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 Sundiata Gaines, Marcus Thornton, and Martell Webster.

• • •

Follow Sundiata Gaines, because he looks like a stock car.

I readily admit that I've personally taken a mildly selfish interest in Gaines' career-to-date. I've been interested in how he's faring ever since he broke the hearts of Cavs fans everywhere during that one incredible moment from the 2010 NBA season. Not entirely out of regard for Gaines as a player or person, no -- he's a compelling story, no doubt, but I wasn't all that intensely interested in that. I simply wanted him to turn out well so it would validate that Utah/Cleveland game winning shot going forward. You know, make future NBA fans think "oh, yeah, Sundiata Gaines! The second best player of his era, of course he'd upset LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Of course." ... Alright, that was probably an unreasonable expectation. But you know what I mean, right? I feel like this is a relatively ubiquitous feeling among sports fan. This odd desire to see a bad team that beat you -- or a subpar player that beat you -- succeed solely to justify the loss you've suffered. When your guys lose to the worst team in the NBA, you want that team to go on a 2-3 game winning streak so you can say you lost to an "upstart" team thatreally is playing their best ball of the season, come ON guys, it's NOT A BAD LOSS! Et cetera, et cetera. Natural result of being a fan and all.

Anyway. Point is, I've followed Gaines more than I follow the normal NBA player, primarily by dint of that curious need for validation as a sports fan. It's sort of absurd that I of all people still experience this itch, because I'm a professional statistician. I understand intuitively the randomness of the NBA, and on a mental level, I don't usually get caught up in the vagaries of complete randomness in any other sphere of life. But a player's one good game out of 100 or the one time an impossible shot goes in? I'm ruined. Just brutal stuff. As for Gaines in the time since that shot, he's been a mixed bag. He spent the 2011 season bouncing from franchise to franchise, with few realizing that he ended up playing time for three teams during the season, getting waived by two -- the Wolves, the Raptors, and the Nets. He finally stuck in New Jersey, whether because he fit with Avery Johnson's coaching style or a fit with Deron Williams or who-really-knows. Last season he put up relatively decent numbers in New Jersey for a backup guard, and earned enough trust that he played his way into over 80% of the Nets' games and put up a cool 14 minutes a contest besides. His scoring efficiency was about as dismal as one could possibly expect -- about average from three point range, for a point guard, and grotesquely low percentages from every other range of the floor. His free throw shooting in particular boggles the mind -- a stocky 6'1" guard should be able to do better than low-60% from the line. He just should. It's actually funny, because he drew quite a few trips to the line and rated as one of the best guards in the league from a "FTA/FGA" perspective. If he was a good free throw shooter, that skill could've added 2-3 points to his total a night. But alas.

The Pacers made a decently large deal about signing Sundiata Gaines during the offseason, hoping that Gaines and Augustin would put together a good enough season that they'd fill in everything Darren Collison brought the Pacers on a lower contract and a lesser investment. Things didn't quite shake out that way -- Augustin has been an abject horror with the Pacers, and Gaines was rather inexplicably waived before the season. Instead of waiting around for another NBA contract that might not come, Gaines decided to throw up a middle finger and sign in China. Out of all the places a player could sign overseas, China has always been one of the more restrictive ones -- it's a nice guarantee of a salary marginally higher than you could get in Europe, but if you want to get back to the NBA, you need to wait for the CBA playoffs to finish, and if you can get into an NBA team you've only got a few weeks until the season's over anyway. Still, I like the move for Gaines. He's clearly at that crossroads where he's not quite good enough for an NBA rotation but not nearly bad enough to retire from the game. If he puts up a solid season for his current team (the currently 3-1 Fujian SBC Sturgeons, which is a hilarious team name), he could garner a bit of NBA interest next season and play a potentially larger role. And if not? He's got a good setup with a profitable overseas game. Seems like a win-win, although I'm sad we don't get to see him for a while. I don't have much more to say about Gaines. In the LeBron capsule, I wrote of the moment Gaines sunk the shot to help frame the whole story. Here's the link, if the reminder makes you itch for it.

• • •

_Follow Marcus Thornton on Twitter at __@OfficialMT23.___

There are exactly two things that Marcus Thornton does well. He scores well and he doesn't turn the ball over much. That's basically it. Thornton is a bit of a machine when it comes to scoring -- his percentages as a shooter won't wow you, necessarily (34.5% from three is decent if-not-great and his midrange numbers are quite pedestrian), but you can't really mention his offense without noting with relish the fact that Thornton takes a seriously hilarious number of shots off the dribble or in relatively contested territory. The man has a Bryant-esque adherence to taking the tougher shot when a simple shot would do the job. Much like the Kings team itself, it has to be a bit frustrating for Kings fans. It's nice to see that Thornton has the confidence to take the shots, but there's_ got_ to be a serious case of "NO NO NO okay fine"-type rumblings at Sacramento bars every single time he gets the ball. The knock on Thornton is as I mentioned earlier -- the man can score and he doesn't cough the ball up much, and that's just about it.

He ranked as one of the highest points-per-minutes guards of any kind last season, which is nice -- he also ranked in the bottom 25% of all guards in both assist rate and assist-to-turnover ratio, which is even more impressive given how rarely he turned the ball over (per-possession, at least). He was a poor shot blocker (obviously, he's 6'4"), he drew fewer fouls than his adherents would've hoped, and he's a surprisingly poor rebounder. Which surprises many. But one thing you need to understand about his numbers -- the Kings played a DRAMATICALLY faster pace with Thornton on the floor, posting 6-7 more possessions (pro-rated over a full game's time) with Thornton on the court than with Thornton off. His numbers all rate out relatively high among his peers because of it (his rebounding in particular is top-5 among guards), but if you adjust out the pace difference and examine his per-possession statistics, he's a relatively poor rebounder who's decent on the offensive glass but absolutely dismal on the defensive glass. He also is, as I noted, a very low turnover player -- the 1.6 turnover per game average is another ill product of the pace the Kings played with him on the court more than a true reflection of his ball control. Defensively he's a nonentity, but the man's scoring skill and general control over what he's doing would stand to reason that

One last observation. I could be totally off the mark here, but I noticed something while doing my Thornton scouting last night. Is it just me, or do the Kings have a really permissive statkeeper? I was watching some of Thornton's assisted shots, as I was somewhat surprised at his being assisted on 60% of his shots last season -- that didn't seem intuitive to me and I felt that was a really high number, as that's around the average for NBA shooting guards and he always seemed like a very focused off-the-dribble player. He creates a LOT of his own offense, you know? So I started looking at buckets he'd been theoretically "assisted" on. And you know what? More often than most, he'd take 2 or 3 dribbles and create a completely different shot, only to have it still count as an "assist" for another player by the Sacramento scorekeeper. This is hardly some crazy sin or anything -- statkeepers everywhere do it all the time. But I found this a somewhat exceptional case, because it seemed significantly more obvious here than it does for most teams (other than perhaps Boston and New Orleans, both of whom are notorious for it). The Kings are traditionally a poor passing team, and last year, they went 26th overall in the league with 1271 assists. Is it possible that the Kings have been so bad at setting up legitimate shots in recent years that their statkeeper decided to lower the bar on assists, for at least a year? Seriously -- go watch some of Thornton's assisted shots on Synergy. I may be seeing things. I probably am. But I feel like this is sort of darkly humorous caption to the 2012 Kings season, if it's really a thing.

• • •

_Follow Martell Webster on Twitter at __@MartellWebster.___

Last season wasn't a great one for poor Martell Webster, who had another injury-riddled season in a career replete with them. His three point stroke comes and goes with more randomness than you tend to see in a player (he's a career 37% shooter, with single season numbers wobbling between 42% and 33% depending on god-knows-what), and while he's a decent defender by the eye test he's nothing spectacular. He turns the ball over quite a lot relative to most guards, and didn't fix that with a lot of tertiary accomplishments. Poor rebounder for his size, poor passer, low-usage player who gives no guarantees of efficiency despite the low usage, et cetera. He's been very solid this season for the Wizards, and one of the one or two bright spots on a team that's been relatively absent them. The positive aspects of the current Wizards season can essentially be summed down to "beating the Heat", Martell Webster's minor renaissance, and Jordan Crawford's development. That's about it so far.

Off the court, Webster seems like a pretty great guy, enough so that it's not really fair to assess him solely on his injury-riddled and occasionally lacking game. Blazers fans who watched him tend to root pretty hard for him, and in a general sense, the most adamant fans of the teams that Webster plays with love him. The more you see Webster in interviews and learn about him, the more you realize why this is and like/root for him yourself. I recommend checking out this great interview between Webster and Kyle Weidie at Truth About It. He's mainly just talking about his role on the team and some exactitudes of a close loss against a good team, but he also drops some nice quotes, like a bomb late in the video where Weidie asks if Webster would be a good coach only to elicit a stunned, chuckling response of “No! ... I have three kids, man, I’m already a coach. Coaching a whole bunch of knuckleheads… can’t do it. I can’t do it.” Valid point. And well-stated. He generally spends the interview being respectful, talking about the importance of working for his role, and spilling some good points about strategy and general approach to changing the pace of an offense. It's a great watch.

Really, I don't know how best to describe Webster. You could call him a "bust", strictly going on his production (which has been lacking for a lottery pick, it should be said), but that doesn't really sit well with me. Mostly because he's an inspiring enough human being that distilling him down to his game being less-than-exceptional is necessarily reductive and depressing. The guy has been through things most people never even imagine -- his father abandoned his family before he was born, and his mother went missing when he was only 4 years old. Many theorize she was murdered by one of Washington's most historically prolific serial killers, and her body has never been found. Being able to overcome something like that shows strength enough -- his ability to overcome ADD as a youth and find the strength to reject a medication that changed him as a person in favor of a harder road to find his true self is inspiring. His love for his coaches, the game, and his teammates is unparalleled, and it's hard to find a guy who works harder. Does that mean he's a great NBA player? No. But it DOES mean he's one of the better people in a league with a lot of great ones, and it does make him worthy of your respect.

Also, there's this story, which honestly never fails to crack me up.

• • •

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. Everyone got 2/3 yesterday, probably owing to just how obtuse the Sundiata Gaines riddle was. But props to wul.f, Matt L, Alex, and Booze__Cruise.

• Player #325 was one of my favorite players the second I saw him suit up for my college. That's right, folks -- I'm a Player #325 hipster. I liked him before it was popular, damnit! Will be a Capsule Plus... if I get off work on time today, that is.

• Player #326 is one of the only real NBA-caliber players on a team with few. He's acquitted himself relatively well -- great three point shooter, very low turnover player, decently efficient. Doesn't really do anything else, but I mean, he IS a shooting guard.

• Player #327 looked, at first, like he'd be a sweet-shooting three point gunner with no other discernible skills when he entered the game. He's put a lot of work on his game, though, and his passing and defense are both high quality now.

Just realized I'm down to the last 40-something. The homiest of home stretches, here. Until next time.

• • •

War does not require bombshells and brigadiers. It does not require bloodshed and hardship. War requires a single thing -- conflict. Overwhelming conflict, traditionally between two large bodies composed of untold masses of souls lining up obediently for the cause. That's all. We don't need two large bodies to have a war. All we really need is a single large body and a small group of rebelling forces with enough pesky guile to incite the larger body to make war. That's it. Perhaps you'd think this new type of war implies a recent phenomenon. One that rose with the advent of terrorism, small cell resistance groups, weapons of mass destruction.

That would be wrong. It's not new at all.

Warfare of the second type -- a large body against a smaller, self-sufficient group -- has always been a factor in society, and always will be. And not in the way you think. Weapons of mass destruction have always been ambling about -- the nuclear bomb is the belated antecedent of weaponized knowledge. Destruction can be wrought from grim dictate of the pen and the rogue idea, in the hands of a brutal tyrant or a careless fool. The biological weapon is a diseased form of an idealist's contagion. The terrorist is the next step in the artist who uses their words to incite fear and loathing among the sycophants who follow. These weapons began with the advent of independent thought. Their rule can be cruel and unusual. The tyranny of a good idea can -- and has -- ruled the world in its history. More than any one man could ever hope to achieve.

• • •

Kobe Bryant elicits fundamentally intense reactions. There's disgust from some -- the echos of scandal and a controversial style loom over his game, and detract from his brilliance among that faction. There's devotion from others -- the style that others so hate endears him to many in an overwhelming fashion. It's a rare few who watches Kobe Bryant and thinks "oh, that's neat, I can take it or leave it though." There's a core challenge to the fan in Bryant's play. A challenge to accept, to understand, to love despite his faults.

And faults? They're there, whether the devotees like to admit it or not. Becoming a devoted fan of Kobe Bryant necessitates becoming a devoted fan of a man who -- despite being one of the most gifted passers of his generation -- simply doesn't pass very often. Becoming a devoted fan of a player whose defensive effort waxes and wanes from an all-defensive peak to a ridiculously low-effort fluff on 90% of the possessions of a season. Becoming a devoted fan of a player who, inevitably, will make life a bit harder for himself every few possessions solely in the name of style.

In a vacuum, these are all things we learn to hate in other players. We learn to dislike the passers who keep avoiding their talent. We learn to dislike the players whose defense yo-yos through incredible highs and impossible lows. We learn to throw up our hands and yell at the player who takes the awful shot when there's an easy shot seconds away. But there's an element of self-respect and self-awareness in Kobe Bryant, in his most quiet moments. This is a man who rates out as one of the most knowledgable basketball scholars of his generation. He's studied the annals of the game, the breaks of history. He understands that he makes the game a bit harder for himself. Internalizes it. He knows that he often does things inexplicable at best and actively harmful at worst. Things that increase the difficulty of his road, or might make the team worse.

And -- surprise, surprise -- he doesn't care. In fact, he scoffs in the face of the people who do. Because much like Manu Ginobili can make his aesthetic keynote a fundamentally inconceivable three point shot, Kobe Bryant makes his aesthetic keynote the imposition of impossibility in any possession he can safely manage it. What should be a simple dish through the double team to Gasol becomes a double teamed bicycle shot. "And-1! And the foul?!" What should be a simple case of rotating on the help for some becomes a dread steal, with Bryant refusing to give an inch edgewise and refusing to let his prey escape the tendrils of his pressure defense. What should be a simple play in most playbooks becomes a one-on-five as his teammates turn to stone and Bryant takes a few pretty dribbles and hoists up a terribly ill-conceived high-arcing shot as time expires.

Swish. The crowd goes crazy.

• • •

Mikhail Bulgakov was a very good writer.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote plays, novels, and vignettes. No piece better represents the stark way Bulgakov's own nature challenged the world around him as his early-career short novel, Heart of a Dog. In it, a mad scientist takes a dog off the street and transplants into the beast the spleen and reproductive organs of a man, causing the dog to transform inexplicably into a disturbing half-man with a nose for the grotesque and horrifying. When stated like that, it sounds like a silly romp through a now-worn science fiction premise. In execution, it was far more. The book was an examination of the ethical difficulties of enforced transformation, and a reflection of the Soviet's attempts to fundamentally change the Russian people to a nation of communist principle and moral.

Mikhail Bulgakov was fond of the story-within-a-story critical piece, even when it ruined all chance of his work seeing the light of day. Bulgakov wrote dozens of plays that were banned for production in Russia for his entire life. The aforementioned Heart of a Dog wasn't published in Russia until well after his death. His masterpiece -- The Master and Margarita -- was a vicious critique of the Soviet literary establishment baked within a masterwork of a two-frame story and high philosophical questions about life, art, and the general state of man. Writing his masterpiece took an incredible toll on Bulgakov, and realizing the dismal chances he would ever see his life's work published sent Bulgakov tumbling into depression and agony. His inability to get his grandest work published destroyed his health and placed the artist on death's door. Not less than a year after the completion of his manuscript, Bulgakov died.

Mikhail Bulgakov was a casualty of two wars. One was the first world war, where he served as a front-line surgeon and suffered several terrifying injuries that caused him to become hopelessly addicted to morphine for much of his life. The second was a war of ideas, a war balancing Bulgakov's harsh critique of the Soviet establishment against the establishment's disgust towards any and all criticism. There was a distinct irony in the way Bulgakov's work was treated -- Stalin himself was a noted admirer of Bulgakov's. But powerful men like Stalin never quite realize that ideas are bigger than any one man, even one as important as Stalin. Bulgakov's work continued to elicit censures and suppression throughout his life, despite Stalin's general appreciation for his work, with lower level communist officials continually rejecting his attempts to publish until finally levying a full-scale ban on the publication or dispersal of any and all work produced by Bulgakov in 1929, and maintaining it well beyond his death despite his pleas. Bulgakov continued to write, and to bury pieces he could never publish in a drawer he'd never return to. The man knew no fear. Unfortunately for the world, he also knew nothing of old age.

Mikhail Bulgakov died at age 48, a tragic victim of a silent war.

• • •

"Il Fait à présent la Pluie et le beau temps." *

To some, basketball is a game. To Kobe Bryant, basketball is a war.

But here's where things get tricky. It's not a traditional war, as earlier described -- it's not some large-scale conflict between two teams as masses. That's an average basketball game, a brightly colored facsimile of a two-country war as played on a comically abstract field of battle. Kobe Bryant's approach to the game is different -- far before any pretense of the team or the franchise, his war is personal. Kobe vs the machine. Armies lined up to face down the barrel of Bryant's long gun. One versus many.

Bryant's war is one man taking on an entire defense, dozens of possessions a game. Few stars are as good at Kobe Bryant at simply taking ownership of a rogue possession -- turning, for one stirring moment, the game of basketball into a vicious 1-on-5 cage match. If you're one of the people who wonder aloud why Kobe Bryant elicits such stirring praise from his comrades in arms, or why Kobe Bryant is considered one of the best to play the game? Watch how he commands the audience's attention. Watch how he molds and shapes context around the vagaries of his goals and desires. Some stars shoot, over and over again. They'll hog the ball, play some hero-ball, refuse to work in the team concept. Bryant approaches it in a similar way. He wages war on the opposing team, hoping his own overwhelming force will be enough to guide his team through.

This all is_ described_ in a similar way as the hero-balling star, but that doesn't mean it's the same. It's not. The casual star molds their style to fit the game -- Kobe Bryant molds the game to fit the style. He's a showman with a command of his craft so effective that most who watch him can't help but revise their entire idea of what a star should do to follow Kobe's example. Understanding what makes one a fan of Kobe requires understanding the way his game depends on the viewer buying in to his dictate. It requires the viewer to see him take over a game and begin to fundamentally enjoy the takeover more than you would have enjoyed a series of expert shots from his supporting cast. Abandoning, at least temporarily, the idealization of teamwork and taking as your dictate exaltation of the individual. Better than anyone in the game right now, Bryant turns the game into a manifesto, a personal statement. Like Iverson, Jordan, Arenas at his peak.

He takes a game of many and produces a game of one. That's his gift.

* - "He runs the whole show, now."

• • •

There's exactly one person in the game today who reminds me of Kobe Bryant. Not a player, an official, an owner or a fan. It's the man who redefines coaching and changes the meta-game for those around him. It's the man whose machinations often cause the fans to throw their hands up in confusion and anger, whose adherence to the long game can make his individual actions immaterial or confusing. It's a man who -- above all else -- acts like a tremendous jerk and gets away with it on a daily basis simply by dint of his incredible talent and his tendency to change the game.

Gregg Popovich, that is.

There's a certain allure Popovich holds beyond his already considerable coaching talent. And it's exactly what makes Bulgakov and Bryant enduring as personal figures. They find themselves thwarted, at times -- by reason, by logic, by the fact that they're simply trying to fight a personal war too vast for one man. Kobe Bryant, for all his successes, has a lot of incredible failures where he shouldn't have flown solo or alienated his teammates with inexplicable jesting and harshness. Gregg Popovich, for all his titles and talents, has lost the Spurs numerous games stubbornly fixating on crazy tics like small-ball or Blair/Bonner, and he's gotten the franchise fined on multiple occasions on sole account of unnecessary rank churlishness. Mikhail Bulgakov, despite being by far the best Russian writer of his particular era, was unable to parlay his brilliance into any tangible recognition or praise simply because he refused to play the game in the way the Soviet censors wanted the game to be played.

In the final estimation, Popovich is among of the greatest coaches of all time -- and in my book, the greatest -- not for his coarseness and brackishness, but not despite it either. Will Pop's surly answers be entombed in the hall of fame, for all to remember? Probably not. But they will mark the memories of those who remember him, and they will form the first two or three stories that old hands will tell when the children of tomorrow ask what was so special about Popovich. When Bryant is enshrined in the Hall of Fame, the same applies. Bryant's hall of fame career will demand mention of his titles, his scoring, his will to win. All that fun stuff. But the first story old hands tell won't be that of Kobe's 81 point game, but that of his style. His absurdist 1-on-5 fixation that killed the Lakers as often as it helped them. The complexity of a man's failures is as key to their own greatness as the actions that make one great in the first place. Both Popovich and Bryant exemplify that.

Bulgakov once wrote -- semi-prophetically -- that "manuscripts don't burn." He was right. Although he himself once burnt The Master and Margarita in an effort to rid himself of it, he rewrote the book from memory. The ideas and theories underlying Bulgakov's brilliance were too overwhelming to prevent its eventual release, even by his own hand. His work was too good to sit in a musty drawer for the rest of his natural life. Bryant and Popovich -- luckily, for their devotees -- are not faced with the same restrictions. They do not have to file away their brilliance in a drawer and hope that someday an ex-wife will push it to publication. Popovich gets fined, not jailed. Bryant gets criticized, not silenced. Both will leave the league, someday -- and their remembrance will be vast, a multifaceted tapestry of accomplishment and challenge, of brilliance and mistakes, of obvious greatness and obvious prickishness. There will be complicated memories for complicated men, and stories to tell until the young get bored to hear them.

Manuscripts don't burn. And neither do legacies -- those that really make a man, at least.

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the Los Angeles Lakers, visit the Lakers 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 Mike Dunleavy, Rip Hamilton, and Kobe Bryant.

• • •

Follow Mike Dunleavy by going to Duke. ... Actually, don't__.__

Mike Dunleavy is one of the quietly effective NBA players you might miss if you aren't paying attention. You might be shocked to know that with the sole exception of his 3-9 foot floater (in roughly the 60th percentile), Dunleavy shoots in the top 25% of wing players from every single range on the floor. He converted 67% at the rim, 46% from midrange, 44% from the long two, and an absolutely blistering 40% from three last season. All extremely good. He compounded that by making over 80% of his free throws and getting to the line 2.6 times a game, slightly above the average for wing players. He produced 1.08 points per possession for last year's Bucks, and despite the Bucks' relatively shaky offense for much of the year, ended up with efficiency numbers that would indicate he's one of the top offensive players in the game. Unfortunately, that isn't quite accurate -- late-career Dunleavy's always been a bit too passive of a player on offense, and that was true again last season as he posted a usage percentage of just 19%, well below average. He also was a well-below-average rebounder, hurting his team on the glass without providing the extra box-out advantages you'd get from a player like Epke Udoh.

Still, the man's effective. He gets most of his offense as a catch-and-shoot option, floating around the court on offense in an effort to space the floor as a threat. The vast majority of Dunleavy's shots are assisted -- last year, for instance, he was assisted on a startlingly high 83% of his shots taken. But that's by design. Few plays are ran specifically for Dunleavy, he's just employed as a useful and efficient option that can get his shot off despite a strong close-out and makes any open shot the opposing defense gives him from virtually anywhere. I'm rather undecided as to whether Skiles has been using him entirely correctly or not -- while he's been better with Skiles than he was in his last few seasons with Indiana, when a player is as efficient and effective as Dunleavy was last season for an offense that (prior to the Ellis trade) was about as dismal and low-down as you can get, I think it's generally a coach's responsibility to run more plays for the one efficient mainstay. You may harm the player's overall efficiency, but a slightly less efficient Dunleavy shot was a lot better than yet another awful Drew Gooden 20 foot brick, right? I also understand that Dunleavy isn't a good defender (he's pretty awful), but it's not like you're subbing him out with Mbah a Moute -- Dunleavy and Delfino tended to play the large wing spot in Milwaukee last year, and Delfino was just about as awful defensively as Dunleavy is, if not a slight bit worse. But when your offense is your main problem, getting minutes for guys like Dunleavy becomes key.

As for aesthetics, I can't really speak to ever waking up in the morning and really feeling like I needed to watch Mike Dunleavy. I can't exactly speak to assertions of creative brilliance on Dunleavy's part -- he's not some modernized basketball Picasso. He's the efficient, tedious, and not particularly groundbreaking. An efficient shooter with a nice catch-and-shoot game who defends sparingly and has a famous dad. Maybe I've just written too much of these by now, but it's hard to get too excited about that, although I certainly see his value in the league. The last notable thing that comes to mind, to me, is his face -- I can't be the only person who's spent much of Dunleavy's career having nightmares about his strangely proportioned, oddly structured face... right? Once, when I was a wee lad (read: 21 years old, less than a year ago) I had a dream where I woke up with Mike Dunleavy's face. No, I'm serious, stop laughing at me. It was like Face-Off, except terrifying and all-too-real. I got fired from my job and had to get a job in a traveling circus. I became a supervillain, intent on exacting revenge on Mike Dunleavy (senior) for bringing into this world such a cursed face. I woke up before I could do that, but trust me, it was going to happen. It's not even like Dunleavy's really ugly -- I'm sure there are people out there who find him quite attractive. There's just some aspect about his face that seriously upsets my sensibilities. Any thoughts on what it might be? (Not a rhetorical question. Legitimately curious.)

• • •

_Follow Rip Hamilton on Twitter at __@ripcityhamilton.___

I understand why a lot of people saw Richard Hamilton as a disappointment last season. Really. The old hand was relatively productive when he played, but it was rare he saw the court -- injuries limited him to just 25 minutes per game (in only 28 uninjured games), and unfortunately for Hamilton, the time he spent on the court didn't often overlap with the time Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah saw the court. Per our friends at Basketball Prospectus, in games where the Bulls played their full starting lineup (Rose-Hamilton-Deng-Boozer-Noah), the Bulls went 14-2. Hamilton helped open the floor and take some of the pressure off Rose (as expected) and was slightly more efficient as a shooter than he'd recently been in Detroit (as expected). Unexpectedly, his free throw rate tanked into absolute nothingness and his defense (which was good enough in Detroit alongside middling-to-poor defenders at every surrounding position) became a slight problem-spot on a team that was backing him up with crack defenders like Butler, Brewer, and Watson. Guard-heavy teams tried to abuse Hamilton, as he was regularly the worst defender on the court. For the most part, they succeeded. Which helped keep his minutes down as well.

On the other hand, I think it's important to emphasize that first thing, because it gets lost in most of the retrospectives on his 2012 season: he was productive when he played. Maybe not in the most efficient ways he possibly could've been, but he certainly wasn't bad. I've heard a lot of frustrated people talk about how Hamilton has been a monumental failure in Chicago, or the worst of all possible players. Hamilton was never going to give Chicago exactly what they needed -- he's always been more of a long-two than a three point guy, and his passing and rebounding were both a bit disappointing relative to what was expected of him with a roster like Chicago's around him. But his shooting was far, far better than Chicago had any reason to expect, and the free throw woes were partly caused by the fact that he simply didn't have as much reason to handle the ball as an injured cog when Rose was on the court and when Noah and Deng were rolling. Hamilton is great at drawing free throws when he drives it and when he creates off the dribble -- he's considerably less great at it when he's primarily being employed as an off-ball catch-and-shoot guy in a motion offense. When a role changes, sometimes you lose the skills that made you a star. It happens. He shot as well as could be expected, he was OK defensively, and he didn't show an incredible amount of falloff despite being a creaky 33 year old. He needs to get healthy, obviously, but he did about as well as could've been expected.

Which is actually exactly the problem. Hamilton represents, in perhaps the most obvious form, the big problem with the last few years of decisions by the Bulls management. The Bulls have taken what looked like a relatively young, vigorous roster around Derrick Rose back in 2010 and turned it into something of a retirement home beyond their core four. Other than Rose, the only three important members of Chicago's cast under the age of 30 are Deng, Noah, and Gibson. Deng is far older than his calendar age in NBA mileage due to the insane amount of minutes and overwork Thibodeau (and Del Negro as well) placed upon his shoulders. Gibson is young in minutes but old in years. Noah's great, and the four of them make a considerably great core when they're all healthy. But when you're looking at a four-man core like that, you don't really want to surround them with brittle old men. But that's exactly what Chicago's done. Kirk Hinrich, Rip Hamilton, Carlos Boozer, Nazr Mohammad -- the Bulls have dropped quality young players (C.J. Watson, Ronnie Brewer, James Johnson, Omer Asik) in pursuit of these old hands, and the net result are a bunch of moves that have been marginal upgrades at best. At worst, they're overpriced low-level moves that barely move the needle on the Bulls as a title contender, cut off opportunities for the franchise to keep their young talent, and plug in low-upside filler that costs more than they should to replace actual young talent that may someday deserve the money. It's ridiculous. I'm hoping that the Bulls make some serious moves this offseason to vacate the old and overpriced vets in favor of a serious infusion of youth. I'm not positive this is going to happen, and in fact, I'm pretty sure it won't. But we can hope, can't we?

(Also, as an aside: this concludes all of our Chicago Bulls capsules. Adios, Chicago!)

• • •

Follow Kobe Bryant into the tides of fate. You're in God's hands now, friend.

Went in an odd direction for this one. Do I ever go in any other, though?

Kobe Bryant elicits fundamentally intense reactions. There's disgust from some -- the echos of scandal and a controversial style loom over his game, and detract from his brilliance among that faction. There's devotion from others -- the style that others so hate endears him to many in such an overwhelming fashion. It's a rare few who watches Kobe Bryant and thinks "oh, that's neat, I can take it or leave it though." There's a core challenge to the fan in Bryant's play. A challenge to accept, to understand, to love despite his faults.

And faults? They're there, whether the devotees like to admit it or not. Becoming a devoted fan of Kobe Bryant necessitates becoming a devoted fan of a man who -- despite being one of the most gifted passers of his generation -- simply doesn't pass very often. Becoming a devoted fan of a player whose defensive effort waxes and wanes from an all-defensive peak production to ridiculously low effort-level performances on 90% of the possessions of a season. Becoming a devoted fan of a player who, inevitably, will make life a bit harder for himself every few possessions solely in the name of style.

In a vacuum, these are all things we learn to hate in other players. We learn to dislike the passers who keep avoiding their talent. We learn to dislike the players whose defense yo-yos through incredible highs and impossible lows. We learn to throw up our hands and yell at the player who takes the awful shot when there's an easy shot seconds away. But there's an element of self-respect and self-awareness in Kobe Bryant, in his most quiet moments. This is a man who rates out as one of the most knowledgable basketball scholars of his generation. He's studied the annals of the game, the breaks of history. He understands that he makes the game a bit harder for himself. Internalizes it. He knows that he often does things inexplicable at best and actively harmful at worst. Things that increase the difficulty of his road, or might make the team worse.

And -- surprise, surprise -- he doesn't care.

For more on Kobe Bryant, see his Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

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. Just about everyone got last night's set correctly. Time to capriciously up the difficulty again. Jerico, Utsav, Booze_Cruise (sounds like my weekends), J, and Mike L all got it right, although I'm being nice and assuming the first three meant Dunleavy Jr. If they meant Dunleavy Sr., as Mike L aptly pointed out, none of them deserve shout-outs. Technicalities!

• Player #322 broke my heart, once. But it's okay. Now I just hope he stays in the league.

• Player #323 is better than most people think, but not as good as he thinks. And I have trouble seeing him as a star in this league. He could be good, though, if he gets out of that toxic California morass and makes a team that needs his scoring.

• Player #324, on the other hand, was amnestied for a reason. He's fallen off to absurd levels, as of late. But he's somehow putting up halfway decent numbers for his currently dismal team, and if it continues, he may stay in the league a little while longer. Recently lost his car keys and slept in his car for a night, in a nationally reported story that has yet to make sense to me.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

• • •

Gregg Popovich acted in bad faith in resting his starters the way he did. Pop should have been more discreet and subtle about sitting his four best players. The message here isn't that teams can't rest players. They can, and they will. But be discreet about it. Be smart about it. Communicate it. And show some concern for the sometimes futile, often unfair exercise known as the NBA regular season, without which no championships can be won and no dynasties formed.

This is an attempt at summarizing the general point against Coach Popovich's decision. It's a set of arguments that deserves examination, both on their numerous merits and faults. Ken Berger's piece is an excellent summation -- "keep up appearances" even if it is slightly dishonest. You can tank, but dear god, don't say you're tanking. Don't say you're taking nights off and that the plane has already left for San Antonio. Keep them around, report an injury, keep it hush-hush. When I read the tone of this general argument, I disagreed fundamentally and didn't quite know why. Sure, Berger's tone in certain passages serves to undermine his argument to the casual reader (For instance... "But let's play along for a moment, shall we? Let's play along better than the Spurs did." What? How is that anything other than inflammatory?) But it's an overall solid take on the situation, and one that you can't ignore.

• • •

Little White Lies

I landed in a long Twitter argument with Matt Moore centering on Berger's article, one that I don't wish to call back to in a broader sense. But one example stood out. Moore mentioned that you can claim you're feeling sick to get out of a boring co-worker's party, and that doing so is far preferable to calling them boring to their face. That's a powerful example: "Little white lies" are great for seamlessly getting us out of obligations that may not be good for us or we may not enjoy. Keeping up appearances is important, because you have to see that co-worker again and again, and everyone suffers, just because you decided to be honest to your co-worker. Dave Chappelle had a wonderful set of sketches on his show back in the day about "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong".

Well, that's what the Spurs did on Thursday.

Yes, rest is important, and for the Spurs not to acknowledge this fact in 2012 would be foolish. Yes, inter-conference games have a low incentive to win relative to conference and divisional games, except (generally speaking) as statement games for Eastern teams and gimmes for Western teams. Sure, the regular season is probably way too long for the idealized season of basketball health, and plenty of coaches less noble and/or less empowered than Popovich (*cough*, Thibodeau, *cough*) wear out their starters to often-horrifying effects, and this is clearly a bad thing. All of this is true.

Sidenote: This is especially true for older players, and the more we learn about medical science, the more we learn how crucial rest is (look at the concussion debate in the NFL; rest is one of the most important points in any sport's concussion policy). And the risk of fluke injuries and overwork is ever-present. Look at Tim Duncan in 2009 and 2010 playoffs, as Spurs beat writer Jeff McDonald reminds us. Or, just as notably, look at Manu's elbow injury in 2011 that quite conceivably cost the Spurs a playoff series against Memphis. The freak injury was suffered during a meaningless game in Phoenix at the end of the season.

But they still goofed. Badly. The Spurs refused to give the league any advance notice of the impending rest-game, despite (in Coach Pop's own words) knowing since they first saw the schedule that the Heat game would be "one of those" rest games. For all the arguments in favor of why they did it, few actually address how they did it. Because, frankly, it's indefensible. Popovich being Popovich, in his usual caustic way. And Berger correctly notes that the manner in which Popovich approached the rest -- if perhaps not pointedly inflammatory -- was so completely tone-deaf it does merit some sort of acknowledgment, punishment, or course adjustment. Decorum and standards aren't everything, but they aren't nothing either. Let's play the co-worker argument out again, as it should've happened and as Popovich should've handled it: you tell your co-worker that you need some rest, they accept it and everyone moves on with their lives, the party a little poorer for your absence, the boring co-worker happy in his boring party with his boring acquaintances, and you're living it up at home, watching the Spurs torch the Miami Heat and lose in the end, but not without giving everyone an entertaining little romp. Everyone wins for this little deception. Right? I think so. Little white lies save the day. The End, everyone's happy.

• • •

Except, wait. Maybe not. Your co-worker announces after the success of his party last night that he's going to have a party every two weeks, and you're always invited over! Even if you're sick sometimes, even if you have a doctor's appointment, he will accommodate you and request your presence another Thursday night! You have no excuse not to go, now! Haha, screw your life! This is the part where you tell him he's boring to his face. I mean, unless you're in the bridge burning business, you probably don't put it quite like that. You probably say "I'm not a big party guy, I'm not very social. We kinda have other interests. Not so big on strobe black lights set to isolated bass tracks from Metallica put on a mind-numbingly loud speaker for six hours straight, as you are." Your co-worker nods grimly, hearing the subtext. You're never going to be his good buddy.

But ultimately, he moves on with his life, and you are feel free to put in the odd occasion at his place or find something mutually agreeable, supposing he's a decent person that you can get along with, at least. That's if you eschew the lies. The little white lies can't address systematic problems, and I don't hope you'll try. Try to address that situation with your co-worker again with little white lies. Say you're busy with a doctor's appointment. Say you are in a bowling league. Say something different every fortnight, whatever you want to get out of your biweekly travesty... and one of two things will happen: 1. He gets the hint, and finds your treatment of the situation extremely disrespectful (as it is). 2. He doesn't get the hint and assumes you're living a life that is totally tightly-scheduled and rarely available -- in short, an interesting or eventful life that you haven't thought him worthy of forming even a small part. I'd find that latter possibility a lot more insulting than just being called boring.

When you apply little white lies to systematic situations, the result is a culture of deception and a pernicious policy of bad faith. And systemic bad faith has a way of sliding into the kind of bad faith that makes Popovich's bad faith in sending four players home look like The Giving Tree. Don't buy it? Well, just look at this laughably sneaky move undertaken by the Warriors. Little white lies to preserve the bottom line that spiral into grand deception. Tanking is fine by me, but not disclosing that you're tanking by hiding valuable information from your loyal-to-a-fault fans for months? THAT'S inexcusable, and unlike the Spurs' "probably should have given more than a couple hours' notice" sneakiness, it probably cost a number of season ticket holders thousands of dollars apiece on the margins. The bottom line is that this scandal that actually cost middle-class fans thousands of dollars got pushed to the back page by a much more innocuous story, and why?

Because lying about major injuries has become so commonplace that it hardly bears mention.

Pressuring injured players to return with deliberately liberal timelines (the old saw "day-to-day" was addressed in The Breaks of the Game) is as old as the injured list itself. So the Spurs should've told a fib, sure, or at least been a bit more discreet. They should've kept up appearances. And for that, it was reasonable and right that they be punished, even if you think they were in the right. And so Berger's point is well-taken. But it's important to delineate a broader point where it falls apart: keeping up appearances can never be a substitute for systematically good incentives and good products. Keeping up appearances can never be a substitute for marketing creativity or recognizing what the product you're bringing to the table is. And keeping up appearances is a short-term solution, a band-aid, in the parlance, to problems that often go much more deeper than appearances can ever address.

• • •

"I know you hate the Heat, bro. But Tiago Splitter, bro. The Spurs are [fornification throwback word] amazing. Boris Diaw is like staring at a lava lamp set on full chill mode. Way better than Richard Jefferson. I shouldn't have tried to sell you on RJ last season, bro needed a pat on the back just to stay in the game against the Heat. No confidence at all. I'm sorry about that, bro, that was embarrassing, and I was wrong. Come on, change the channel to TNT. Bro. Bro."

-- 99% of my conversations with other people, in short.

Which brings me to Nando De Colo. Tiago Splitter. Matt Bonner. Gary Neal. Boris Diaw. Patty Mills. Household names. ... Well, obviously not. That's what this whole thing is about, right? That those players are unmarketable non-entities that probably can't sell the casual fan to tune into on the margin. The Spurs threw the league under the bus on Thursday, even if the outcome was fine. I get this sentiment, but look more broadly: it's a self-deconstructing argument! The league itself threw the league under the bus in its marketing strategy by making that lineup impossible to market.

Consider: thanks partially to these players, since late 2010, the Spurs are in the midst of one of the more dominant regular season stretches in NBA history. They are also all international stars, both in terms of where they've played (all of them played overseas), and in terms of what nations they represent (Brazil, France, Australia, Canada on a technicality, France). Bonner is a self-deprecating, seven-foot tall, utterly unique player with a sandwich blog who parties with Arcade Fire. Patty Mills is one of the fastest, most energetic players in a league of fast-moving athletes and an inspiration to an entire peoples. Diaw is one of the best passing bigs in recent memory, and a hilarious-looking player with a funny shot. This isn't to advocate on these players' behalf, necessarily. Just to show that it can be done. And, considering the number of international players, that this sort of thing should already have been done! There's a finite quantity of beloved players, but the NBA is far from saturated when Australia's star speedster (and someone that absolutely lit up our Team USA Olympian best this summer) is a non-entity.

Stern's league of stars abides no framework for these interesting, entertaining, teamwork-heavy players that don't quite fit onto a cereal box. Instead of encouraging the unfamiliar, the international, and the elite, Stern actively punishes teams that showcase these players because they aren't already established stars, like (ironically) Parker and Ginobili. I say "ironically" because Parker and Ginobili (and Duncan, to a lesser extent) only won begrudging respect from fans by cutting their teeth in three championship runs that made it impossible to marginalize them with "soft" labels. And even after establishing themselves in every way it is possible for a player to do, the NBA has traditionally done Parker and Ginobili no favors in terms of marketing except for existing as a showcase for their now-legendary skills. Consider that both Parker and Ginobili have had to operate at barely-sub-MVP levels at times simply to get All-Star levels of respect (much less MVP talk), even while doing certain things historically well. And yet, these are the players that Stern has designated as being so crucial to the appeal of the Spurs that sitting them was apparently a travesty worthy of censure and sanction.

That's the irony. Stern is saying that he'll do these players no favors in terms of marketing, and yet, when they become established, they are socially obligated to do him the favor of showing "good faith". All the while players that could be getting plenty of marketing their way (the new generation of Spurs' foreign players), the league is found wanting there. If the Spurs are throwing the league under the bus by not giving fans Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, then what precisely has the league done in failing to promote these legends before their primes are soon finished? If the Spurs are throwing the league under the bus by giving them apparently random foreign players (that just happened to, without exception, play splendid ball for their countries' Olympic teams), then what precisely has the league done in allowing the entire bench of a great team to escape the notice of casual fans?

The Seven Seconds or Less era was wonderful and entertaining, but perhaps it was more than anything else the prototype of a new way to market the sport. Bill Simmons once called them a "critically acclaimed" team (a back-handed compliment for their inability to get a ring, to be sure). That's the thing about the Suns: you could market them as an international force. You could market them as an exciting combination of athleticism and vision and cohesion. You could market them (and all their next-generation acolytes like the Triangle Lakers, the Motion Spurs, the Ubuntu Celtics, the Grindhouse Grizzlies, and the Program Thunder), not just as a collection of well-documented and compelling individuals, but a true team. The lights have changed, and you don't have to be a diehard to appreciate it. And I wonder if Stern's noticed. Based on his rigid implied treatment of the Spurs as three marquee stars plus an incidental supporting cast, it's safe to assume until proven otherwise that Stern simply hasn't noticed. While the Spurs will likely make some minor institutional tweaks, I'm guessing they'll be the first to admit that staying ahead of the curve in terms of how a modern, international team ought to be run is worth more than $250,000.

And if the NBA's designated international wizard -- David Stern -- had considered it in that context? He might agree.

• • •

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!"

"This was an unacceptable decision by the San Antonio Spurs and substantial sanctions will be forthcoming."

That's what commissioner David Stern had to say before fining the San Antonio Spurs a quarter of a million dollars because the best coach in the NBA, Gregg Popovich, rested his stars on a long road trip. Yes, that's right, resting your older players is an unacceptable decision in the eyes of Mr. Stern. But overstepping his bounds and vetoing a trade that both team GMs involved approved? Sure, why not, that happens all the time! But it's alright, the Hornets got the 1st pick in the draft after the trade got vetoed -- you know, the draft for which the choosing of the order takes place behind closed doors and isn't shown to anyone but people on the NBA payroll.

How about Donald Sterling ringing people into the locker rooms to let them admire the "beautiful black bodies" of the players? Well, I guess they are beautiful. And good old Donald Sterling sure is an upstanding member of his community! We'll let that one slide too.And remember how Stern oversaw two lockouts within a span of 12 years, leading to some teams playing 5 games in 6 days? It was good for ratings, the viewers at home love watching sloppy basketball where the players have a higher probability of getting injured because they're playing for the third night in a row! And if the coach thinks they need some rest, he can just sit them for a game!

Wait, what's that? Oh yeah. Nevermind.

What about the time a referee was caught manipulating games for gambling purposes? That was classic, wasn't it? Sure, it was a bit of a misstep, but Stern sure did do the right thing by loosening restrictions on NBA referees gambling and then never answering questions about it again! And refusing to acknowledge referee fallibility except in fledgling gasps in the death throes of his career! Whatta guy!

You're starting to get the point here, right? I'm not going to insult your intelligence by further pointing out the hypocrisy of what David Stern calls "unacceptable" and what he allows in today's NBA, where he is king. And nor should Stern insult your intelligence by pretending that he actually, genuinely cares about the Spurs sitting some players. This is nothing more than a power play at the expense of the small market Spurs to show them their place. This is David Stern getting revenge for never being able to market a team that won 4 championships in 8 years to a national audience even though he's supposedly the marketing genius of the NBA.

Let's face it, who in today's ESPN big market culture will care about the Spurs outside of the blogosphere? The casual fans who've never gone out of their way to watch the Spurs will let out their generic "well Stern probably fined them because they're so boring to watch" jokes and the other casuals will laugh along because that's what the television told them to think. The Spurs are everything that's right and winning about today's NBA and that's why they're hated. There are no storylines to be found in a team that just goes out and wins. There's no drama in a team that builds from within and doesn't land marquee free agents but still wins. There's no controversies to be found when a team utilizes teamwork, floor spacing, and ball movement to win. Did I mention... wins? (In case I didn't, let me say it again, with emphasis this time: wins.)

In short, there's no one that would go out of their way to see a small market team like the Spurs unless there was some sort of moral uproar involving them. No casual fan isn't going to be THAT excited about a regular season Heat/Spurs match-up without some added drama, even if it is on national TV! There's no way people would actually get up-in-arms about a Spurs game unless outside factors created an insane, controversial, and ridiculous overarching conflict that brought in viewers and made people forget all about the Spurs' small market snappiness. Without some villainous looming figure to create the controversy, nobody but a few random bloggers are_ really_ going to care about the Spurs playing a TNT game, no matter who's on the floor. David Stern would have to create some kind of ridiculous meta-story if he ever wanted the Spurs to really drive ratings. Something so ridiculous that it essentially forced writers to scribe obscenely haughty pieces bloviating for both sides. A story-above-the-story. Drama for the nondramatic. And how could David Stern accomplish something like tha--...

Hey. Wait a hot second.

Oh, David... maybe you really are the marketing guru they say you are...

In solidarity with Coach Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs, I sent the other mainstays of this feature home to Finland on a Southwest flight. Just try to fine me, McGuire.

• • •

• IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM THE EDITOR •

You can do that, Alex Arnon, but know that I will be withholding your pay until further notice in solidarity with David Stern's position. Good luck buying that shiny new gold-plated trap album without your weekly $15,000 salary you make from your cushy blogging job! Also: retroactively, I'm withholding all prior pay. Which means it's a good thing we hadn't paid you any of it yet. Also, probably a good thing nobody else on the staff realized you were making $15,000 a week before this pernicious act, given that nobody else here makes anything and we had no actual way to pay you that salary. Also, it's a good thing I never told you about it. I'm a great editor like that. Always striving, never diving. That's what my pops always used to say. Because I can't swim, damnit.

... What was I talking about again? -- McGuire

• THIS CONCLUDES YOUR IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM THE EDITOR •

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 Tyreke Evans, Tony Allen, and Nicolas Batum.

• • •

_Follow Tyreke Evans on Twitter at __@TyrekeEvans.___

It's really hard to figure out what happened to -- and what SHOULD happen to -- Tyreke Evans going forward. Do you remember his rookie year? There were so many things he did well. So many things! Most notable, to me, was his rookie defense. Yes, his defense. While he wasn't the most effective by the numbers, he was a pretty fun defender to watch back in the day. He looked to me like a potentially great defender his rookie year -- he had a certain amount of swagger to his isolation defensive game, and it portended (to me) flashes of a possible stopper-quality defensive talent down the line. Didn't turn out that way, at least not yet, and that's primarily because his defense has become extremely easy to scout. That intensity, that tenacity, that strong isolation coverage? All of that's pretty darn useless if you don't fight over screens, and chief among all of Tyreke's defensive flaws is his dogged insistence on going under screens and letting his man loose instead of fighting over it and sticking to the man. If Tyreke is dogging a player, all a team really needs to do at this point is set a series of screens. Tyreke will get hopelessly lost, his man will score, and he'll slump his shoulders and try again next time. Only to fare badly on the screen and let his man score again. It's kind of a vicious cycle, when your skills are so easy to thwart on the defensive end.

Offensively, things are more confusing. Evans has never been a particularly impressive presence on the offensive end, even going back to his red hot rookie year. There was never any real outside shot to speak of -- even as a rookie, the man shot only 31% on jump shots, including a dismal 25% from three. That decreased to 30% as a sophomore and 26% as a junior. For Evans to really shine as an offensive player, that has to improve -- if not by improving his actual jump shot (something I'm 90% sure would happen if he had a legitimate shooting coach -- Chip Engelland, anyone?) then by working hard on a floater or a jump hook and really incorporating that into his game. As it stands, the Tyreke Evans scouting report is about as simplistic as you can get. "Pack the paint, let him shoot from 10-25 feet. He'll miss. Badly." And why not let him shoot it? As a rookie, Evans dove into the teeth of defenses and racked up fouls by the bushel. By dissuading him from doing that, not only have teams effectively neutralized his greatest offensive threat, they've also kept themselves out of foul trouble and kept Tyreke from getting to the line. Which was actually the main place Tyreke's superstar scoring came from, his rookie year -- he had an insanely high FTA/FGA split that year, and that more than anything else was what propped up his shaky shooting into a well-rounded and dangerous offensive whole.

Other than his easy-to-scout defense and easy-to-scout offense? He has a good command of the tertiary stats -- a good assist rate (for a large wing), solid rebounding for his position, and a relatively low turnover rate despite a lot of ballhandling. But he's not great on the intangibles. He's had a lot of problems moving without the ball, though, and as aforementioned his formerly solid-looking defense has been something of a detriment recently, it's hard to really see what he's bringing you on the floor. He scores "efficiently" only insofar as he's an awesome offensive option when he gets to the rim. Anywhere outside the rim and Tyreke Evans is a jumpshooter -- and a bad one, too. Which is what led the Kings to decide against signing Evans to an extension -- he'll be a free agent after his 4th year. I can't think of it off the top of my head, but has a rookie of the year winner ever NOT been picked up to an extension by the team with his rights when the extension period comes? Some ROTY winners have been traded -- Mike Miller and Jason Kidd come to mind immediately -- but it's extremely rare that they're traded without being a key piece of the trade, and they generally get a nice extension. For Evans to not only NOT get the extension but to be going into restricted free agency is smart on the part of the Kings but crazy given his pedigree and the way things looked little more than three years ago.

All that said, I have trouble giving up on him. In fact, I really haven't. I'm of the evermore lonely belief that Evans still has quite a ways to go until he reaches his peak. Two reasons for this. One, I want to see him with an actual chance to work on his shot with a good shooting coach. He called in Keith Veney -- a famous shooting coach with an immaculate college stroke -- to help him rediscover his shooting. He responded to Veney's work by cutting off his three point shot entirely, a move that was probably for the best given his disgustingly low conversion rates from that end. It now falls on Tyreke to figure out some kind of off-ball offensive game and rework a close shot to be more accurate. How will it happen? Not really sure. Maybe Veney needs to mix things up and try different form adjustments to improve Tyreke's flagging jumper. Maybe he needs to work on his floater. Maybe Evans just needs a change of scenery. I'm really not sure. Something needs to happen, in any event. I see Tyreke's final form being something of a poor man's next Iguodala -- lower usage than he has now, a better picking-of-his-spots outside the rim, and a lot of dunks and cuts to maximize the number of times he can get to the rim and finish. More of a focus on rebounding, being a pivot in a working offense, and (of course) defense. Evans needs to take the time to learn how to handle a screen and fully internalize it. He needs to do a lot of things, but in the main, all he really needs to do is "play better." I can scream to the high heavens about the potential I continue to see in his game all I want -- if he doesn't really do much with that, it's hardly the fault of Kings fans or NBA fans to ignore him and refuse to give him notice.

• • •

_Follow Tony Allen on Twitter at __@aa000G9.___

Tony Allen is the greatest free agent signing the Memphis Grizzlies have_ ever made as a franchise_.

Alright, now that you're laughing, I'll dial back from that a tad. No, he's not their best player. He never will be. I specifically gave myself the weasel-worded "free agent signing" bit to exclude the Conley/Gasol/Randolph extensions, all of which have been arguably as important or moreso to their current success than the Allen signing. But don't sleep on the Allen signing. Really. Don't. Do you remember how much they signed Allen for? Don't look it up. Just guess. How much money does it take to lock up one of the 2 or 3 best perimeter defenders in the NBA for 3 years in the absolute prime of his career, coming off three years in a key defensive role in a defensive juggernaut? How much money does it take if you're one of the smallest markets in the NBA, with none of the built-in discounting factors of an LA, Florida, or Texas team? Have a number in your head?

If that number is more than $9.5 million for three years, you were wrong. And yes. It boggles my mind too. I realize that there were numerous reasons Allen wasn't seen as a premier free agent during the summer of 2010. There were more enticing options at the top of the ticket -- LeBron, Wade, Bosh, Dirk, et cetera. So much so that teams like Memphis found it relatively straightforward to snag bargain bin deals on pieces like Allen, whose offensive woes made him a persona non grata for the majority of the league's front offices. But that's the problem with overlooking elite skills because of singular flaws. Tony Allen's problem is the same one that will eventually depress Sefalosha's value and can lead to highly deflated contracts for defensively talented players. He's simply awful on offense. He turns the ball over all the time with his atrocious handle, and would make it a habit of missing some of the easiest bunny shots he could possibly take. You never know what you're going to get with Tony, and that's often a problem. Sometimes, it meant playing Tony Allen amounted to playing 4-on-5 on offense. But Memphis has been good to Allen -- although he'll always be a far cry from a positive contributor on offense, he's had significantly more chemistry with the Memphis big three than the Boston big three and he's worked hard to modulate his more irritating tendencies -- the turnovers have gotten marginally better, and he doesn't foul nearly as much as he used to.

What makes Tony Allen so unique on the defensive end is that he's not only an incredible one-on-one stopper, he's also a beast in the passing lanes and a bulldozer through screens. Elite scorers who are used to shedding defenders with a screen or two have no real recourse to get past Allen -- his lateral movement is too crisp, too quick, and too bruising. He's also got a modicum of shot-blocking talent, as well -- he's good at the Ginobili-type "touch from behind, apply backspin" block that ruins a shot and usually allows a teammate to take the ball out of midair, control it, and start a transition break. Celtics fans who watched Allen for years know how good he is. Laker fans who watched Kobe and Allen duke it out in the finals twice know how good he is. And anyone who's ever paid close attention to Allen's ridiculous defensive game knows how good he is. He's simply an amazing defender. For the sake of sharing, here's a video you may not have chanced to see -- this is a compilation by The Two Man Game of a sampling of Allen's defensive play on Kevin Durant during the 2011 playoffs. It's absolutely something to behold. Watch how he frustrates Durant -- Durant finds himself unable to make enough space to comfortably shoot, despite being far taller than Allen, but Allen maintains enough distance that Durant can't safely draw the foul. He rotates on a swivel foot while off-ball, able to change directions quick enough to remove the need to exactly anticipate what Durant and Westbrook were going to do next. When they finally get him out of a possession, he comes from behind and erases the shot with a brilliant backspin block. The depth of Allen's defensive skillset is absolutely obscene. Nobody in the league has a deeper well of tricks to draw from.

There's a question that often gets asked by fans of elite closers -- Kobe, Dirk, Manu, Melo, et cetera. Who do you want taking the last shot? Me, of course, I'd take Manu, while accepting the fact that Dirk is probably the best answer in the NBA (and that the best answer of all isn't any one player, just "whoever the hell is open"). But I genuinely prefer to ask a different question. Who do you want defending the last shot? And that answer is a lot more straightforward. You want Tony Allen. Think back to the final shot of the third game of Memphis/Spurs in 2011. Can't remember it? Watch it again. People pounced on Manu and the Spurs for not getting a shot off, claiming that it was a massive mistake by a franchise that never made them. The thing is, it really wasn't a massive failure of the offense so much as an incredible triumph of the defense to quash a fast-break transition three opportunity -- there was no way that Tony Allen could've defended that shot attempt better. He bothered Manu all the way down the court, and by the time Manu had made it far enough to shoot it, Allen used every possible trick to keep Manu's shot from going off and Manu himself from calling a timeout. The Spurs offense was broken on the possession, it's true, but nowhere near enough credit goes to the man who broke it -- Tony Allen, in the flesh. He's a pitbull. He's a beast. And now that his offense is passable enough to keep on the court at all (it's still bad, mind you, but good enough to keep him on-point for 20-30 minutes a night), he's essentially a star player. He's an incredible defender whose contract is -- I maintain -- the greatest free agent signing the Grizzlies ever made. He's Trick or Treat Tony, the baddest $3 million dollar a year veteran in the NBA. And he's gonna getcha.

Also, I say it on top, but I'll emphasize once more.

Follow him on Twitter. Really. He's the best NBA follow and nobody else is close.

• • •

_Follow Nicolas Batum on Twitter at __@nicolas88batum.___

While I'm not Nic Batum's biggest fan, I will say this -- the man is smart. We often pile on players who tend towards inefficient shot locations and chuck up poor percentage shots. We tell them to take fewer long twos, tend towards the efficient ranges, and run far away from the areas they aren't excellent at. Batum does that. He does that very well, in fact. Last season, Batum shot above average percentages at the rim and from three point territory. Fitting with that, almost 3/4 of Batum's shots came from those two regions, and it was enough to offset the fact that Batum shot an utterly abysmal 29% from 10-23 feet last year. He did this despite setting a career high in usage percentage and a career low in the percentage of his shots he had assisted by someone else -- primarily, to these eyes, due to the dismal state of the Portland point guard hierarchy last year. The main knock with Batum -- to me, at least -- is his defense. I have a lot of friends who are Portland fans that swear by Batum as a stopper of the future. I just don't see it, yet.

Don't get me wrong -- the man's useful, and his defensive fundamentals are extremely solid. He draws charges by the bundle, has some shot blocking talent, long arms, solid quickness, et cetera. All the things you want. But he has yet to put them together in a statistically evident way, and watching footage, you start to see small syndromes of laziness. Those possessions where he goes for a steal then gives up on the play as soon as the player gets daylight. Those possessions where he's floating, looking in the lanes, and paying little heed to his man. Those are the possessions that stick in my craw, and make me wonder about Batum as a true stopper. Tony Allen, for all his faults, never takes possessions off. Iguodala doesn't take possessions off. Batum acts like a superstar on defense, pulling the little LeBron/Kobe punch where he takes some time off as though to modulate for the long haul. That's the thing, though. They can do that because their offense is so vital to the team, they kind of need to. Batum isn't that offensively important to warrant off possessions defensively. And frankly? He's not good enough -- yet -- to be defending so well that his defense can withstand possessions where he's a total nonfactor. LeBron is there. Kobe -- for a few years -- was there. Batum isn't, yet.

Regardless. Batum is a good player already, and if he makes a few leaps, he'll probably deserve his fat contract. One thing I found amusing about the aftermath of Batum's contract signing was Batum's insistence that he could average 15-5-5 in an interview with Joe Freeman of the Oregonian. That's a pretty reasonable goal, in some respects. He's actually averaged 14 points per game before (last season), and from 2009-2012 he averaged exactly 15 points per 36 minutes. So if he can get to 36 minutes, he stands a good shot at 15 points per game. In that period, he also averaged 5.3 rebounds per 36 minutes, which means he just needs more time on that one too. But the assists? Batum has had -- in his entire career -- a total of 9 games at five or more assists. Three of those came this season. So, at the time Batum stated that as a goal, he'd managed to reach the number he wanted to average in exactly 6 of his then 202 career games played. That's... that's phenomenal. That's essentially equivalent to what would happen if I looked at my life, examined my data, then came to my friends saying that because I once drank fifteen beers in one sitting, I plan on raising my per-week beer average to fifteen beers each Friday. It doesn't make sense. It's the hilarious assuredness of it that gets me. I think what gets me is how he essentially just took his per-36 averages and then randomly decided "oh, yeah, I should pass too" and more than doubled his career high in assists just to make it even. It is pretty even, come to think of it. 15-5-5? Maybe Batum watches too much Adrian Monk? Or maybe not. I'm not sure there's such a thing as too much Adrian Monk. ... on a related note, is it obvious that I've written too many of these this week? No? THEN PREPARE FOR MORE TOMORROW, FOLLOWERS!

• • •

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. Shout-out to Matt L and Zewo for properly isolating the correct players based on tangential evidence! (Words!)

• Player #316 was stealthily one of the most cost-effective acquisitions of the offseason. Probably won't be there when the rebuilding project finishes, but he can't hurt until that happens. Not on that salary.

• Player #317 was a remarkably good shooter as a rookie. Not sure if it'll hold up forever, and he needs to get a bit better defensively, but he's a solid young guy with strong upside next to a rising star PG. Sounds good to me.

• Player #318 looked GREAT as a rookie. And as great as he looked as a rookie, he looked atrocious last year. And now he has that huge contract. Mistakes, everywhere!

Because I'm getting on a plane at 1:00 tomorrow, the string of two-set days ends tomorrow. With my vacation from work drawing to a close, I'm back on track to finish the series on Christmas or Christmas Eve. Fun times. See you tomorrow morning for the Friday capsules.

• • •

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 Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, and Reggie Evans.

• • •

_Follow Jrue Holiday on Twitter at __@Jrue_Holiday11.___

I'm going to be honest. I fell into a trap with Holiday. While I tend to be a proponent of giving players ample time to continue their development -- especially when, as with Jrue, you're talking about a player who entered the league at an uncommonly young age -- at some point you start to wonder if you've seen enough. Three years into his career, Holiday had yet to enact any large or present changes to the configuration of his game. He seemed about the same as he had when he started -- a very poor at-rim scorer with a surprisingly decent floater-to-long-two range on his shot that made him retain some manner of offensive value. A decent defender from the point guard position who nevertheless didn't have a surfeit of defensive creativity and was relatively easy to figure out if you were a crafty guard like 2011 Wade, Rose, or Paul. Good at fighting over screens, good at contesting, not so good at rotating when forced and a bit overly focused on staying with his original man off a switch. That often led to wide-open shots that he'd have to recover on out of nowhere, or perhaps more commonly, disoriented the relatively substandard Philadelphia defensive bigs into leaving their man to add additional help, which allowed smart coaches and teams to pick and roll the Sixers into (relative) oblivion.

I was also worried about Jrue Holiday's overall suitability as an NBA point guard. His passing always seemed decent-but-not-quite-there, posting assist rates that were hardly in the same stratosphere as any legitimate NBA point guard. Philly fans -- and Jrue fans -- tend to laugh at this. There's a lot of creativity in Holiday's passing, and I don't deny that at all. But it's not an idle complaint. There were 52 point guards that played greater than 20 minutes a contest in 2012 -- Holiday's assist rate ranked 11th worst among them. He clocked in slightly above Brandon Jennings and Kyrie Irving and slightly below Kemba Walker and Jordan Farmar. And while Jennings and Irving were lords of the hockey pass, much of Philadelphia's offense revolved around shooting the long two straightaway off the pass, far moreso than the offenses of Milwaukee or Cleveland. (Not to mention that Kyrie's teammates couldn't make a shot to begin with). Regardless, here's a visual representation of where Jrue stood among the point guards. It's not a nice graph to look at.

Y-Axis represents assist rate, X-Axis represent the player's spot in the 52 player line. Darkened portion represents the guards under Jrue. As you can kind of tell, rather poor spot for our man. He falls well short of the position-average, and clearly comes far behind the "elite assist-man" cutoff around player #46, where Andre Miller delineates the basic split between guards that destroyed worlds with their passing and guards who were merely decent at it. This would be fine, if Holiday wasn't the Sixers' primary passing option and the primary steward of their awful offense. Much like Rajon Rondo shoulders some of the blame for the Celtics' poor offensive results, so too does Holiday bear some for that of the Sixers. Not all -- Collins probably deserves more, for not really putting his guys in a position to succeed offensively. But some. So, rather understandably, I did not expect huge things for Holiday this season, and wasn't 100% sure about the size of his contract -- I felt it was certainly possible for Holiday to live up to it, but it wasn't exceedingly likely.

Count me as wrong on that, so far. There have been a lot of disappointing aspects of the Philadelphia start, not least of which being that their current record and differential are mirages forged against terrible no-good teams in a home-heavy start. And, of course, "anything having to do with Andrew Bynum." But Holiday has been one of the true bright spots of the year, much like Brandon Jennings was last year. He's looked smart and in control, and he's been playing like one of the best guards in the eastern conference. Some of it may be unsustainable -- Holiday has been shooting markedly better on the road, especially from three point range (52% from three on the road this year) and things are likely to normalize. But he was already above average from everywhere but the rim -- and his at-rim scoring has been excellent this year, with Holiday seeking out the finishing play far more readily and sinking the lay-up like a pro's pro. He's been Philadelphia's best player absent Bynum by a country mile, and he's led the Sixers to several wins they shouldn't have even been close in.

He's had poise, and with his talent finally being tapped into, he's been a lovely guy to watch. I'm hoping he keeps it up and makes the all-star team, although the Eastern game is a bit packed. Rondo, Kyrie, Deron, Lowry, the formerly all-star point guard Raymond Felton consumed to augment his powers, et cetera. Even Rose, if he's back on time, has a good shot of making it. And Jennings has been good too. So I fear he may end up as Brandon Jennings did last year, a player who starts the season on a huge tear, misses out on the all-star game, and just tapers off afterwards as though offended at the unbecoming absence. Let's hope that doesn't happen and that Holiday can keep it up long enough to garner some notice, reenergize to finish the season, and continue showing people like me just how far from his ceiling he actually was. Keep at it, Jrue.

(Also, on a related note, Tim: that waiter DEFINITELY was giving you the eyes.)

• • •

_Follow Darren Collison on Twitter at __@Darren_Collison.___

Another UCLA product, Darren Collison is remarkably similar to Jrue Holiday in the basic numbers. In fact, they're almost entirely the same by the numbers -- Collison is slightly worse at getting to the rim, Holiday is slightly worse at passing. Both are good at controlling the ball. Both are exceedingly young starters on fringe playoff teams. Both are having decent starts to this season, although Collison is starting to fall off a bit. Both are great free throw shooters. Lots and lots of similarities. Obviously, differences too. Collison's defense is nowhere near Holiday's, despite both being a bit undersized for their position (Collison far moreso than Holiday). Neither are wonderful at developing an offense -- Collison has balked at running an effective pick-and-roll offense since a short flirtation with fame as a brilliant rookie behind Chris Paul, and Holiday (as any point guard probably would) has had some difficulty running Collins' pet longball program with any real efficiency. Still, Collison has a few interesting offensive wrinkles. Mainly that he's one of the quickest guards in the NBA. Being the son of two Olympic sprinters has its advantages, you know. While this makes him (theoretically) a beast in transition, he's shown some problems actually converting on that.

Which, actually, deserves some special mention. One of the reasons Collison's two point percentage is so low is that he simply has a lot of trouble actually finishing transition layups. He can get to the rim relatively easily, and he can get an open shot there without going through too much trouble. Having speed is useful that way. The problem -- and the thing that differentiates him from other NBA speedsters like Tony Parker or Ty Lawson -- is that he's simply so bad at finishing (regardless of the duress he's under) that his speed advantage impacts his game marginally at best and uselessly at worst. And, as stated, he balks at running a traditional set-play offense -- he regularly dribbles himself into oblivion, ending the play far away from the screen that's been set for him. Going forward, could potentially make him a poor fit in Dallas, as Carlisle likes calling plays. As do, well, most coaches. But still. Collison's best offense is probably going to be a Ramon Sessions-type spread surrounded by shooters as he pushes the tempo a bit. He's not going to get that very easily in Dallas, although I'm interested in the offensive prospects of a Collison-Mayo-Marion-Nowitzki-Brand lineup if Carlisle consents to running Collison's pet spread. He's a good player, it's just an open question as to how useful he'll be in a set-play lineup.

This all would be a lot easier to handicap if Collison would just develop a reliable at-rim finish. Just... something. Anything. A better twist to his layup. A better sense of space under the basket. I don't know. Collison often misjudges how open he is and tries to finish layups from 2-3 feet away from the basket -- if he'd curb that, his at-rim numbers would look a lot better. My fear with Collison is that after an excellent start in Dallas he's been oscillating between abject horror and decent play every few nights. This wouldn't be all that big of a deal if Dirk was around and the team still looked decent without him, but Mayo and Collison have been so important to the Mavericks so far that Collison's poor performances have been that much more noticeable. When Collison registers a game score over 10, the Mavericks are 6-3 -- when Collison registers a game score below 10, they're 1-5. With Collison seeming more important without Dirk around to take some weight off his shoulders, any perceived struggle can lead to drastic measures. Like the Mavericks inexplicably pulling Collison from the starting lineup. Kind of worried that the Mavericks might take a flyer on some washed up old point guard in an effort to spell Collison, not realizing that the new guard has virtually no chance of actually improving their team and he's simply not ver--...

THEY SIGNED DEREK FISHER?!?

The Mayans are coming. Prepare yourselves for the soothing embrace of the grim reaper.

• • •

_Follow Reggie Evans on Twitter at __@ReggieEvans30.___

I'm not a big Reggie Evans guy. There are a few players I legitimately can't stand watching, and Evans is one of them. I don't know if it's the style of play, the lack of offensive talents, or the atrociously off-base calls that Evans seems to get on a daily basis in the NBA. Wait. Yes I do. It's the calls. It feels like Evans draws at least 3 ridiculous off-ball calls a game, which is pretty absurd given the fact that he plays less than 15 minutes a game. The man is a freaking SAVANT at getting under a player, drawing incidental contact, and sprawling on the floor like he's at the mercy of John Henry's hammer. Not to mention his most absurd talent, that being his absolutely remarkable ability to shove players in the back willy-nilly and never get called on it. I honest to God don't know how Evans gets away with half this stuff. You know how there's that whole "David Stern knows where the bodies are buried" thing? Yeah, I think that's crap. David Stern doesn't know where the bodies are buried. Reggie Evans does, and the entire lockout was a ruse to make us think he doesn't.

I'm joking, but explain this to me. How do you internalize the way Evans gets to the line? The man's taken 30 free throws to 21 field goal attempts this season. This isn't a new thing -- last year, he took 71 free throw attempts to 72 field goal attempts. He's been on the edge a few times (IE, within a few free throws of it), but Reggie Evans may very well be the single greatest free throw drawing machine in the history of the NBA. Want to know how many seasons he's had in his career with free throws greater than field goal attempts (or the two virtually even)? Four seasons, out of 10 years played. Want to know how many other players had four? Dwayne Jones. That's it. There are only 16 other players that have had multiple such seasons in the three point era. ONLY 16 PLAYERS. This is not some common thing. It's extremely rare for a player who uses the ball as sparingly as Evans (who sports a career 12% usage rate, although he hasn't passed that in 3 years) to actually register enough free throws to overtake even the sparsest of field goal attempts. Refs flock to Evans like lawyers flock to malpractice suits, waving their arms and screaming bloody murder. "Leave our Reggie all alone," they say! (They don't, but they should. Or they should stop calling so many phantom calls.)

Beyond the absurd calls, he's a hustle player whose defense is shaky at best and harmful at worst. He was fantastic last year against the Grizzlies in the playoffs (in what may very well have been the greatest playoff series he'll have in his entire career), but don't let that fool you into thinking he's a plus defender in the regular season. The man's single-minded focus on drawing fouls and getting rebounds leads him to constantly lose prime defensive position in hopes that he'll get better position for the board, and it doesn't help that he's undersized to begin with. And although he's a great rebounder for his size, he'd be a hell of a lot worse if they actually called him when he grinds his elbows into an opposing player's back to move them out of the way and grab the carom for himself. But that probably isn't going to happen any time soon. Referees have had 10 years to figure out Reggie Evans. They've either all gone blind as bats or discovered that Reggie Evans is the man Kool Keith wrote about when he wrote out the lyrics to Dr. Dooom's "Apartment 223." (Also, for the love of God, don't look them up if you aren't familiar. They're brutal and terrifying. Just be content knowing that the 10 people who actually listened to Dr. Dooom know exactly what I'm talking about and are cringing, locking their doors, and swearing off Brooklyn games until they forget the comparison.)

Really, though. Nothing's going to change. Evans will be Evans -- the most frustrating player to watch in the entire league, if he's not on your team. If he is? Try to enjoy it. It's hard, but you're essentially watching "history" happen when you watch this man draw free throws and crush the boards. Kind of. It's like watching a man set a world record for the most sardines eaten in a single sitting. You know it's a seminal moment in his life, and something you'll personally remember forever. It's "history." You're "rooting" for him insofar as you can root for someone like that. But you also will be nauseated, unentertained, and confused at the reason you're actually watching it. That's what it's like to be a fan of a Reggie Evans team, insofar as I can understand it. But perhaps you have a stronger stomach than I do. You wouldn't be the first.

• • •

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. Shout-out to commenter Okman on an admirable 2/3 guess. Even got the team right, just the wrong guard. Heh.

• Had you told me in 2010 that Player #313 would not be receiving an extension, I would've balked and laughed at you for hours. And I would've been wrong. He will not be getting an extension. It's been a shocking turn for the guy's career.

• Player #314 is one of the best defenders in the NBA, and among the best twitter follows to boot.

• Player #315 is considered to be a great defensive player. But he's not. ALMOST NOBODY BELIEVES ME. But he really, really isn't! I'm serious! Stop laughing! Argh!

In Los Angeles, my friends. All the drugs, money, and Coco Puffs my streetcar could possibly desire. Unfortunately, other people are the actual owners all three of those things, so I can't seriously partake in any. RIP Aaron McGuire. Knew ye well.

• • •

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 Elton Brand, Courtney Lee, and Trevor Booker.

• • •

Appreciate Elton Brand by making a snifter of Brandy an important part of your morning routine.

A few years back, I'd firmly sided myself with those who believed Elton Brand to be (essentially) done and washed up. He'd looked subpar for several seasons in a row, playing most of his minutes injured and producing minimal gains for terrible teams when he'd actually make it onto the court. I think I distinctly remember telling a friend that I'd eat my hat if he got through a season without significant injury ever again. Someone should figure out what hat I had on when I said that, because I should get to eating. In Brand's two years since that proclamation, Brand played (I kid you not) 141 out of 148 possible games. He missed just seven! In two years -- one of which was on a compressed lockout schedule! He's currently batting a perfecto on the current season, as well, which is astonishing. We're looking at a guy who played in 113 of 246 possible games in the three seasons immediately prior to that. We're looking at the guy who'd looked a bit over the hill for years. We're looking at the guy who had one of the biggest albatross contracts in the league, once upon a time. He recouped wonderfully, became a key cog in a very solid 2012 Philadelphia team, and was amnestied because the Sixers felt they really, truly needed to resign Spencer Hawes, pick up Kwame Brown, and sign Nick Young. Go figure.

Regardless. While Brand is undersized in height for the center position, he's been extremely effective as a defensive anchor over the last two years by relying on his wingspan, his bulk, and his instincts. He's far better in the post than outside of the paint contesting jumpers, but he's not really that bad at either -- his enormously long arms help him in that regard and allow him to put up a strong contest without jumping or fouling. He's one of the best shot blockers in the league, and unless I'm forgetting someone major, I'm almost certain he's the best one under 6'9". His bulk allows him to body up most post players and keep them uncomfortable in the post, and although he's lost a step, he's still one of the better pick-and-roll covers in the league. There were many reasons that last season's Sixers were good, but the Brand/Iguodala one-two punch on defense was by far the most important. Collins put together a scheme that best maximized their skills and absolutely wrecked even the most prolific offensive teams with effective re-routing, forcing the broken play, and keeping just about every team unsettled against the Philadelphia defense. Andrew Bynum will be a massive offensive upgrade over Brand, but it really does remain to be seen if Bynum can have the same defensive impact that Brand did -- Brand was really phenomenally good on defense in 2012.

Offensively, Brand had some good moments as well under Doug Collins. One thing I did neglect to mention in my Iguodala capsule earlier this week (as good friend Matt Moore later pointed out) was that Iguodala's awful shot selection hasn't entirely been a factor of his own decisionmaking. Doug Collins has an odd insistence on making his teams shoot long two pointers, and this tends to make players on his teams have oddly inflated attempts from the midrange and the long two even when they've got effective three point shooters and solid at-rim players besides them. A stylistic thing. "They're inefficient, but because of that, they're less guarded! Therefore, they are the right option." Not quite accurate logic, but it's what he rolls with. And is, indeed, a pretty big part of Iguodala's higher-than-they-should-be proportion of long twos. And the same goes for just about everyone in the Collins system. It REALLY isn't a good thing for most players, but it's actually ended up being fantastic for Elton Brand. He can't shoot threes (or, realistically, anything outside 20 feet), but inside that range he's great. He's got a phenomenal 10-to-20 foot jumper, and last season posted an excellent 45% from 10-15 feet and 43% from 16-23 feet. He did that on far more attempts than average, as well, just to dissuade you from imagining it's a fluke.

Brand didn't fit very well with Eddie Jordan or DiLeo, but he was essentially a perfect match for Collins' system from both a talent perspective and a fit perspective. And he made that fit count -- he's been a great player for the last two years. Truthfully, he's been far less than excellent in Dallas, and chances are pretty high he'll never produce at quite the level he did last season ever again. Age takes all men at some point, and subjectively, watching Brand inspires a sense that he's falling off in a few ways the stats don't quite pick up. His heavy footsteps, his inability to cover transition plays anymore, his generally flat shot, et cetera. But if he can recoup a bit and Carlisle can put him in a similar defensive situation as he had in Philadelphia, there's really no good reason Brand can't be an excellent value contributor for the Dallas Mavericks this season. And I'll continue eating my hat, thank you very much.

 

• • •

_Follow Courtney Lee on Twitter at __@CourtneyLee2211.___

I'm a big fan of analyzing important leverage points, both historically and in my personal life. You know the analysis, most likely, even if you've never really heard it phrased like that. As an example -- when I was in college, I took a class on Markov Chain Monte Carlo modeling. We were given a distinct problem one week, as part of a broader teaching example. The data was a large dataset of monthly measured smog levels in a small English town. At some point in the last 200 years, the town had completely transitioned its identity -- it used to be a massive industrial town, with several smog-spewing factories and a gritty working class. Now, though? It was a clean, green, sparkling cottage town. The factories were gone. There were some farms, now, and a viable telecommuting working class. The teacher refused to tell us what the town was, and posed as our modeling problem to determine when, exactly, the city "switched." In short, we had to produce a model that would give us a series of the most likely dates when, via the data, we could state that the city had alternated from an industrial smog-spewing smokestack to the everclean present.

We needed to find the leverage point, the moment when the underlying distribution to the smog concentration numbers changed. It was a highly interesting problem, and as it turned out, the data was about as clear as possible -- almost all of us got the same answer, primarily because the town in question had closed down all three of the factories within a month of each other. It didn't exactly take a complicated model to tease it out of the data -- in fact, most of us checked our work by simply looking at the data around the point. It was pretty clear. But although the final MCMC sampler came up with a relatively simple model, the whole idea of analyzing time-varied data in an effort to determine tangible distribution shifts has always stuck with me. We tend to look at a career or a time series as different snapshots of a similar underlying distribution. Analyzing for leverage points and finding distinct distribution shifts inspires a better understanding of the fundamental volatility in the underlying distributions behind the statistics and numbers we take as gospel, and helps us realize when our assumptions may be flimsy or ill-prepared.

Reeling myself back in, Courtney Lee is a good player to introduce with this concept, because I can't really talk about his career without talking about the single leverage point that may have changed his entire story. You may have forgotten it, but I can say without a question that he hasn't. I refer to his blundered miracle lay-up that quite nearly gave the 2009 Magic a tied series with a historically great Laker team. I often wonder -- what, exactly, would've happened if he'd made that layup? Thinking in the very localized sense, the Magic would've knotted the NBA Finals heading into three games at home. They still probably wouldn't have won it, but people don't tend to remember that the 2009 Finals did include three extremely close games -- had the Magic won this one, the series would've at least gone back to Staples for a game 6 and, if they could've flipped one more game, possibly forced a game 7. It's worth noting that while Jameer Nelson was relatively awful in that series, he also was coming back from injury -- which stands to reason that he may have gotten better as the series went on, potentially giving the Magic one or two new wrinkles to use in the later reaches of a long series. The botched layup didn't necessarily decide the Finals, but it has completely changed the way they're looked upon historically. It turned a hard fought series into a "gentleman's sweep." It changed the game, both on a micro and macro level.

It changed Lee's career, as well -- it's plausible to consider the idea that if he'd made that layup and the Finals weren't later looked upon as such a dominating performance by Los Angeles, the Magic may have refrained from flipping him to New Jersey. Had that happened, Lee wouldn't have had to spend a year of his young career mired on one of the worst teams of all time with a coach that supremely disliked his game. He was then ported over to Houston, where Adelman didn't like him at all either -- leading to, again, another lost season. He finally recouped a bit in 2012, shooting more threes than he'd ever shot before under a more approving McHale and redesigning his perimeter defensive game a tad in hopes of becoming a bit more reliable as a stopper. And despite his reputation, he needed it. He's a decent defender, by the eye test, but you look at his on/off numbers and you do start to wonder if he's a bit overrated on that front. Subjectively, his help defense is a bit problematic and he has some trouble getting over screens, which makes his generally tenacious on-ball defense less valuable overall. But Lee's a good guy, and I'm hoping he finds a good niche in Boston. He hasn't looked bad in Boston, but his three point shot has left him and his problems getting over screens have been major problem-points for a Celtics team that desperately needs Avery Bradley to come back and supercharge their flagging defense. His career may never quite be as promising as it was when it looked like he'd have 4+ years of tutelage behind Stan Van Gundy, but it's certainly not a lost cause. So here's to Courtney Lee, leverage points, and the tiny twists of fate that change everything.

• • •

_Follow Trevor Booker on Twitter at __@35_Fitz.___

I like watching Trevor Booker's game. Which is surprising in some ways. Lovingly dubbed "Cook Book" by journeyman Cartier Martin in a midseason joust last year, he's got a lot of the problems that make a player tough to watch at an NBA level. It starts with his position -- he doesn't really have one, and although we live in a post-position world, it's nice to actually have a cogent idea of where you fit on the floor. Booker is in that awkward place between a wing and a big, where he's not quite nimble enough to cover wings but not at all large enough to cover bigs. It ends up making him a rather negative-production player on the defensive end, although given how many players on Washington are awful defenders and how little defensive structure or system the Wizards have around him, it's hard to really argue he's in a great position to maximize anything. And it's not to say he lacks in effort -- the man played hardest of any member of the 2012 Wizards on that end, he's just at such a size & athleticism disadvantage it never worked very well. He also has no outside shooting ability, a rather uncreative game, and is quite prone to turning the ball over. Which usually would make for a player I don't like much.

But that's not all he is. Booker lacks many things, but he'll never lack effort. The man ranked as one of the best at-rim players in the league, converting on a scintillating 73% of his shots in the basket area last season. And he didn't do that on a scant few attempts, either -- he attempted almost 50% of all shots he took from the at-rim range, and he made significantly more shots at the rim than he did from every other range of the floor combined (112 to 69). This does tend to point to one flaw in his game -- as I said, he doesn't have much of an outside shot, and in general isn't much of a jump shooter. He shot just 32% from the floor on all jump shots last year. Subjectively, it looked even worse than that. As a result of his jump shot struggles, he's never going to be a high usage player -- last year, he ranked in the bottom 25% of all big men in usage percentage. But it's the little things, with Mr. Cookbook. The fact that he's the only Wizard with the ability to set a remotely useful screen. The fact that he jumps for loose balls, throwing them at untold speeds into the body of an opposing team's player in an effort to ensure possessions. The fact that he'll hustle for the rebounds while other Wizards stare idly at the ball, immobile, waiting for the ball to approach them slowly and tenderly caress the small of their back as it reassures them that "yes, Jordan, it's OK that you can't stop shooting me. I can take it. I love you."

Overall, I like Booker. I like watching him. I'm not always on the train with high-energy hustle players, but something about Booker really entertains me. I hope he can fully recoup from this season's knee strain and take his place as a 25-30 MPG hustle guy for the Wizards. He's one of the few on that team I unconditionally enjoy. Perhaps it's partly the players around him -- the Wizards are one of the most dismally drab teams in the league, and against that backdrop, I have a feeling that many marginal players would seem more enjoyable than they would in the context of a better team. But there is something beyond that. Can't knock the hustle, can't knock the grit. Seems like a good guy, too. Some call him Booker T instead of Cook Book, which I actually think is probably the better nickname. Also, a fact that deserves constant notation: Trevor Booker's favorite Christmas gift ever, according to the good folks at Truth About It? A big wheel! I mentioned this in the last-year's capsules and I'll probably mention this whenever I talk about Booker for the rest of my life. Because it's awesome. If you vow to remember one arbitrary fact about Trevor Booker for the rest of your life, make it this one.

• • •

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. Commenter Matt L got this last set spot-on. Good work, fella.

• Player #310 has been playing like an all-star point guard this season. His team's still awful, as of yet, but he's surprised me.

• Player #311 hasn't been all-star level this year, but he started decently. He's been worse lately, though, and his team has fallen off badly around him.

• Player #312 flops. A lot. He's also a decent defender who's been somewhat useful to his team, as of late.

Gonna be in Los Angeles tomorrow. Fun times for everyone.

• • •

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 Mike Conley, Chauncey Billups, and Shannon Brown.

• • •

Follow _Mike Conley on Twitter at @mconley11.
_

When you list off elite point guards, Mike Conley doesn't always come to mind. There's the usual suspects. You think of Chris Paul, because as Gregg Popovich might say, "he's Chris Paul." You think of Derrick Rose and the Chicago offense's single-minded dependence on him. You think of Steve Nash and his historic offensive achievements. You think of Rajon Rondo and his enigmatic command of the floor. You think of Russell Westbrook and his obscene takeovers. Tony Parker and his cubist post play. Deron Williams and his scoring acumen. Kyrie Irving and his blitzing attack. Stephen Curry's quiet brilliance. Et cetera, et cetera. You don't tend to think of Mike Conley's contributions and think him worthy of inclusion on that list. He's good, but not quite elite. Or so the story goes.

Well, honestly? At this point? He's right about there.

I've never been his biggest fan, but watching him more last year finally converted me. Conley is elite, or at the very least tantalizingly close to it. He's an extremely good three point shooter who has always put in some incredible work on that end. Consider how poor the Grizzlies were at making three point shots last year -- Conley was their best and most consistent three point shooter by a country mile, and would almost always draw the other team's best perimeter defenders on switches. Still made 37.7% of his threes. Conley's at-rim game gets less notice, but deserves more -- on a team with Randolph and Gasol, Conley orchestrates the offense in such a modulated and pinpoint fashion that he too can make his living at the rim, and over 1/3 of his points-from-shots came from at-rim conversions in 2012.

Conley and Hollins have built an offense where Conley's three point range and the threat of a Gasol/Randolph post-up gives Conley just enough room to run plays and flash to the rim, whenever the Grizzlies decide to run a play for him (which isn't often, admittedly -- he's a low usage guard at heart, and doesn't look for his shot quite as much as he perhaps should). In general, though, it works really well. Conley has been so completely essential to the Memphis attack these last three years that it's a minor miracle that Hollins is able to keep him under 36 minutes a night -- in 2010, 2011, and 2012 merely having Conley on the floor improved the Memphis offense by 7.3, 9.4, and 10.2 points per 100 possessions (per Basketball Prospectus). This fits another one of Conley's "silent" skills -- he's gone from a point guard who can't dribble a few years back (seriously, his handle was horrible) to one of the most controlled handles in the game among point guards, and his turnover rate has gotten lower almost every year of his career. Last year, he was 3rd among starting point guards in assist-to-turnover ratio, bested only by Chris Paul and Jose Calderon. Could he shoot a bit more? Definitely. But when you make as few mistakes as Conley does, it's not that hard to look past that.

His defense is also quite underheralded -- Conley isn't exactly Andre Iguodala, but he's a decidedly elite defender at the point guard position. It's very hard for point guards (even really good ones) to break free from Conley with just a simple screen or two, as he's nimble and slippery and has a talent at slipping past screens more quickly than almost anyone in the league. Just as he's modulated and controlled on offense, he's the same on defense -- he rarely takes idiotic steal attempts, but he still rates out as one of the best per-possession steal-generating guards in the league because he picks his spots so well and scouts his prey with the best of them. Memphis is a team that talks a lot -- on defense and offense -- and Conley takes an active leadership role in both discussions. He directs the offense and keeps people in shape on defense. He's Hollins' "voice on the floor", so to speak, and he's absolutely essential to that team. Just compare the Grizzlies' awful night at home against the Kyrie-lacking Cavaliers last week to any of the other games they played this season. They barely beat an injured, terrible Cavaliers team because -- quite simply -- Conley matters that much. Gasol/Randolph are important, and Gay/Allen are great players. But Conley is the mixer that puts it all together, and he's evolved into arguably their most important non-Gasol player. He's the straw that stirs the drink. He may not be elite in the tangibles, and his lack of offensive usage will always hurt him a bit. But in what he brings the Grizzlies beyond it (and his astounding lack of cogent flaws in any specific areas of his game), Conley becomes elite. Or, as I said before, dang near close to it. Which, let's be fair, probably all happened just to make Matt Moore look really astonishingly silly.

Thanks, Matt. Apparently, your criticism is the best pal a guard can hope for.

• • •

_Follow Chauncey Billups on Twitter at __@MrBigShotCB1.___

Chauncey Billups -- by all accounts -- is a really respectable guy. A nice dude, even if his calculated statements after his amnesty would tend to imply otherwise. He's been the locker room glue behind six conference finals teams in his career (so far), and good luck finding a former teammate that seriously dislikes him -- excuse the use of the relatively worn down tropes, but Billups is a leader in every sense of the word. Leads his teammates on the floor, leads his teammates in the locker room, leads his teammates in their off-hours. He's one of those all-encompassing figures, and he's a good bet to become a future coach. Or a GM. Or something. He has a sense of humor, although I have not confirmed this by paying him $75,000 to bake me a cake. And by all accounts, each of his last three teams have done him wrong -- he was in no way expecting to be traded from Detroit, Denver actively promised him he'd stay a Nugget, and New York gave him little say in his future by waiving him straight out of nowhere. A guy with Billups' pedigree and generally good-natured devotion to the team deserved more.

None of that means I can handle watching him play offense.

This isn't even new -- this has been true for years. Billups is not a fun player for me to watch, offensively. In his long and successful career, one of Billups' biggest "successes" has been popularizing something that should have absolutely never been popularized. I refer of course to his undying love of the transition three. The pull-up jumper in transition several feet past the three point line, with a trailer on him, nobody on his team back to rebound the ball, and generally little-to-no chance of making the shot. Back on the early-aughts Detroit teams, this strategy made a limited amount of sense -- those teams weren't very good on the offensive glass anyway, and they wouldn't be setting up high-percentage offense in the first place. There's a time and a place for everything -- transition threes can be useful in an offense. But when they make up every single transition play a particular player runs, their main use (as a change-of-pace offsetting factor) is completely abandoned. No surprise remains. We get on Rondo's back for ignoring opportunities for his own offense and making the pass. Why not get on Billups' back for ruining untold numbers of 3-on-1 fastbreaks with his frustrating three-point heaves with no regard for his teammates, the fundamentals of play-calling, or logic?

The first set of games I watched thoroughly with the intent to recap were played in the summer of 2010, when I watched the FIBA world championship games with Alex Dewey and wrote recaps and analysis of Team USA's ultimately successful romp through the FIBA weeds. In my game-watching, I took notes in a little notepad. The format of my notes became more and more informal as time went on, eventually becoming a loosely-bulletpointed mess of disconnected thoughts and ideas. But about two games in, there was one thing that remained throughout the rest of the exercise. For every team USA game I'd watch and take notes on, I'd add a little box in the corner of my notes titled "Chauncey Chucks". For every time Billups would blithely ignore several open teammates in pursuit of a chucked-up shot, I'd notch a tick mark. It says something that two games into my FIBA experience, I felt I really needed a box to keep track of that. It also says something that I can't remember a single FIBA game where the box had five or fewer tick marks. He makes the shots -- sometimes -- but to call them anything but errant chuckery is to misstate your case. The "Mr. Big Shot" nickname relies less on his ability to make the shots and more on his ability to take the shots -- Billups has no remorse, which is useful at times, but can just as often be harmful as he passes up better options and isolates to no end in pursuit of a clutch isolation. It's kind of annoying.

All that said, he's not terrible or anything -- simply not quite the offensive mastermind many take him as. Despite the chucking, he's still an effective three point shooter and he draws free throws by the boatload. He can't make a two-point shot to save his life (last season Billups shot 38% at the rim, and 34% from two point range overall), but he takes 55% of his shots from three point territory, so he minimizes that damage a bit. I'm of the lonely view that his formerly excellent defense suffered a bit of a letdown period from 2009 to 2011 as his athleticism waned, but I'm with the pack that Billups' move to the two-guard last year was a bit helpful to him on that front. He clearly can't cover point guards anymore, but he's large enough and smart enough to cover the average NBA shooting guards with some manner of efficacy. He gets lit up by the stars, but so does everyone. The big concern with Billups now is simply that of his comeback potential -- the only NBA player to ever successfully return to form after a ruptured Achilles is Dominique Wilkins, who returned around the age of 33. Billups will be returning around the age of 36, after several years of declining performance to begin with. Whatever he can bring the Clippers off an injury like that is going to be gravy -- there should be no serious expectation for Billups to produce offense, defense, or anything of present value. Except $75,000 cake. He should be expected to bring that. I mean, if I was on the Clippers, I'd expect him to bring that...

• • •

_Follow Shannon Brown on Twitter at __@ShannonBrown.___

A short history of Shannon Brown's career seems fitting here. Drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers as a jitterbug point guard to change the pace and complement LeBron, Brown never quite lived up to that role -- it didn't much help matters that Mike Brown downright refused to play him (just 420 minutes in around 1.6 seasons under coach Brown, and less than a minute of playoff burn in an NBA Finals playoff run). He was ported to Chicago in the Ben Wallace trade, where he (again) couldn't get minutes and left immediately for greener pastures. The Bobcats signed him in the pre-2009 offseason, and after some of the most productive minutes of his career, he came to the Lakers in the same deal that got them Adam Morrison. Then he sort of broke out, became a replacement level player, and has been there ever since. This isn't to say he had a massive, enormous, or incredible role with the Lakers -- merely that Phil Jackson figured out where his skills were, put him in a position to maximize those skills, and let that be. Those skills? An acumen for cutting, a high vertical, and absolutely no conscience when he misses a shot. That last one also hurts him, particularly when he has one of his frustrating games where he takes 7-8 long twos and makes one. But who's counting? (I'm counting.)

Brown represents one of the things most people don't recognize about Phil Jackson (myself included, at times). Jackson wasn't the greatest player development coach in the world, but he wasn't bad at all -- there are a rare few players who couldn't get minutes in Jackson's rotations that went on to become brilliant players in a different situation. Jackson gets a lot of flack for being a less-than-stellar player development coach, but that seems to be more based on judging his player development skills in relation to his best-in-class skills in other areas of his coaching rather than in relation to the rest of the league. He wasn't excellent, but he was average at worst in a league filled with coaches who are abhorrent at it. Just look at Shannon Brown's time with Mike Brown (utter failure), Jim Boylan (hah), and Larry Brown (no thanks). None of them were able to really figure out how to use and develop Brown's gifts. Jackson was the first to really crack it, and although Brown has improved a bit under Gentry's tutelage in Phoenix, it's hard to argue Jackson didn't do a good job developing and bringing out Brown's latent talents. He did a fine job.

As a last note on Brown, I'm still strangely enthralled by 2010's "Let Shannon Dunk" movement. In a very distilled form, the whole ordeal provides a simple explanation for why exactly the dunk contest has descended to such nasty depths over the last few years. The storyline, if you forgot, was rather simple. Brown had a few vicious breakaway slams early in the 2010 season. There were rumblings of him potentially participating in the dunk contest. Rumblings grew to mumblings. Mumblings grew to shouting. Things got a bit crazy. Twitter feeds, websites, a franchise with 16 rings openly prostrating itself and rallying in hopes of getting Brown a spot in the contest, et cetera. Finally, he got his invitation. He shows up, the world prepared for something special. And, well... he sucked. His dunks were terrible. The whole contest, really, was a tired reprisal of the same old thing we'd seen millions of times before. The fun of a modern NBA dunk isn't in the dunk itself, it's in the raw aggression of the action -- not aggression towards the rim or a prop, but aggression towards an objectified opponent. That's why dunk contests with amateurs have become so superior to dunk contests in the pros. Pro dunk contests involve professionals trying to recapture that aggression without an object to act against. Amateurs have molded their dunks to fit the loneliness of the contest dunk, the vacancy of the empty court. Their aggression is focused differently, towards physics and convention and the limits of the human body. NBA dunk contests are players trying to ignore the loneliness and emulate an in-game matchup with props or bounces. Amateur dunk contests are players coming to terms with the loneliness of the form and making it work to their advantage. I don't really understand why the NBA shows the pro dunk contest while ignoring the amateurs, at this point.

Star-power can only go so far, you know.

• • •

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. Comment-folk Sir Thursday and Alex were batting 1.00 last night.

• Player #307 is an excellent defensive player who I thought would be a great fit on his new team. He hasn't been, but he might be turning it around.

• Player #308 could be given the exact same riddle as Player #307. Instead, I'll just say this: I'll always wonder what would've happened to him if he'd converted that tip-in.

• Player #309 has a detailed, extensive, and serious "cookbook" of moves. They are not very good moves, mind you, but it's still a downright clever nickname.

Today, I'm getting on a plane to Los Angeles. Vacation Part II: The Rejazzebration. Let's see if I can get another set done before I take off.

• • •

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 Corey Maggette, Jonas Jerebko, and Devin Ebanks.

• • •

Follow _Corey Maggette on Twitter at @ghostC5M.
_

I'm going to try to make this one short, for two reasons. Firstly, I absolutely don't like Corey Maggette. I really, truly don't. Avid readers will know by now that I'm essentially the least-school-spirited Duke student in all of recorded history. I do not like my alma mater and I don't tend to like the players that Coach K's system produces. Corey Maggette completely embodies the Duke style, on defense and offense. Secondly, he's not really a very relevant player. I tend to pride myself in finding at least one or two interesting things to say about each and every NBA player, but when it comes to Maggette, I honestly have trouble figuring out what to say. He's not very engaging, and there aren't a ton of original or interesting observations to be made about his game.

The only observation of particular note with Maggette is that of his somewhat empty style -- Maggette embodies the concept of improving one's stats by playing on awful teams. If his team is atrocious, he'll generally have excellent-to-solid statistics and look like a strong possible option as a first or second string guy on a contending team. If his team is good, those solid statistics dissipate into the wind, and his minutes vanish with them. He's been arguably one of the worst players a franchise could sign. He's overpaid, harms your team's bottom line a bit with his dismal defense, constantly gets taken out for large swatches of the season through injury due to his foul-drawing style, doesn't seem to grasp basketball aesthetics, and completely lacks the personal charm to make up for any of the sins. Not to belabor the aesthetics, but it bears repeating -- his game is centered around a bumbling sort of foul-drawing mastery. In Maggette's career, he's made over 500 more free throws than he has field goals. Which is... not exactly something most people want to watch, efficient though it may be. It's simply not very fun. Maggette is not a very fun experience.

The one other thing I find interesting about Maggette is that of his frame. Many people -- looking at Maggette with no real knowledge about the NBA -- would assume him to be a good defender. He's one of the most muscular NBA players in the league, he's built like an ox, and he just has the feel of a solid defensive player. Well... he's not. He lacks lateral quickness, he backs down out of post position, and he generally just doesn't use his muscles on defense. It's simultaneously hilarious and sad. It's like watching a killer robot whose personality was typed with a Tickle Me Elmo doll. You have this beastly-looking figure on defense who simply cannot guard a fly. He doesn't have the instincts, the know-how, the anything -- oftentimes, it looks like he still feels he's at Duke, overrotating and doing little dirty nudges in hopes the refs won't notice, which they rarely do. Maggette is not the worst player, but by god, he's not very good. He has a laundry list of limitations, the aesthetic allure of a stepped-on anthill, and a decidedly unbecoming disinterest on the defensive end. I just can't really stand watching him, and while I know he was a lot better than this at his prime, I simply can't get over how poor he looks now. Maybe it's injuries, maybe it's karma, maybe it's just the slow march of age. But the man isn't what he used to be, and what he is now isn't very appetizing at all.

• • •

_Follow Jonas Jerebko on Twitter at __@JonasJerebko.___

Jonas Jerebko is one of those players that genuinely confounds me. His rookie season was promising -- he displayed a solid three point stroke, a knack for rebounding, and a general versatility that made it seem like the sky was the limit for Jerebko's potential as an NBA roleplayer. He even looked to have some defensive potential -- his rookie year, the Pistons were quite a bit of a better team defensively with him on the court, and although he had issues sticking with wings or defending post-ups, most teams didn't rely on that against Jerebko that often and he was able to stick to his shot defense on big men (which is solid) and a general ballhawking, wandering defense to set offensive players off kilter. In short, the stage looked set for a phenomenal career as a super-talented roleplayer. Or better! His sophomore year ended up delayed, as Jerebko strained a tendon in a preseason joust with the Miami Heat and ended his 2011 season before it began.

In the run-up to last season, the Pistons signed Jerebko to a 4-year, $18 million deal -- this seemed a bit high to most, but given his promising rookie year, it wasn't that bad. And then the season started. Jerebko did the same things he did as a rookie, for the most part. He rebounded extremely well. He scored efficiently. He hustled. But there was something distinctly different about Jerebko's play, and with more talent than before in a crowded frontcourt, his minutes suffered. Trying to put a finger on what exactly changed between Jerebko's first and second years is actually pretty difficult. The one thing I definitely noticed was a worse showing on the defensive end -- teams had figured out by the end of his rookie year that they could either post him up with a bigger guy or test his lateral quickness with a smaller guy if they wanted to disrupt his defense, and coming off his injury-lost season, he had serious problems doing either. Even his defensive talents from his rookie year seemed lessened -- his ballhawking was worse, his ability to stick past screens fell to pot, and he generally looked lost on the defensive end.

This isn't to say he wasn't useful, but it is to say that his decrease in minutes didn't come capriciously. There was rhyme and reason to it, even despite his solid offense. Most assume that Jerebko is a good finisher given how often he finishes strong. Turns out that isn't quite the case -- surprisingly, he's marginally below average as a forward at the rim. The key with Jerebko is one of constant usage -- Jerebko takes almost 40% of his shots at the rim, and 54% of his shots within 9 feet of the basket. He's roughly average at both, but he does it so often it seems like he's better than he is. And when it's close-in offense, being average is fine -- the problem most tweeners face is a decided allergy to getting to the rim and finishing strong. To Jerebko's credit, he doesn't share this difficulty. He works hard to get to the rim and draws a lot of free throws to get there. Which, net and net, makes him a positive offensive player even if he hasn't quite extended his range to that of a legitimate three point sniper. Yet. The problem is that without the legitimate three point shot, a player of his defensive caliber is going to have trouble getting big minutes on a team with no frontcourt talent, let alone on a team stacked with some in Monroe and Drummond.

Which leaves the Pistons where they are now -- with a player who is obviously quite talented and quite offensively useful, but who can't play the 3 (until he gets faster) or the 4 (until he gets more muscle) on defense. It's difficult to figure out where Jerebko fits in the Pistons' future -- he's much like DeJuan Blair with the Spurs, in that they're players who played lights-out rookie seasons who are just about as good as they were during those seasons... but no better. To the extent that one starts to wonder at some point if the rookie season was more of a best case scenario than a sign of things to come. Jerebko's still young, and there's still plenty of time for him to get in better NBA shape and turn the league upside down. But whereas I used to think it was an inevitability, I'm now relatively convinced it's merely a possibility. Wish him well regardless, though -- the guy is very fun to watch.

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_Follow Devin Ebanks on Twitter at __@DevinEbanks3.___

Although Devin Ebanks found himself shackled to Mike Brown's doghouse last season, I never thought it was all that big of a deal. I know there are a lot of Laker fans who like Ebanks -- he's the spitting image of Trevor Ariza, right down to the curves of his jawline. There's a desire, internally, to project Ariza's best traits onto Ebanks and assume them the same player. If not the same, at least similar. But there's a problem with that. Ebanks has played really, really poorly as a Laker, despite playing the vast majority of his minutes against remarkably awful competition in garbage time blowout lineups. Ebanks features an utterly broken shot (he didn't make a single three, converted just 58% at the rim, and barely shot 26% from 3-15 feet last season), a propensity for turning the ball over (an absurd 15% of all his possessions, in fact), and provided no other offensive talents on the floor. Ebanks is not a willing passer in a play-call offense, he isn't a good rebounder, and his steal/block totals are pathetic for a guy as athletic as he is. His defense was solid but unspectacular, with his relatively solid man-up perimeter defense usually easily thwarted by simply running him off a weak screen -- Ebanks did a terrible job negotiating screens in his tenure last year.

This year, despite the Lakers' depth problems, Ebanks still hasn't seen much time. There are many possible reasons for this, but my theory now is that the Lakers simply want to wait and see the results of Ebanks' early season drunk driving arrest before they try him out as a valuable member of their rotation. The court case is in a little over a week, now -- may as well wait and see. They don't want to risk potentially giving Ebanks an important role on the team before a drunk driving suspension is brought down by the league. The Lakers are having enough trouble with chemistry already -- no reason to put a huge investment on a guy who could be out 5-10 games with additional media headaches to boot. So far as I see it. This doesn't totally explain why Ebanks saw very little time under Brown, but I think that's pretty easily chalked up to the fact that he simply never made it into Brown's good graces and Brown was never really confident enough in Ebanks to give him a fair shot anyway. Although, again -- I'm not sure he got all that unfair of a shot. The man shot 26% from 3-15 feet. For such an athletic guy, Ebanks converted less of the time at the rim than 75% of all NBA small forwards. He turns the ball over like it's his job. He didn't draw charges. He didn't have legitimate range to his jump shot. Perhaps he'll be decent someday, but he has yet to prove he's a rotation player in the NBA. Which, once again, goes back to the Lakers' depth problems. The fact that so many fans are convinced that Devin Ebanks -- a player who by former performance would be out of the rotation entirely on 27 of 30 NBA teams -- will vastly improve the quality of their bench is a speaks loudly to the type of depth Los Angeles is carrying right now.

Namely, none. I consider it a complete shock that the Lakers chose to stay put with Duhon/Blake/Morris instead of picking up Shaun Livingston for the minimum -- while Livingston is hardly a lights-out player anymore, Nash's injury has made all-the-more-obvious the Lakers' unenviable position at the point. The same applies to the Lakers' wing rotation, where Jodie Meeks has dramatically disappointed and even D'Antoni has seen fit to use two-point lineups in an effort to minimize the damage caused by playing Darius Johnson-Odom and Meeks large minutes. Artest has played like a shattered record for virtually the entire season, but his starting role is in absolutely no danger -- no matter how poorly he plays, he's not in any danger whatsoever of getting leapfrogged by any of the Lakers' pathetic options behind him. The big man rotation is a mess of ill-fitting parts right now, but at least there are four legitimate players there -- that's more than they can say on the wings and point, and speaks to the general challenge that continue to make the Lakers one of the more interesting teams to handicap and examine in the entire league. D'Antoni has a beast of a task ahead of him to synthesize these pieces into a dangerous playoff monster -- I have a lot of confidence in his ability to do so, but to act like he's not working with a tough roster to mold would be a mistake.

Perhaps Ebanks can break out and surprise. Perhaps he won't. We'll see, I suppose.

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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. Mike L got a 3/3. Good work with some intractable riddles, there.

• Player #304 is one of the most valuable point guards in the league. He's also not a top-5 point guard, and he rarely makes top-10 lists because everyone simply forgets he exists.

• Player #305 popularized the trend of wasting a 3-on-2 transition break with a random pull-up three that none of his teammates were in position to rebound. Everyone does it now. I'm mad.

• Player #306 throws it down, [his name]. Also plays above his head for a contract, seemingly every time!

And that does it for today's second set. Join us tomorrow when -- again -- I will try to do two sets of these blasted things. This certainly isn't going to last forever, given that writing 6000 words per day feels about as insane and unreasonable as it sounds... but so long as I'm on vacation, I figure giving myself a bit of wiggle room to get the project done by year's end is always a good idea. Until then, gents and lasses.

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