretty smart. The Classical piece on him is well-done, and covers a lot of good points -- no, he didn't need to learn "how to play basketball" in the traditional way, and no coach really challenged him to learn fundamentals like ball-control or defense. But I'm in some disagreement over the article's general tone, implying that Walker never learned these things, or that his career is somewhat lost at sea because he hasn't seemed to fully internalize them yet. If you watch footage of Walker from last year, and look at how his career's progressed, I don't see how you can really deny that he's trying, and that he's definitely made strides -- his defense has gotten quite a bit better over the years, and he's developed from an off-the-dribble player to an off-the-catch type. He's a better three point shooter than the numbers imply -- he shot an absurdly low percentage on corner threes last year despite being a generally excellent corner-three shooter both in college and in 2011. He'd make a good addition to any playoff team in need of three point shooting on the wing from a defender that doesn't kill you, like the Grizzlies or the Celtics. He probably can be had for a minimum deal. I'm not sure why he hasn't gotten a call-up yet -- the man's just 25 years old, he's relatively healthy, and while injuries have sapped his game, they haven't eliminated it. Generally I prefer D-League callups to vets, but when the vet is as young and potential-stricken as Walker (and comes so cheaply!), I can't help but hope he comes back.

He's also responsible for my single favorite Seth Rosenthal series ever. Missing you, Bill.

• • •

_Follow Goran Dragic on Twitter at __@Goran_Dragic.___

I don't dislike Goran Dragic. I have bad memories tied to him, sure -- Dragic single-handedly kicked the Spurs when they were down in the 2010 playoffs, as the Suns experienced the sort of franchise-wide catharsis that only comes once in a lifetime and swept what then appeared to be Tim Duncan's last chance at a championship team out of the playoffs in embarrassingly lopsided fashion. Dragic was, as most remember, almost solely responsible for the Suns' win in game three of that series -- he scored 23 points in the fourth quarter of the contest, which I like to contextualize by stating that Dragic scored more points in that fourth quarter than LeBron James scored in every single fourth quarter of the 2011 finals combined. It was a good night for the kid, let's just say. The 2011 Brandon Roy night before 2011 Brandon Roy's night, so to speak. Game of his career? Game of the century? Game of my lifetime?

Okay, none of the above. Perhaps the game of his career, to-date, but I've got a feeling he's got more in him than that. Just because it's the best he's got so far doesn't mean it'll stay that way -- Dragic is actually a really solid player, and chances are pretty high he'll reach a bit higher someday. We'll start on the end of the court guards aren't usually known for -- Dragic is one of the better defensive point guards in the league. He's adept at shadowing his man despite so-so quickness. He's got a highly developed sense of when to dive into a lane and cut off a pass before the players put them up. As said, not incredibly quick... but it doesn't really matter much, as Dragic tends to get physical enough that you don't really have a chance to take advantage of the lacking quickness. He reminds me a bit of a highly souped up defensive-prime Vujacic, in a smaller frame and a more effective position. Physical, mushes you, gets you inflamed and making terrible decisions on the daily. That's how he approaches defense. It helps that he's a tad large for a point guard, measuring up at around 200 pounds at 6'4" -- he's lanky, but a bit large and with a wingspan longer than the average. It helps. He's a good match for just about every non-freak guard in the league and can safely cover most if not all bench point guards, which is a nice feature.

Offensively, the story's more mixed. I hear a lot of people give a ton of praise to Dragic's passing game, and while I agree that he's decent, I'd stop short of saying it's anything to write home about. By the numbers, he has a slightly above-average assist rate for a point guard (good) and a well above-average turnover rate (not so good). Aesthetically, his passing isn't Rubio-esque nor is it Arenas-level drab. It's all just very average. No next-level court vision, but no insignificant talent either. As for his personal offense, again, it's a bit mixed. His shot still leaves a bit to be desired, despite being quite improved last year. He helped himself quite a bit by sticking to an extremely efficient distribution of shots (over 2/3 of his shots came at the rim or behind the 3 point line), and that led to high overall scoring numbers and composite efficiency. But break it down and you still see a few of the problems with his scoring game -- he doesn't spot up well (and tends to create more offense for himself than one would perhaps appreciate), his three point shot is neither phenomenal nor below average, and he's an average-to-poor midrange shooter. On the other hand, he's a FANTASTIC finisher at the rim, one of the absolute best at his position. And the ability to stick to an efficient distribution of shots (something he's done throughout his career) is an underrated talent in the league. So perhaps I'm just being a bit too hard on him.

Ironically, before last season, I'd assessed Dragic's upside as "a starter for a noncontender a la Kyle Lowry." I'd amend that to say that after Lowry's breakout 2012, I'm not sure that's really fair to Lowry. And after Dragic's breakout 2012, I'm not sure it's fair to Dragic either! I could see him putting in time as a Mike Conley-type figure later in his career, if he can take control of his turnovers and make his way to the right team. Conley is absolutely essential to what the Grizzlies do -- I could see Dragic do the same, later on. Just needs to improve his handling a bit and take better care of the ball. And improve his shot. And keep his defensive intensity. And... well, alright, now I'm manually realizing that I'm underrating Mike Conley. Is there no point guard I can properly rate? Wait, I got it. Mike Bibby. That guy sucks. There. Done. Faith in my own abilities restored. Off the court, Dragic's your average everyday foreign guy -- a bit brash, a bit silly, fun to follow. He also was the star of one of the league's all-time best feuds, the feud that began in 2010 when Dragic insulted Sasha Vujacic's mother and called Vujacic a "very low human being." It's hilarious. Read about the feud, if you get the chance -- it's absolutely worth your time.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. I was kind of shocked that so many people got perfect scores on yesterday's riddles. Are these getting easier with so few players left to go? Good work to Dr. No, Alex, and Mike L.

• Player #340 was the centerpiece of one of the most confusing trades of the summer, for me. I kind of get what they were doing, but have no clue how his new team thought he'd be a key piece for them at his age.

• Player #341 isn't quite Ryan Hollins, but he's close. It's__ really hard__ to be 7'0" and average less than eight rebounds per 36 minutes in the NBA. But he's perservered.

• Player #342 has probably seen Lincoln. He should've made a cameo in it, I think.

Due to my missing a day, I may need to double up capsules sometime in the next few weeks to finish on my desired closing date. But we'll see. We've got just 31 players to go -- just two full weeks of capsules. Crazy stuff, this.

• • •

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Ronny Turiaf, Anthony Parker, and Andray Blatche.

• • •

Follow Ronny Turiaf on Twitter at @RonnyTuriaf14.

Ronny Turiaf is one of the few Clippers I enjoy watching, although there's always a touch of sadness when I consider the state of his career relative to how I would've hoped it'd be years ago. Always a treat and always an asset, in his youth and prime. He's reached a somewhat young fall-off period, now, as the slow churn of injuries has made him unreliable and (in some ways) somewhat unremarkable. I'd say some of the promise that was there when he was young has been squandered, if only just. Whether you attribute that to injuries or simply not being as good as he looked is up to you. Regardless, Turiaf is one of the more amusing backup big men to watch in the entire league, period. Everyone knows the whole "energy big off the bench" trope -- Turiaf goes far beyond the trope, and makes the players that embody it look like dozed-off hobos. He's constantly, CONSTANTLY moving. All the time. Forever. He's out to prove the scientific law that particles are always moving. He revs himself up every day by internally repeating the laws of particle motion -- "cmon, be the particle, Ronny. Leggo. Prove it." This may sound really nice to you, and aesthetically, it definitely is. But it's worth noting that this constant breakneck energy isn't always something that manifests in a good way, and there ARE good reasons he's not always in high demand -- after all, Turiaf's energy leads him to foul indiscriminately, occasionally lose position, and can be considered partially responsible for Turiaf's spotted injury history. So that's not great.

Still, Turiaf is a good player, and better than a lot of people think. He's a downright excellent defender, and has always had brilliant instincts about when to help off his man and when to stay home and bother. One of the main reasons the early-2010 Knicks (with Amare, Gallo, Felton and the rest of the misfit children) were such an engaging team was Turiaf's presence -- his command of the rotations helped him act as sort of a miniature Tyson Chandler, and while the Knicks obviously are better off now with Tyson, it's worth noting that when Turiaf is healthy and clicking he provides similar qualities on defense. Phenomenal weakside blocking, killer screens, and a ready-made stick of pick-n-roll dynamite that blows up the most conventionally successful play in the league. He's quality. Even though he hasn't played a ton this year, he's definitely helped the Clippers in this respect -- they've been a markedly superior defensive team with Turiaf on the floor, and he provides the best play-out-the-string big man the Clippers have ever really put behind Jordan and Griffin. And as many note, when you play as few minutes as Turiaf does, the constant fouling is less of a serious problem. Turiaf's real issue? No offense whatsoever. His offensive game is completely bare, and unlike Chandler, he can't simply throw his size around and get buckets through effort alone. He doesn't really play an important role as an offensive threat, given that all he can really do is finish at the rim every now and again so long as he doesn't need to create the shot or need to move creatively off-the-ball to establish position. Which makes his teams traditionally offensively flawed when he sees too much court time. Which is why, despite being a massive impact player on defense, he'll probably never elicit 20 MPG again.

Off-the-court (and on-the-bench), Turiaf is an entertaining man. The man watches anime with the best of them, which might be one of the reasons I like him -- I'm no anime fan myself, but I hung out with a lot of people in high school who loved the stuff and as such Turiaf tends to remind me of my best childhood friends. Which is all great. He's probably the single best towel-waving big man off the bench in the league, with his on-bench stylings a must-watch whenever his team does anything even remotely impressive. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons Turiaf-on-the-Clippers was a hilariously good idea from the get-go. The man goes crazy for dunks, and while the whole Lob City appellation was never quite the truism it was promised to be, Los Angeles is a great team for him. Just look at examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 for why that is. Finally, the man has a rather wild backstory of his own -- Turiaf's battled through heart problems throughout his career, and actually had to undergo open-heart surgery just to get healthy enough to enter the league. Which is pretty insane, and worthy of a whole lot more respect than he tends to get. I like Turiaf. Pay him some attention, next time the Clippers play your favorite team -- he might impress you, really.

• • •

_Follow Anthony Parker on Twitter at __@_AnthonyParker.___

I'm not Anthony Parker's biggest fan. Although Parker has always been a relatively effective shooter, he's also (for my money) been overly prominent in Cleveland over the last few years -- I didn't really have strong feelings one way or the other about Parker until he came to Cleveland and started taking more shots than he really needed to. Especially pull-ups -- he's a solid shooter on the catch, and you rarely felt that bad about a Parker three as long as it came at the end of an actual play-call. Far too often, though, Parker ended up going one-on-one and trying to hit off-the-dribble pull up shots (regularly from inefficient long-two range as though it would validate his career as a shooter if he could master those shots). He couldn't, for what probably are obvious reasons, and Cavs fans were left watching a possession or two every few games get lost to a doomed Anthony Parker "I CAN ISO! I SWEAR!" possession. Given that Parker's defense hasn't been anything to write home about for almost four years now and given that he's never had any real tertiary value beyond his shooting, these random possessions of taking over the offense for a pull-up fadeaway two bugged me a lot. You're on the court to finish plays and take open shots. You aren't on the floor to dribble around and create shots, no matter what Austin Carr says.

Still. Parker is part of a rare, elite team of NBA players, a group that doesn't get nearly enough dap. I refer, of course, to the group of NBA players whose sisters are infinitely superior basketball players. Candace Parker -- child rearing constraints aside these last few years -- is one of the WNBA's brightest stars, and one of the more entertaining WNBA players ever. The only other NBA player who I can even argue fits in Parker's elite company on this respect is Reggie Miller, whose sister Cheryl was (by the personal account of virtually everyone who played both of them) superior at basketball and likely good enough to be a star in the NBA, had she been given the chance. So, there's that. Beyond those two, there's the Rashad/Rashada McCants duo (neither of whom, I admit, I ever watched closely enough to really assess comparative value), Ime/Mfon Udoka (yeah, uh, "same"), Rudy/Marta Fernandez (Rudy was better) and the Pamela/JaVale McGee duo (well, that one's mother/son, but still -- JaVale is probably a hair better, if only because of superior staying power). Which makes Parker and Miller alone in their tower of "being inferior basketball players to their ballin-out-loud sisters." This isn't really notable, but it is kind of cool. I am one of the lonely few NBA bloggers who doesn't mind the WNBA at all, and in general appreciates a good WNBA game far and away above a college basketball game and (often) an international game. So I'll be sure to keep monitoring sister/brother pairings. Someone has to do it.

With Parker about to exit the league, there's a single thing I'd like to highlight before he goes. No, not a facet of his game -- I'd rather take my best efforts to forget it, thanks. No, not his time in Israel -- Noam Schiller noted that (and the reasons one should care that he retired) better than I could ever hope to for Hardwood Paroxysm last summer. No, I'd like to highlight something different. Namely his Wikipedia page. Just... just look at it. I have no idea who wrote it, but whoever did has to be the world's biggest Parker fan. Or his wife. Or Parker himself. Seriously. It reads like a fan-page. Just look at some of the wording, here:

• "In his first season with the Raptors, Parker helped the team clinch their first ever division title, first NBA Playoffs berth in five years, and best regular season record in franchise history. He helped the Raptors reach the playoffs again in the 2007–08 season, before becoming a free agent in 2009." (This wouldn't be notable, except this is describing his career in the intro paragraph. Because we need to introduce him with everything the Raptors did while he played there, natch.)

• "In a season that was fraught with lengthy injuries to a number of his team mates (such as T.J. Ford and Chris Bosh), he managed to play in all 82 regular season games and ensured that Toronto made the 2008 NBA Playoffs, albeit as the sixth seed." (Good thing Anthony Parker was around to 'ensure' Toronto made the playoffs, or lord only knows what would've happened. Might've lost 25 straight or something.)

• "Cleveland General Manager Danny Ferry said of Parker: "Anthony will be a solid addition to our roster. He is a very good, intelligent all-around basketball player. Our coaching staff will especially appreciate the good shooting and solid defense that Anthony brings to our team."In a bid to ensure that James had his best shot of winning a title before he could potentially become a free agent after the season, Cleveland also acquired Shaquille O'Neal and subsequently, Antawn Jamison, both of whom were veteran superstars." (This is one of my favorite blurbs ever. "The Cavaliers acquired Anthony Parker, and Danny Ferry said THIS about him. Isn't that great?? Oh also they acquired Shaq and Jamison but shush your face Parker was 'The Diff.'")

There you have it. Anthony Parker: the greatest shooting guard of all time. Meet the new Jordan, same as the old Jordan.

• • •

_Follow Andray Blatche on Twitter at __@drayblatche.___

Contrary to popular belief, I don't have a ton of animosity for the Brooklyn Nets. I don't think they're a great team (and I'm still quite hesitant about their defense going forward), but they're clearly much improved and they're doing some really phenomenal stuff on offense. When Johnson and Williams start playing up to their names, sparks will fly. And even on defense, watching Brook Lopez evolve into a "remotely passable" defensive player is a treat. Absolutely a treat. It's always nice to see a long-struggling team right the ship, as I'm sure Ben Swanson will say when the day comes that the Lakers finally catch up to the Bobcats. I don't mean for half the Nets capsules to be negative or jerky.

But I can't bring myself to praise Andray Blatche in good conscience. I'll admit a few things, first -- he has been playing very well this year. His currently-top-10 PER dramatically understates his defense (which has been abhorrent, even still) but it accurately describes the ridiculous level he's been performing at on the offensive end. He's brought his game mostly inside, as he's more than cut in half his rate of shots outside the paint in favor of at-rim jams and offensive tip-ins. His rebounding has gone from sickeningly substandard to startlingly sweet, and he's cut his turnovers to a career low. Blatche is a fringe 7'0" big man who's spent his entire career playing like a 6'5" shooting guard. He finally seems to have remembered that he's a big guy. It's worked, and he's having his best season ever. Nothing else is even close, for him.

Here's the thing. The Wizards have an obscenely poor grasp on player development. They don't really know exactly what they're doing. They've squandered many careers and messed up many player primes by screwing up simple things like putting a player in a role where they have any possibility of succeeding, hiring adequate skill coaches, or finding coaches that actually know what they're doing. They don't draft very well. And their medical staff -- lovely though their attempts to keep Nene's time constrained may be -- isn't anything to write home about. But I refuse -- actively, actually, acutely refuse -- to blame them for Blatche. Seriously. The man was horrible in DC. He's been one of the least valuable players in the league for about 7 years running. He's had some of the worst on/off splits in the entire league, consistently -- his defense has been awful, his offense has been worse, his rebounding has been as tepid as humanly possible for a man in spitting distance of 7 feet tall. But he's amazing right now. This is insane to me.

Look, I didn't think Blatche would give anybody anything this season. You'd think the fact that he very much is would change the picture for me, but I don't think it does. If anything, this makes me even more inclined to dislike him, because it puts his DC years in a more confusing context. Where in God's name was this effort and energy in DC? Seriously! The Wizards did nothing but feature Blatche -- they were letting him start games for a playoff team from his sophomore season onward. It's hard to get 20+ MPG in the NBA, and they managed to give him that every post-rookie year of his career. He was never in want of playing time, shots, or offensive sets that put a spotlight on his unique skillset. They paid him. They hired coaches to help him. They tossed their hat in and made him one of their featured players. And not one bit of it mattered. He still chucked almost half his shots from beyond 15 feet, showed an absolutely insane disregard for his teammates and coaches, and generally made a complete mockery of the Wizards' faith in him. Now he's in Brooklyn, dazzling the world as he makes good on his potential and shows the basketball world what he's actually capable of. The Wizards -- as the team that amnestied him -- are still paying his salary and getting to watch as Blatche does exactly what they wanted him to do... elsewhere. Insofar as they exist at all, the Basketball Gods have a demented sense of humor.

Well... that, or Blatche is just a total jerk. Either/or.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Dr. No, Wul.f, Mike L, Matt L, and J all aptly received their very own 3/3 on 12/12/12. Next thing you know, they'll be doing it at 144/144/144/144/144. (I'm bad at jokes.)

• Player #337 is one of the most annoying yet enticing twitter follows in the league. P.O.P. every day. Also: a hot girlfriend never hurts.

• Player #338 is better than you'd expect but worse than his fans think he is. Wait, okay. That's probably not quite true. I'm not sure he really has fans. Still, I'm actually a bit surprised he hasn't made a team yet this season. Perhaps he needs to talk to Vader.

• Player #339 enters the dragon nightly. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but ever since the 2010 second round, I try not to think about it.

I like how my body is only now beginning to tell me "HEY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. STOP." in regards to my insane sleep schedule I've been doing for months in order to do this series and hold a more-than-full-time-job. Related note: sorry about the miss on yesterday's capsules -- hopefully I can get a day or two ahead this weekend to make sure that doesn't happen again. This does almost guarantee I'll be doing two sets on Christmas, though. FUN TIMES. Also: only 34 capsules left. Yikes.

• • •

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Brandon Rush, Dominic McGuire, and Chris Wright.

• • •

Follow Brandon Rush on Twitter at @KCsFinest4.

Yet another Mount Zion Christian Academy product, Brandon Rush attended the same Durham prep school attended by Amare Stoudemire, Tracy McGrady, Marquis Daniels, and John Wall. He went to college at the University of Kansas under Bill Self, a key member of the 2008 Kansas title team that outfoxed Calipari's last great vacated team. Sort of ridiculous to remember, as I always think "seasoned vet" when I watch him, but Rush is just a 5th year player -- he was an exceedingly minor piece in the Pacers' scheme for 3 seasons until finally finding a reasonably open role in Marc Jackson's Golden State system last year. Being featured in the offense a bit more and given a bit more room to show his skills, he acquitted himself admirably well -- he ended the season with by far the best offensive numbers of his career, and while his defense was really nothing to write home about, he wasn't exactly Jose Calderon on that end. He stuck with guys, and he worked his tail off. He wasn't bad. Several Warriors fans I know are intensely obsessed with the idea that Rush was an amazing defender, and good Lord, no he wasn't. He was easy to pin on screens and he was a bit too much of a ballhawk without the requisite quickness to make up for it. But he put in the effort and on a team of dismal defenders he was one of the better ones. You know. The average stuff.

On offense, he's intriguing. Rush ranks among the absolute best three point shooters in the league, having shot the lights out in college and settled in as a career 41% three point bomber in the big leagues. That's downright excellent, especially considering the number of years he spent playing poorly designed offensive sets in the O'Brien system (insofar as the O'Brien house of horrors could be called a system). Last year, freed from the shackles of Indiana's former-lottery-pick expectations and with virtually nobody paying attention to him, he put up a phenomenal scoring season efficiency-wise and showed that he's still got quite a bit of potential as an above-par NBA roleplayer. A 3-and-D guy without the D but with a more multifaceted offensive game. Good at cutting, and in something of a shocking twist, he ended up being one of the top offensive players in the league (by the numbers) at isolation situations last season. This is all with the caveat that his usage was extremely low, and few of these (with the sole exception of his wonderful three point shooting) look to hold up well with added usage. But he's definitely a solid role-player offensively, and his $8 million for 2 years looked like a very solid contract to me when he signed it. Good for both parties.

Then, in the 2nd game of his burgeoning 2013 season, he was pushed in the back on incidental contact and ended up absolutely destroying his knee. As with the Marquis Daniels injury I discussed yesterday, I absolutely refuse to link to video -- it's grisly, it's grim, and just grotesque enough to keep me from spreading it. But if you want to find it, it won't be that hard to track it down. Originally it was thought to be an ACL tear and little else, although anyone watching would've probably been skeptical of that diagnosis. Later, when the media circus died down a bit, the Warriors continued their semi-dishonest injury reporting tactics by hiding the important reveal that Rush also tore his MCL, meaning what looked like a season ending injury wasn't just that, but an injury that could very well take out a portion of his 2014 season. Which is, suffice to say, absolutely heartbreaking. Even moreso when you read articles like this, and read how down in the dumps he is about the whole thing. He's realistic, and he's taking his rehab seriously. But he's understandably pretty depressed about it. And I'd be sad too -- basketball is a profession for an NBA player, but it's also a labor of love. Scarce few members of the league don't love the game, and scarce few players don't always want to be out there. Proving people wrong, showing what they're good for, et cetera. May not be his biggest fan or anything, but here's hoping Brandon Rush makes a full recovery and comes back strong next year. Curious to see what he does with a bit more usage, you know?

• • •

Follow Dominic McGuire because you can easily turn his name into "McGuido".

Dominic McGuire is a brutal offensive player. Simply brutal. People can laugh and chortle and make little jokes about how their guy is a poor offensive guy. People whose teams employ Dominic McGuire can't do that. Because Dominic McGuire isn't just a "poor" offensive guy, he's an abjectly horrifying one. What number do you want? Do you want his spot-up efficiency? The guy scored 0.56 points per play on spot-up attempts, and watching them, they were almost all completely open. Dominic McGuire scored 1.00 points per play on transition attempts, which included several hilarious layup misses, a missed dunk, and other hilarious possession failures. Dominic McGuire scored -- again, this is not a typo -- 0.47 points per play on offensive rebounds. BRUTAL.

That all said, he's very g... alright, no, he's a pretty bad player. I really don't know how else to put it. If you're going to make up for offense like that on the other end of the court, you'd better be one of the best defenders of your generation. He isn't. His defense is decent, although it's nowhere near as good as most people hype it up to be. By his size, he's a perimeter stopper -- by his habits, he's a big man stuck in a little man's body. Lots of fronting, some unnecessary ballhawking, a bit too eager to block shots, et cetera. He's not bad, mind you, and one has trouble isolating any one-on-one defensive attributes that look particularly defunct in the game footage I watched. But he simply isn't very phenomenal on that end. His biggest sin, defensively, is sort of problematic -- he may have decent one-on-one stopping capabilities for several positions, but he doesn't fight around screens very well at all, which makes getting an open shot for a star off McGuire not exactly rocket science. Run a few screens, he'll get lost, and suddenly your best perimeter guy has a wide-open jumpshot. Boom.

He was recently waived, which is sad, I suppose. Sort of hilarious that it happened less than two weeks after Dwane Casey called him the Toronto Raptors' primary perimeter stopper, but I'll withhold the chuckles for now. He's a decent defender and those get undervalued. Although once again, when you're as dismal offensively as McGuire is, you aren't long for the league unless you're one of the single greatest defensive players of your generation. I don't have much personal investment in McGuire, so I've got trouble looking incredibly sympathetically on his plight. He's made it to some degree based on his status as a veteran and his decently sized role on the last few decent Wizards teams. But alas. I'm one of those jerks who likes seeing D-League guys (like our next player) try their hand at new roles -- I don't tend to particularly love when middling-to-poor players like McGuire get constantly revisited and called back up instead. I like the new-blood thing. But that's just my cup of tea, I suppose. There's obviously some value in his knowledge of NBA economics, dynamics, and the rest. I probably underrate that. And again, he's a decent defender, so maybe his sticking around reflects NBA decision-makers starting to figure out defense a bit. Maybe.

But, look, come on. He stole my name. Geez, Dom. Get it together.

Ed. Note #1: More accurately, seeing as how Aaron was born in 1990, he stole it from Dominic.

Ed. Note #2: I really don't know why I referred to myself in the third person in Ed. Note #1.

Ed. Note #3: Why are these editor's notes in the first place? What am I doing?

• • •

Follow Chris Wright b... wait, Chris Wright? What?

Commenter wul.f, having correctly predicted that Chris Wright was today's 3rd, asked the following:

Why would you do a capsule on Chris Wright, though?

You know what?

I have absolutely no idea how Chris Wright made the final cut.

I'm serious. I have no clue. I thought I'd taken out most players around Wright's minute-level that I knew virtually nothing about (even if the strict exclusion criteria was > 100 minutes & > 4 MPG last season), but I must have simply overlooked the guy. Which sounds roughly similar to how Warriors games happened last year for me -- I suppose was vaguely aware of his existence, but until I watched some Synergy scouting on him last night and asked a friend who went to his college about him, I honest to God couldn't have told you a thing about him. Or recognized him. I just overlooked him, I guess. So, thought I'd state this upfront. I don't really have a ton to say about Chris Wright. I'm not sure anyone else does either, but alas.

Anyway. I'm not referring to the 1989-born Georgetown point guard currently playing in the D-League -- I'm talking about Chris Wright, the 1988-born hometown Dayton kid who went to the University of Dayton and made their team a little bit more relevant for a year or two. According to the guy I know who went there, he's really remarkably beloved in Dayton -- much like Jeff Foster in Indiana (I see you, @MillerNBA!) or any other beloved home-town hero, Wright grew up around the Dayton area and stayed at the University for the full four years, which basically guarantees he gets a beer or two on the house for free in Dayton for the rest of his life. It's one of the underrated fun facts about some guys like Wright -- no matter how badly they may end up washing out in the NBA, no matter how scant their NBA talents, they're still -- in some respect -- hometown heroes to a certain town. ESPECIALLY when they go to their hometown college and lead them to minor respectability.

As for a scouting report... look, what do you want? Seriously. In college, he was a rim-wrecking beast of a player who dominated the A-10 for a few years and put Dayton on the map as a basketball school. As players tend to do, if they're remotely NBA caliber. And he is that, as long as you make sure not to leave out the "remotely." On an NBA level he struggles to score in any consistent fashion beyond transition buckets and gift-wrapped at-rim jams, and beyond his free throw rate (which was obscenely high for reasons unknown to the world), there simply wasn't much to write home about. He's a tweener wing/big who can't shoot but can't really guard big men effectively either. He posted one of the worst assist-to-turnover ratios I've seen, turning the ball over 8 times to just 4 assists. Which is obviously a huge sample size and worthy of massive analysis, let me tell you. Of his 23 NBA field goals, 13 of them came on dunks -- most of them rim-rocking, several of them fun. His understanding of the game is, as IQofAWarrior put it at Golden State of Mind, exceedingly raw and exceedingly in need of some better basketball education. Would be pretty interesting to see Wright make it out to the Austin Toros and see if the Spurs system can't extract a bit more value out of him. Although, again -- he's a tweener wing/big with minimal shooting talent. So I'm not really sure the Spurs system gets that much out of him, unless Engelland beasts it once again and gave him a shot. So that's that. He got waived before the season, and now he's back with the Maine Red Claws.

He'll be back. Probably. Maybe I'll recognize him next time.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Yesterday's riddles were abjectly terrible on my part, but that didn't stop a few people from getting them all right -- Mike L, Cash McNeil, and wul.f in particular.

• Player #334 is the best high energy anime-loving center in the NBA. Related story: he's the only one.

• Player #335 is retired. There are many reasons people like him. I couldn't stand him on the Cavaliers, but I guess he was OK sometimes. Rousing endorsement, I know.

• Player #336 having a good season now after his years as a Wizard just goes to show that any God that exists has a really demented sense of humor.

See, I can still put these up on time! Every now and again.

• • •

Long ago in a distant land, Alex Arnon was watching a Kings/Suns preseason game when he became so furiously enraged at a Tyreke Evans double-teamed isolation jumper with 19 seconds on the shot clock that he hit his head, fainted, and woke up a delusional new man. To my understanding, he's now wholly ensconced in a bizarro world where some guy named Xenu created the Earth, Segways changed the very core of how people get around, and small markets make up the vast majority of NBA coverage and traffic. So just remember the motto we've provided our cracked-skull columnist: "No superstars? No problem!"

Good day, faithful readers! I apologize for not following our tried-and-true structure last week, but that whole Spurs fiasco really rustled my Jimmies. Seeing as how being critical certainly isn't a value we small marketeers like to propagate, I'm going to make amends today by teaching our true values to the team who needs it most -- the big-market Los Angeles Lakers. I know, I know. I've written about the Lakers much more than other (perhaps more deserving) small market teams. But rubbing in everyone's faces just how well-run our teams are isn't in our code of values. But charity is - and the Lakers certainly need charity after last night's dismal-yet-hilarious performance where they lost their fourth of five games, each of which to a small market juggernaut. The first loss was to the Orlando Magic, the team Dwight Howard left to join the Lakers, and a team from which two lessons can be derived.

The first of these lessons? Originality. All of us are unique and precious snowflakes with lives to be cherished and one-of-a-kind legacies to be made. You should never strive to be like anyone else, nor should you abandon the team which did everything you wanted them to do just like the last transcendent center to play for that team did. Dwight changed it up a bit by virtually not trying at all in the penultimate year of his contract while trying to force a trade to the Brooklyn Nets, but the end result was the same when he ended up with the Lakers. Just like good ol' Shaqnificent. You really need to try to be yourself Dwight. Unless your true self is a guy with an obnoxiously over-the-top "wacky" persona who tries to eat cookies off of his forehead like a 3rd grader in a game of truth or dare gone wrong. Then you might want to try to be someone else. But only then.

Another thing you need to try, Mr. Howard, is practicing free throws. These are a small market staple as success in them comes from thousands of hours of hard work and preparation, not planking on Pepsi machines. Disregard my previous thoughts, maybe you should go back to eating cookies off your own face. But never mind that either. What you should REALLY do is avoid going 9/21 from the free throw line in a game decided by 10 points. I'm not the best 'mathologist' around but if you were to make all of those, you would've scored more points than the final margin, which generally means you would've won that game! Awaiting confirmation on this. [Ed. Note: I am a professional mathologist. You are correct. --Aaron] Ha! See, mom? I really COULD be a professional mathologist, if I wanted to. I could be anything at all, ever. Regardless. Dwight, please inject some originality into your life. And considering that Shaq was also really terrible at free throws, you could definitely kill two birds with one stone here.

The third lesson to be learned from these losses is selflessness. In the second loss of this streak, Kobe Bryant took 31 shots for 39 points. Considering that the Lakers are 1-9 when Kobe scores over 30 points this is an obvious mental lapse on Kobe's part. He simply needs to take no more than 14 2-point shots a game while taking a lesson from Dwight Howard's book by missing any free throws he takes - this way, he can't possibly score more than 30 points and the Lakers might actually have a chance to win! With those extra 17 possessions, Kobe can utilize these unbeknownst concepts like "ball movement" and "teamwork" in order to try to "win close games" for the Lakers.

Finally, the last lesson is incredibly simple: for the love of Small Market Allah (A.K.A. Reggie Miller), don't give Chris Duhon minutes. And don't, under any circumstances, let him start. Or else you might somehow get a point guard racking up all of 3 assists in 32 minutes. Normally we small marketeers are in favor of giving everyone a chance in the interests of fairness, but this is the one exception. Chris Duhon: Not even once.

• • •

The State of The Small Market Union (Sponsored by The Memphis School of Modern Dance)

Yawn. The sun rose on this beautiful Monday morning. The sky is still blue. Javale McGee is still the most magnificent creature to have ever graced a basketball court. And the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Memphis Grizzlies still have the three best records in the league. The Spurs got revenge on Commissioner Stern by winning all 4 of their games since the sanctions, the Thunder joined them by doing so, and the Grizzlies let the Spurs win in their first game in a post-sanction world. You see, David, we small marketers stick together when times get tough. You can't just strong-arm us into submission. Our wills only grow stronger in the face of adversity, we don't back down from our core beliefs just because Dan Gilbert sent us a strongly-worded letter. Nor will Dan Gilbert keep writing his letters in Comic Sans after we give him a talking to at our next small market committee meeting for that matter.

You see, David Stern, the sun never sets on the small market empire.

• • •

Sammy's Sack Racing Presents: "The King Of The League!" Jimmer Fredette MVP Watch

The Jimmer was jobbed. After getting the attention of our MVP watch, he was told to play two games in back-to-back nights, a Herculean task surely unmatched by most NBA players. Therefore it's no surprise to learn that after a blistering 50% shooting performance (that means he made at least a third of his shots!), he followed it up with an 0-6 game thanks to the fatigue he surely felt in his morally pure legs. Once he got some rest, he proceeded to shoot 58% over his next two games while proving that he'd learned a valuable lesson. Fredette once again had two games in two nights -- is there anything Stern won't stoop to to get back at us small marketeers? -- but he knew better than to play into Stern's hands and chose to not play a single minute in the second game of this back-to-back, a game in which his team won against Portland. How many other players would not only sacrifice themselves, but in doing so would lead their team to a win? None. And that's why Jimmer Jebediah Fredette is our MVP.

• • •

Small Market Mondays Game of the Night

Thanks to last week's rant there wasn't actually a game of the night, but we're going to go ahead and say that every Spurs game that week was the game of the night. Uncoincidentally_ [Ed. Note: That is not a word.], they just so happened to win every single one of those games! Isn't it amazing what the human spirit is capable of when times get tough? One time, my great aunt Sally fell down the stairs _without her handy dandy Life Alert! But instead of sitting their wallowing in self pity, she got right on up and took her glucosamine pills in order to prevent any joint injuries from happening in the future. And that's exactly what Coach Pop did. But, uh, in basketball form. I guess. Yeah.

But enough about last week, tonight we have our MVP favorite's Sacramento Kinds taking on everyone's favorite Dallas Mavericks. Look for Jimmer to light it up not only from deep, but in our hearts. Look for the Mavericks to fight passionately without Dirk, even more passionate than Dirk fired up with disco fever. And last but not least, look inside yourself to see if these small market teams can teach you any lessons about your life. Especially if that lesson is taught by Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and has to do with skinny jeans. Because you know what? This might be the small market Wrangler fan in me talking but...

I just don't get it either.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Marquis Daniels, O.J. Mayo, and Delonte West.

• • •

Follow Marquis Daniels on Twitter at @Marquis_Daniels.

The story of Marquis Daniels is something of a sad one. It's not that he's a bad player -- he really isn't, when healthy, despite most people thinking that he is after a few years of injury-tarred uselessness. Sure, he's not exactly brilliant -- he's a hustle defender who doesn't really have strong shut-down capabilities, and he floats in-between positions with the muscle (and, unfortuantely, the lessened quickness that often comes with it) of a larger man and the height of a smallish wing. He'll get you hustle rebounds, he'll draw charges if he's healthy (so, uh, he won't draw charges...), and he'll put his best effort into throwing off whatever offensive player his coach dogs him into guarding. Won't always do a fundamentally good job, but he tries his best and doesn't ever make a ton of obvious mistakes. He passes relatively well, too, which is a nice little addition. The main issue with Marquis is that his offensive game has declined to the point where he's among_ the worst offensive players the game's ever seen_ -- last season, for instance, Daniels shot 56% at the rim despite taking almost half his shots there, shot 22% from 3-9 feet, and 18% from the long two. He made zero threes. He drew free throws about as scarcely as Stan Van Gundy did last year, and he turned the ball over on a simply startling 16% of his possessions. Despite all that? Usage rate of 18%. That's rough. And shouldn't really happen. His defense is solid, but lord, he needs to learn to defer on offense.

The big knock on Marquis, NBA-wise, is the fact that his main NBA talent over his career has seemed to be "getting ridiculously injured." Suffice to say, that's not an NBA talent most teams aim to optimize. Many injuries stand out in a career as riddled with them as his, but few are as disturbing as the simply too-grisly-to-link injury that prematurely ended his promising 2011 season. At the time, he'd played 41 consecutive games without missing a single one to injury, which was (believe it or not) by far the best stretch in his career to that point. He then proceeded to fall badly after Gilbert Arenas got under him on a shot attempt, slipping off Gil's back and slamming his spine into the garden floor. Daniels was paralyzed on-the-court, with emergency personnel and teammates (Paul Pierce excepted, for some completely unknown reason that has always confused me deeply) surrounding him in this horrified silence that was palpable even in the broadcast. Nobody really knew what was going on. I absolutely refuse to watch this again, and thus, I refuse to get you a video of it -- if you know what game I'm talking about, you know why. And if you don't, just trust me -- you really, REALLY don't want to see it. Simply don't. Final prognosis was a bruised spinal cord that ended his 2011 season and threatened to end his career -- he came back fine from it, but lord, it could've been so much worse.

Off the court, Daniels seems like an excellent guy in interviews and subjective assessment of his off-court pursuits, which makes the injury problems all the more heartbreaking. People forget this, but for 3 years, Daniels was a really good bench player for a really good Mavs team. He was an important cog on the also-ran 2006 Mavericks, and while he's never really approached the levels of quality play he showed under Don Nelson his rookie year, he's never really been healthy enough to assess what he could've really brought the league. He founded the Q6 Foundation early in his career, a charitable foundation focused on fighting sickle cell anemia and helping underprivileged youth. The reason I bring this up is because during the lockout, I distinctly remember wanting to either cover live or get footage from this event from his foundation, primarily because it included a celebrity kickball game that would've included Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Marquis Daniels, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady. Like, can you imagine that? Best kickball roster ever. Seriously need a box score or some highlights or something. Anyway. Support his foundation. When he's not standing up for underprivileged youths, he's ordering black diamond Jesus head necklaces and dr--... wait, wait, hold up. Really? Am I being serious?

Yeah, no, that's a thing that actually happened.

Man, what.

• • •

_Follow O.J. Mayo on Twitter at __@JuiceMayo32.___

O.J. Mayo is going to be a starter in the NBA for quite some time, and this year serves as an excellent example of why. While Memphis couldn't really be happier to get rid of him, there was always a lot of promise in Mayo's game -- he's proven over his career to be about as good at three point shooting as any specialist has ever been. The issue in Memphis, as far as I could figure, was the same issue that dogs good shooters on poor-shooting teams -- they simply attract an inordinate amount of attention from behind the arc, being that they're the only real threats to hurt you from that range. Teams throw perimeter stoppers at them willy nilly, and without shooters besides him, there's no real incentive for their man to play off them. Ever. This year, in Dallas, he's been blessed with several decent three point shooters around him and a coach who's good at running get-the-man-open plays -- Carter's had a good start from range, Marion's always an asset, and the Mavs spent some time running sets with Troy Murphy filling the role of quasi-Dirk that have been keeping opposing teams defending the Mavs with the same gameplan they used to use when Dirk was on the floor. (NOTE: Murphy was cut. This is not happening anymore. I should stop doing scouting/notes for these things at midnight.) It worked out relatively well for Mayo, and with a slightly more open shot to subsist on, Mayo's been brilliant -- 52% from beyond the arc to date, and that's not a typo. Not much else there -- high turnover rate, low assist rate, middling rebound rate. But when you shoot the three THAT well, you'll find NBA minutes.

Still, despite his three point marksmanship, there are some flaws that somewhat doom his ability to become more than a decent starter. Chief among them is Mayo's general fear of the rim -- on his career, he takes a well-below-average percent of his shots at the rim. This made some sense when he was on a Memphis team that pounded the ball down low with Gasol and Randolph so often he was rarely able to get daylight. It makes significantly less sense on a Dallas team whose best low post threat is Christopher Zane Kaman. Then again, maybe it does make sense -- over his career, he's also been among the worst at-rim finishers in the entire game, well within the bottom 25% of guards in at-rim percentage in each year he's been on the court (which does extend to this year -- even with his torrid start). His turnover rate has always been high, and perhaps worse, he's been cursed with extremely poorly timed turnovers at every stage of his career -- just ask Grizzlies fans, because most can name a turnover or two that Mayo coughed up at extraordinarily poor momentum-changing moments. In 2012 over 33% of his turnovers came in the 4th quarter, and it just seemed like he was constantly quashing Memphis momentum with a stupid travel or a lazy pass attempt. It wasn't great. Compound this with his often lazy defense (high upside though it may be, as his quality playoff defense demonstrated) and his aforementioned troubles at-the-rim (which extend to trouble drawing fouls -- he's been around league average at foul-drawing his entire career despite being good at throwing his body into defenders on jump shots, and that's primarily because he's so bad at driving to the rim and getting calls under the basket), and you can put together a decent case why he'll never be much of a star and probably won't fully live up to whatever large contract he gets from his Dallas successes.

That said, this is all to ignore perhaps Mayo's biggest asset -- his nigh-superhuman durability. He's missed just a single game to injury over his entire career, with his only other absence coming in a 10 game suspension during the 2011 season. And that durability has him in a relatively neat position -- with 535 threes through 321 games, Mayo stands an outside chance of pole-vaulting Ray Allen on the three-point-makes leaderboard later in his career. It would require him eventually building up a few tertiary skills to go alongside his three-point talents, and he's yet to get the green light to shoot quite as many threes as Allen had in his early career. But it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility -- Mayo is currently running a bit off Allen's pace, but it's only 50 or so three point makes outside of Allen's and Allen had a few injury-hobbled years in his late 20s. Part of the reason Allen has made so many threes over his career is that he's been relatively durable, long-lasting, and minutes-sopping -- it remains to be seen if Mayo can last quite as long as Allen has, or if he can (in his prime) soak up quite as many minutes. But it's certainly within the realm of possibility, given his ridiculous injury history and his absurd ability to play through minor scrapes, and it's one of the few storylines around Mayo's career that's still somewhat interesting to follow.

• • •

_Follow Delonte West on Twitter at __@delontewest.___

Delonte West was a really good NBA player, once upon a time. Let me take you back to 2009, when West was one of the best players on one of the best teams in the entire league -- West's perimeter defense was crucial to Mike Brown's schemes, and his general ability to bother and pester the best perimeter player on every other team in the league was one of the primary cogs in the Cleveland defense. West is one of the rare defenders who actually uses a smaller frame to his advantage -- he's small but sinewy, and his size helps him gets over and around screens better than many larger defenders. Combine that with his decent lateral quickness, and you end up with a beastly difficult player for a perimeter offensive guy to lose. It's one of the reasons the 2009 Cavaliers were a legitimate title favorite at many points of the season. Virtually every contender featured a star perimeter player -- Kobe, Pierce, Parker, Melo -- who Delonte could bother and frustrate. And with those players out of sync, none of those teams were quite as good as they would normally be. This, unfortunately, did not apply to the 2009 Magic. None of their perimeter players were of any particular quality, they were all just "very good" and reliant on a lot of three point shooting. Which made Delonte's role as a stopper somewhat ambiguous, and helped cause a lot of confusion on the part of the traditional Cavalier defensive schemes.

But alas. West was a phenomenal stopper on those late-aughts Cavaliers teams, and throughout his career, he's almost always been an asset of some sort on the defensive end. And on offense, he's not nearly as bad as most people think -- he's something of a jack-of-all-trades swiss army knife, combining boatloads of passing acumen with decent guard-position rebounding and about as much hustle as you could possibly put in his slight frame. He was a joy to watch, on offense and defense -- there was never a sense West was ballhogging, nor a sense that he needed to shoot more -- there was simply a perfect equilibrium, a sense that he was both as featured as he should've been without a single shot more. I don't think, in West's career, he's ever really reached that equilibrium since -- he's always been either underutilized (2010 Cavs, 2011 Celtics) or overutilized (2012 Mavericks) with scarce distance in-between. His defense has been as fun to watch as ever, although as his personal life has gotten in the way of his career, it's been clear that he's gotten more and more distracted and shiftless on defense. Despite this, he's still probably the best player bumming it without a contract right now -- his defensive intensity has been spotty at times with his personal problems, but it's never been poor, and he's never a huge threat to hog the ball when in a good system.

I like watching Delonte West play ball. His intensity is absolutely wonderful, and there's a certain edge to his game that I don't see in a lot of other players. I also respect the way he's fought through his mental issues, even if it's often been public and terrifying. Would we get along in real life? Highly doubt it. While we've both gone through some of the same mental issues and from his interviews I get the sense that our struggles aren't as far apart as they may seem, they're still relatively far apart -- he's a feisty NBA player who came from a hard past and a rough future, I'm a thrifty Jewish mathematician with self-image problems and an aversion to help. But that doesn't make him any less of a hero to me for his time spent trying to better himself in the NBA, or battling his demons without the anonymity that eases the burden for many. Delonte West is a funny, stand-up, problematic guy. These things are often seen as being mutually exclusive. They aren't -- you can have serious problems and still be funny. You can be a stand-up guy without ruining your sense of humor. You can come from hard times without letting them destroy you. I wish Delonte West was still in the NBA, and even with all his troubles, I really hope some team takes a flyer and brings him back. I think he can still be a productive player, and I think any team with an understanding medical staff and a smart coach could do well with him.

I could be wrong, though. That's kind of the point. Mental health isn't really predictable. Overcoming mental problems isn't an easily pigeonholed condition with a set treatment pattern or a regular recovery pattern. It's a long journey with twists and turns you can never really see in advance, and given the high variance, I can see why teams might be shaky on him. I can see why teams don't want to introduce that kind of a potentially harmful presence on a team if they feel they're good enough to possibly contend without him. But it breaks my heart to see him go unused when the man's such a useful player. He may have trouble practicing, he may not always be there, but when he's on and locked in he's one of the better perimeter defenders in the NBA, a useful offensive filler-piece, and one of the funnier personalities around. He's a high variance bet, and he's getting up there a bit (not 30 yet, but he's not too far out)... but he's a bet I wish someone would make. League's better when my boy Delonte's out there killin' it.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Props to Matt L and Geezer for 2/3 guesses.

• Player #331's season is over. Which sucks, because he was really solid last year and really looked to be turning a corner in a contract year. Hope he comes back strong next year.

• Player #332's still being in the league surprises me. Also confuses me, when I hear my name repeated whenever he comes on the court.

• Player #333 has the Wright stuff. (Yes, this riddle sucks. Sue me, I'm tired.)

Was a struggle to get this set out today. Bad case of the Mondays. Good case of the "giddy over a girl", tho, so I can overlook the Monday blues for now. Au revoir, and #SmallMarketMondays drops later.

• • •

“Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless." -- Euripides

On November 23rd, 2010, the Duke Blue Devils obliterated the Kansas State Wildcats by a score of 82-68. The game was hardly as close as the score makes it seem. It was a really impressive victory -- the Blue Devils (then ranked #1) were playing against a #4 ranked Kansas State team that featured player-of-the-year candidate Jacob Pullen, one of the most electric scorers in the college game and among the best shooters in the country. The Blue Devils were favored in the game, but only by the slimmest of margins and most thought it essentially a road game for Duke despite the neutral site locale. It was thought of as a given that Pullen would drop 20-30 on a permissive Duke perimeter defense, helmed by rookies and youngsters that hadn't quite grasped Krzyzewski's defensive system yet.

Not quite. Pullen shot 1-12 for 4 points, posting what may have been his worst game as a collegiate athlete. And Kyrie Irving? The 18-year-old jitterbug was phenomenal. Beyond phenomenal. A revolution, a revelation, a reincarnation of all that's good in basketball. A vertical Rothko in three shades of blue, disrupting almost every single shot Pullen took and making everything he touched work better. He even had a poor shooting night, missing his two threes and numerous wide-open jump shots off his pet pick and roll sets. It didn't matter. He still dominated. Nothing he did in that game was anything short of a wonder. He had four games of college experience. Four. He was facing one of the greatest scorers in the history of the college game, in his first true away game as a pro. He had jitters, as he later admitted, but it simply didn't matter -- sometimes you're just too good for jitters.

After the game, what was the topic of conversation? It wasn't really about Irving at all. Some highlights, some features, some general pats on the back for a game well-performed. But little focus on how dominant Irving was in the contest, because that simply isn't how Duke teams are traditionally understood -- instead, commentators sprung for the usual well-worn cliches, continuing to beat the drum on the idea that Duke was the most talented team in basketball and nobody was really anywhere close. Unbeknownst to most at the time, this wasn't true. At all. Without Irving, the 2011 Duke Blue Devils were a lacking bunch with scant cohesion, flawed chemistry, and a tenuous grasp of the defensive end of the court -- and even Nolan Smith's flukishly-good season didn't obscure that once Irving went down. By the time he came back at the end of the year, the 2011 Blue Devils had been exposed as something of a fraud, and Irving was relegated to being an everyday Duke player -- good, decent, and maybe a perennial all-star. Perhaps. With his dominance forgotten, his flaws overstated, and his game misunderstood, people continued to assert rank inferiority of a draft class that's ended up being (potentially) quite a bit better than the 2 or 3 that came before it. And Kyrie Irving sat, in wait, ready to be the transformative player that he knew full well he'd be.

Can you be a star when they don't know who you are?

• • •

To most, the world of Mathematics represents a world of abject certainty. The word "always" is key. One plus one always equals two. One gallon of milk will always contain exactly 16 cups. Avogadro's number will always describe the constituent particles of a single mole. Always this, always that. There's nothing inherently wrong with this stance, and indeed, it's a satisfactory description of the lower-level mathematics covered in high school and the lower rungs of college. In that sphere -- the sphere most contend with -- math is little more than a series of stark truths represented through numerous immutable rules. The broader picture, insofar as it's revealed at all, is inevitably watered down. But ever since reading an excellent piece from the always-recommended folks at Berfrois (this time the imitable Barry Mazur, a Harvard mathematician), I've come to finally put words to a thought I had throughout my studies. Once you get to a high enough level, Mathematics isn't about any of that.

It's more about hunting giraffes.

What? No, that's actually what I meant to type. Giraffe hunting. The key to understand here is the exact core of Mazur's point. Much of mathematics can be distilled to the logical skeleton that composes those previously outlined truths -- everything most people need to know, really. But there's a level far beyond that, and in the seedy and sordid world of higher mathematics, the questions become far less concrete and far more intangible. Even if you accept the proposal that the formal structure behind mathematics is inert and extant in the highest and most complete form it will ever be, as most do, you'll be hard pressed to find a mathematician worth their salt that believes the absolute meaning of these structures is comprehensible to us and entirely within our grasp (although some believe computers will eventually fully comprehend it). Yet, at least. Scrabbling to find that meaning is the core of higher mathematics. And when you apply enough abstraction to the thought, you come to an almost existential crisis -- if we're ascribing meaning to structures we've yet to fully comprehend, at what level have we really established that abject certainty mathematics is known for? Sure, one plus one always equals two, if you're working in base ten in the traditional coordinate system. But so much of higher math involves reorienting systems to solve problems too complex to describe in the traditional frame we spend so much time explicating in our youth.

It's something like this -- as a child, you learn how to shoot a perfect free throw. You are shooting 100% from the free throw line. It's beautiful. Amazing. But then the blindfold comes off, and you realize there are an infinite number of other points on the basketball court that your exacting and perfect free throw form can't make a bucket at, and that you need to be able to take the framework of your shot-making from the line and turn it into a flexible monster that can attack from every isolated space on the court, in an all-engrossing infinite sphere of possibility and wonder. You've established one single thing -- you can make a free throw. Now you need to establish everything using the basis of that single thing. It's terrifying! It's challenging! And it's beautiful, in a way. When you're a young and rising mathematically-inclined student, you're given this broad structure and this set of rules, and tasked to analyze them to their absolute completion. You do so. Life goes on, you work hard, and you finally come to some level of satisfaction with this structure. Then a teacher cracks you in the head and makes you realize the almost-too-hilarious truth. Those rules and that structure you'd been taking for granted in all your work? Indeed, those are the problems. The things that are flexible in higher math aren't the values of the numbers or the forms of the equations. It's the rules you used to get there in the first place.

And that's where the whole "giraffe hunting" tidbit comes into play. In Mazur's piece, he describes a giraffe hunt he observed in a documentary. Four men hunt a giraffe for five days, pursuing without adequate food or water their quarry for as long as it takes to catch it. He describes it as "exhausting yourself in the ecstasy of it", getting lost in your hunt. Finally, when you catch the giraffe, you use everything. You thought you exhausted yourself catching the giraffe? Hardly as much as your former prey will be exhausted for meat, bones, ears, hooves, and skin. That, right there, is what you do with higher mathematics. You hunt for the perfect framework for your perfect proof, and once you find it, mathematics cannibalizes your structure and creates dozens of offshoot proofs in attempts to explain increasingly different phenomena. Mathematics is the process of slowly ascribing meaning to the inert structures we can't quite explain or understand, arrived at through the everlasting hunt of various proofs and logical stabs. These proofs inch us closer to a truth that means nothing until we can explain it. The hunt is what defines broader math, and until the blindfold's taken off by an amused old hand late in our undergraduate career, it's rare for one to fully comprehend the enormity of it.

• • •

This isn't meant to be an anti-Cleveland screed. Really isn't. As many are aware, I'm a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers. I have a Zydrunas Ilgauskas jersey I sometimes wear in support while rooting from my couch. I have Cavaliers pencils. I have a Cavaliers calendar. Kyrie Irving is one of my favorite players in the league -- top 5 at a minimum. This isn't an essay meant to state some sort of snide, backhanded "fact" about Cleveland being a poor showcase for its young star's talent. Think of it through the whole story, instead -- Kyrie Irving went to Duke University, one of the most over-exposed basketball schools in the country. There are millions upon millions of jokes, and most of them hold water. Duke is held up as a standard-bearer, plastered on national television for almost their entire season, and given innumerable extra coverage opportunities that most other schools simply do not get. He plied his trade at college basketball's equivalent of the Lakers.

Despite this -- despite the overexposure, the massive coverage, the big games -- virtually nobody realizes how good Kyrie Irving was as a college student. Seriously! Nobody! When the 2011 NBA draft approached, there was a serious question that floated on talk radio for some time as to whether Derrick Williams or Kyrie Irving was the better bet as an NBA player. Serious questions, by very smart analysts. This was absurd to me, as someone who watched every single minute of Irving's college career and a fair bit of his high school career. I'm not one to exalt Duke players above everyone else, but by GOD, Kyrie was preposterously good. In college, Irving shot 90% from the line, 46% on threes (almost exclusively unassisted!), and shot over 70% on plays off the high pick and roll. You're reading that right -- 70%, with a seven and a zero. He did this all despite using 30% of Duke's possessions when he was on the floor, playing reasonably solid Krzyzewski-style defense, and being the primary target of virtually every team's defensive schemes. Kyrie Irving may have been injured for much of his college career, but he put up numbers that were legitimately historic. One of the best offensive seasons in college history. There shouldn't have been any doubt whatsoever that the man was the real deal. But everyone was shaky on him, and everyone used the "health" card to explain their doubt.

Then you get to his rookie season. Kyrie didn't play a ton of minutes his rookie year -- topped out at just over 30 per game, and he missed bits of the season with a few minor maladies -- but when he played he was undeniably phenomenal. He threw passes that were steps ahead of the defense, often setting up the ball straight in the cradle of an offensive player's shooting motion for a beautiful dish only ruined by the fact that the offensive player was Samardo Samuels. Whoops. His dribble remains one of the most inexplicable wonders the league has to offer, and Irving's speed with the ball is virtually peerless. The form on his shot was legitimately immaculate, and Irving was a few trick shots at the rim and a few injury-tarred games short of a 50-40-90 season -- as a rookie, remember. His defense was poor, although to my eyes, he started the season relatively well on that end. He defended reasonably well in the preseason and only begun to fall off significantly after a minor sprain early in the year, which gives me some manner of hope that he'll recoup strong and rediscover the bulldog defensive tendencies he displayed at Duke.

In short: Kyrie Irving was all manner of remarkable. He was also nowhere near an all-star spot despite playing significantly better basketball than Deron Williams, Luol Deng, or Joe Johnson. National fans seemed to have virtually no investment in his game. He lived in the shadow of LeBron's rookie season, which was ludicrous for many reasons, not least of which being that Irving was putting up the best rookie season since Chris Paul's, and one of the best rookie years for a point guard in the history of the sport. His rookie year OBLITERATED LeBron's in statistics and standard, with about one tenth the hype and one twentieth the recognition.

But I repeat myself.

• • •

The key thought that connects Kyrie to my missive on mathematics is the idea that, on some level, the idea of Kyrie Irving is a relatively inert function. Just like the broader structures we can't quite describe yet. The more I watch of his dazzling NBA play, the more I'm inclined to believe this as an underlying truth rather than a happy coincidence. If Kyrie Irving is an inert function, his own floating Sealand-style island of NBA bliss that exists under its own flag, it stands to reason that on some level it doesn't really matter that we haven't totally figured him out yet, as a collective of NBA fans. Sure, we've got some appreciation for him. But on a broad level, I've always gotten this feeling that the overexposure of Duke in no way properly highlighted the sort of a player Kyrie was for that Duke team. Nor did the overexposure of the 2012 Cleveland Cavaliers in the light of LeBron's all-universe season do all that much to properly highlight the sort of player Kyrie was as a rookie.

And this year? We're staring at a guard who, as a 2nd year player, is poised to finish the year as a blisteringly efficient 25-ish points-per-night scorer that runs a Cavalier offense with brutally poor pieces alongside him like a whirring, well-oiled machine. And yet appreciation is still, as with mathematics, shaky -- there's a vague understanding of Kyrie's structure among the basketball literati as a general collective, a weak understanding of the qualities he brings to the court. It is a weak understanding of what exactly he does that's so phenomenal. There are the little highlight films that show off his beyond-all-reason handle and his "teenage girls weeping" wet shot. There are the little publicity stunts, the Uncle Drew ads and the mushing with Kobe to give people a taste of his brilliant personality. And there are the accolades; the Rookie of the Year voting, his likely All-Star spot this year, et cetera. Each of these inches us closer to full understanding of Kyrie Irving's inherent truth, and the things that make him whole. But none of us quite inch the collective to complete understanding -- not quite.

It does not matter, in mathematics, that we've yet to come to a full consensus or fully discovered the underlying structure we're studying. Some mathematicians are further along than others. Some are still comprehending the basic groundwork they'll need to get any farther -- they're examining the remains of the giraffes that have been hunted before, discovering things that will help them on the next hunt. So too are we, as a people, learning just how we interface on a collective level with a player as good as Kyrie Irving. People have yet to quite grasp how good he is, and indeed, mathematicians have yet to quite grasp the whole truth of the structure that underlines the discipline. And perhaps they never will. But the true joy of examining and following a player like Kyrie is the same as the joy a mathematician derives from his craft -- the joy of a sailor in the age of discovery, setting anchor ashore in a steppe untouched by man and faithfully taking in the details and oeuvre of their surroundings. And that feeling -- that taste of discovery, that thirst for more -- is exactly what keeps a mathematician hungry. It's what keeps the ecstasy present in their exhaustion, the guiding light that sends them off to prove the new proof and discover the new rules. And this elation, this ecstasy of discovery? This sense that the best is just around the corner, imperceptible to even the most hardy of eyes?

That's what it's like to watch Kyrie Irving -- the showman, the structure, the star.

• • •

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the Cleveland Cavaliers, visit the Cavalier Capsule Directory •

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Kyrie Irving, Wesley Matthews, and J.J. Redick.

• • •

Follow Kyrie Irving on Twitter at @KyrieIrving.

Today, in a special extended capsule, I had the pleasure of going over one of my favorite players in the entire league. It took me a while to figure out how exactly one could best cover Irving's game -- he's an extremely unique player, and I've got the unique experience of having covered him thoroughly at Duke in my failed stabs at a Duke blog, met him a few times, and watched him at every step in his meteoric rise. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord", insofar as Kyrie Irving is a Lord of the Australian Empire. (This isn't true.) Still, it took a fair bit of thought to come up with a suitable frame for presenting my personal take on Irving's brilliance. Lots of sifting through Berfrois, etc. And then, a few days ago? A random discussion with friends Matt and Mike about the philosophy of mathematics set the wheels turning and made me figure out exactly what I needed to do. Today, I discussed Kyrie Irving, the meaning of mathematics, and the limits of public perception. I enjoyed writing this piece quite a lot. I quite hope you enjoy reading it.

On November 23rd, 2010, the Duke Blue Devils obliterated the Kansas State Wildcats by a score of 82-68. The game was hardly as close as the score makes it seem. It was a really impressive victory -- the Blue Devils (then ranked #1) were playing against a #4 ranked Kansas State team that featured player-of-the-year candidate Jacob Pullen, one of the most electric scorers in the college game and among the best shooters in the country. The Blue Devils were favored in the game, but only by the slimmest of margins and most thought it essentially a road game for Duke despite the neutral site locale. It was thought of as a given that Pullen would drop 20-30 on a permissive Duke perimeter defense, helmed by rookies and young players that hadn't quite grasped Krzyzewski's defensive system yet.

Not quite. Pullen shot 1-12 for 4 points, posting what may have been his worst game as a collegiate athlete. And Kyrie Irving? The 18-year-old jitterbug was phenomenal. Beyond phenomenal. A revolution, a revelation, a reincarnation of all that's holy. A vertical Rothko in three shades of blue, disrupting almost every single shot Pullen took and making everything he touched work better. He even had a poor shooting night, missing his two threes and numerous wide-open jump shots off his pet pick and roll sets. Nothing he did in that game was anything short of a wonder. He had four games of college experience. Four. He was facing one of the greatest scorers in the history of the college game, in his first true away game as a pro. He had jitters, as he later admitted, but it simply didn't matter -- sometimes you're just too good for jitters.

After the game, what was the topic of conversation? It wasn't really about Irving at all. Some highlights, some features, some general pats on the back for a game well-performed. But little focus on how dominant Irving was in the contest, because that simply isn't how Duke teams are traditionally understood -- instead, commentators sprung for the usual well-worn cliches, continuing to beat the drum on the idea that Duke was the most talented team in basketball and nobody was really anywhere close. Unbeknownst to most at the time, this wasn't true. At all. Without Irving, the 2011 Duke Blue Devils were a lacking bunch with scant cohesion, flawed chemistry, and a tenuous grasp of the defensive end of the court -- and even Nolan Smith's flukishly-good season didn't obscure that once Irving went down. By the time he came back at the end of the year, the 2011 Blue Devils had been exposed as something of a fraud, and Irving was relegated to being an everyday Duke player -- good, decent, and maybe a perennial all-star. Perhaps. With his dominance forgotten, his flaws overstated, and his game misunderstood, people continued to assert rank inferiority of a draft class that's ended up being (potentially) quite a bit better than the 2 or 3 that came before it. And Kyrie Irving sat, in wait, ready to be the transformative player that he knew full well he'd be.

Can you be a star when they don't know who you are?

For more on Kyrie Irving, please read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Wesley Matthews on Twitter at __@wessywes2.___

Wesley Matthews is stuck in an odd sort of purgatory -- while he's one of about four currently NBA-caliber talents on the Portland Trail Blazers, he's clearly the weakest of the four and clearly the most tertiary piece. Which would stand to reason he'd be on the trading block in an effort to land the Blazers multiple fill-in pieces. The problem with that? He's not quite promising enough to net much on the trade market, and he's displayed a few issues that have sapped his game in the last little stretch. Of all these issues, perhaps the most pressing last year was the sudden and complete absence of Matthews' at-rim finishing game. Matthews shot just 50% at the rim last year, rating out as one of the league's absolute worst finishers -- as John Hollinger aptly noted in his player profiles, that number made him the worst finisher in the league who didn't play for the Charlotte Bobcats. This is partly a dig at how incredibly poor several Bobcats players were at the rim last season, but it's also partly a massive indictment on Matthews. He shouldn't be that bad. He can't really finish at the right side of the basket, but he still shouldn't be that bad -- it should NOT be this easy to force Matthews right. He's spent most of his career as a below-average converter from the rim (with the sole exception of his 2nd year), but nothing quite as harrowing as last year. Beyond that, he has a few other things that hurt his efficiency. He's rather poor at drawing free throws, which is awful in the long run because he's blessed with one of the most consistent free throw strokes in the league. Really wish he could do that more often.

His rebounds and assists were paltry, and while his three point percentage was decent, it's worth noting that he had a well-below-average usage rate for a shooting guard. Well-below average. When you cull the list of guards to players in Matthews' minutes range (IE, players with 30+ MPG), only three shooting guards used the ball less than Matthews did in 2012 -- Gordon Hayward, Ray Allen, and Courtney Lee. Which may really constitute Matthews' main problem. This all can be rather problematic when you're looking at a team that only features four definite NBA talents; it's important that Matthews takes more shots when he's on the court with the Portland bench, which rates among one of the worst in the league for a reason. I'm not a fan of cliches, but one fits here -- he's an NBA shooting guard. He doesn't really rebound and he doesn't really pass. Which means__ the man needs to shoot.__ Simply has to. Matthews isn't some fill-in off the Spurs bench that can stay off-ball all the time and focus on his defense (at which he's solid, but not remarkable) -- he's a shooter with scoring talent that needs to be featured when the Blazers put out a lineup where he's one of the best two guys on the court, a situation that happens for 10-15 minutes each night. They don't need Matthews to be "that guy" all game, with Aldridge and Batum and Lilliard there to take the load. They do need him to be "a guy", though, and oftentimes he floats off-ball to the point where he really isn't. He doesn't make himself a factor in the play. Part of this was Nate McMillan and Kaleb Canales, but it's not like Stotts has done THAT much better. He simply needs to find a way to get the ball more often. His efficiency can take a dive and he'll STILL be an infinitely better choice than a Sasha Pavlovic pull-up two point fadeaway. Come on, Stotts.

It's not all bad, though. Really. At 249 games through his NBA career, Matthews has yet to miss a game. He's been almost preternaturally healthy despite Portland's overall injury troubles, which is a testament to both his durability and his generally reliable presence. His three point percentage isn't quite as sizzling as his nearly 41% mark in 2011 would indicate, but it is decent -- around 38% on his career, despite getting assisted on a lower percentage of his threes than many NBA shooting guards. Matthews is a decent defender -- as I said, solid but not remarkable -- and while he can't shut down elite wings with anything remotely approaching regularity, he takes smart chances on steals (at which he owns one of the league's highest rates) and he takes charges like a champ (about one every 3 games last year). He virtually never turned the ball over, which is partly a result of him rarely having the ball but partly a result of him not trying to do too much when he's passing or dribbling, which is usually a good thing. He doesn't shoot as many midrange jumpers as most wings, which is good, because they're (as stated roughly two hundred seventy nine thousand times in these capsules) relatively inefficient shots. So good on him. And the problems with usage aren't necessarily his fault, per se. He's not great at moving without the ball, but he's never really been guided into a situation where it's made obvious to him that he needs to get great at it. And his defense really is solid -- no stopper, but the kind of solid defender who's going to be an asset on that end for virtually his whole career. He may never be much more than he is now, but that's OK. The Blazers don't really need him to be.

They just need him to, you know, shoot. Every now and then, please?

• • •

_Follow J.J. Redick __on Twitter at @JJRedick47.___

The career arc of J.J. Redick is a strange and wonderful one, an arc more akin to a bird swooping into the ocean to pick up a fish and shooting back up into the sky than the semi-normal parabolic arc. That's to say that Redick spent college looking like a dominant all-universe shooter, entered the league only to have his shot wrenched out from under him and his lack of any supplementary game disturbingly exposed, and then recouped through hard work to a level where he's at now. His current state has him at a point where he's completely remodeled his game to become a far more versatile version of the end-state most saw as his natural role when he entered the league in the first place. It's a beautiful little story, and for Magic fans, it's been somewhat fun to watch -- Redick has effectively transitioned all the way from reviled to ridiculed to redeemed in his 6-year career, and it's seriously hilarious to watch. Even as someone who's never much liked Redick, as he came before my time at Duke and seemed to reflect in many ways the parts of the university that made my time there so aggravating.

As for last season, Redick made a genuinely big mark on a Magic team that was rather lacking. He wasn't just the Magic's best three point shooter, he was one of the best in the league -- 42% from three point range is patently solid no matter which way you slice it, but it gets even more ridiculous when you realize Redick took 46% of his shots from three -- in essence, he always took threes, opposing teams knew this and guarded him like it, and Redick still made a phenomenal mark on them. Excellent work from the guy, although (just as with Matthews) someone needs to call out the fact that Redick needs to shoot more. He had more of an excuse than Matthews, since he was on a team with a few actual NBA players, but my lord. Low usage for amazing shooters bugs me sometimes. Somewhat ironically, he's not really a HUGE passing talent (above average but only just), which tends to be obscured by the fact that he always seems to develop a few exceedingly obvious pet two-man games that announcers love to point out in great detail. Last season, it was Redick to Ryan Anderson, as assists to Anderson baskets made up almost a third of Redick's total assists. In 2011 it was "whoever plays center", as Bass and Howard combined for almost 40% of his assists. You get the drift. The one nice thing about Redick's passing is that his handle is relatively pure -- a team can deal with Redick handling the ball without the team falling apart at the seams, as he's not one to make a ton of stupid turnovers in pursuit of a pass that isn't really there. Still, he's more of a pass-before-the-pass kind of guy, and not the most creative passer on the face of the planet. Alack.

One place where Redick may still be a bit underheralded is his defense, which has been a legitimate asset for almost 4 years now. He's much like Wesley Matthews on that end -- not quite good enough to be considered a wing stopper, but he plays a consistent and solid style that's not going to wear down anytime soon and provides a legitimate asset to a team's perimeter defense. One thing that always bugged me about the usual "Dwight Howard dragged a bunch of nobodies to defensive brilliance" meme was that it never quite accounted for this -- Redick is a legitimate asset defensively, and under Van Gundy, most of the perimeter pieces were excellent at rotating and cutting off space. Yes, I know -- you can construct the argument that they only had the levity to do that because they had the confidence Dwight would cordon off the rim. I get that. But look at the Lakers' attempts to do the same thing -- part of it is Dwight, but part of it is simply that the Magic perimeter defenders weren't as bad as people liked to gripe. Redick is a legitimate asset, Richardson wasn't easy to get around, Carter was on-and-off but tended to be fine, and the only real position of defensive weakness to the Magic's perimeter attack tended to be the point guard. Which, it should be noted, simply doesn't matter very much -- in the wreckage of the hand-check, NO point guard can guard point guards. Dissing the Magic's perimeter defense on the basis that the point guard can't defend is silly, because you can diss virtually every defense in the league by this metric. And watching as Los Angeles struggles to put together its own perimeter defense with Dwight behind them and a few solid pieces (Kobe, Artest) to boot has been a bit validating to what I've always thought has been a substantially unfair characterization of the Magic's efforts.

As for off-the-court, you can't knock the man's work ethic. In a somewhat underreported fact, over the last 3 years, Redick has been the single best-conditioned member of the Magic in virtually every internal team competition -- strength training, endurance, et cetera. When he came into the league, he was an absolute twig, but he didn't let that stop him from grinding it out and getting better at it. He rates highly in the "players who got my ex-girlfriend to swoon" category, being one of only 2 or 3 guys in that category at all (other members of this exclusive group: George Hill, Ricky Rubio). So, he's clearly pretty attractive, right? I don't really know how to gauge these things but I'm going to assume he is. Heck, even my friend Brian wants to (direct quote) "suck his anything", which sounds awfully crass but supportive of my girlfriend's general attraction, although I am 100% positive it isn't a sexual love, because Brian is married and OH hello there Brian's wife how are you doing today YEP I'M GOOD I hope you are OK please enjoy your stay at the capsules and no Ma'am Brian isn't propositioning J.J. Redick do not worry. Phew. Finally, let no man tear asunder this the bonds that tie Redick to this poem, a sample of J.J. Redick's attempts at poetry when he was a student at Duke University.

No bandage can cover my scars
It's hard living a life behind invisible bars
Searching for the face of God
I'm only inspired by the poems of Nas
Because the truth has carved my life's patterns
The reality of pain, and the joy of laughter
My hopes and dreams shattered
by the miscalculation of my own situation

Brings a tear to my eye. Laughter, maybe, but a tear all the same.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Props to wul.f, Matt L, and__ @MillerNBA__ for their almost perfunctory 3/3 guesses. Gonna put me out of business, those guys.

• Player #328 looked like a likely candidate to be completely out of the league multiple times in the last few years, through no fault of his own. Injuries suck. But he's recouped, a bit, and playing a decent role for a surprising team. Good for him.

• Player #329 looked like a likely candidate to get a max contract as a rookie. Then he had disappointing year after disappointing year, to the point that he signed a one year deal last year in the contract year that he was supposed to deserve a max in, long ago. He might just be playing his way into that kind of a contract, tho.

• Player #330 is one of my favorites. Which makes his current fall from grace all the more jarring and sad to me. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It SHOULDN'T be like this. Not with his talent.

That's a wrap. Enjoy your weekend. Mine's chock full of exciting things to do. Hope yours is too. Adieu.

• • •