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 Quentin Richardson, Rodney Stuckey, and Larry Sanders.

• • •

Follow _Quentin Richardson on Twitter at @QRich.
_

Quentin Richardson has carved out two unique places in history during his career. The first was through absolutely no fault of his own -- in a downright bizarre period during the summer of 2009, Richardson was moved in the following sequence:

• Traded from the Knicks to the Grizzlies in exchange for Darko Milicic.

• Three weeks later, Richardson was traded to the Clippers in exchange for Zach Randolph.

• Three days later, Richardson was traded to the Timberwolves for Sebastien Telfair, Mark Madsen, and Craig Smith.

• Finally, about three weeks after that, Richardson was traded to the Heat for Mark Blount.

If you're keeping count, that's four different teams in the span of two months. This is -- if not the absolute quickest -- at least among the quickest durations a single player has churned through four teams in the history of the league. To his credit, Richardson stayed grounded -- as he said, at the end of the day, he had a guaranteed contract and he knew he'd be playing basketball. As he put it -- "with the way the economy is, I don't have a ton of problems. If me not knowing what team I'm going to is my biggest problem, that's nothing. A lot of people around the world are much worse off." Always a nice thought, and it's always good to see a guy with legitimate career perspective. The other unique place in history is less based on his game than his off-court pursuits -- for about a year, Richardson made the headlines by being engaged to Brandy. No, not the drink -- the famous singer. That's right, folks -- it was the Humphries/Kardashian engagement before Humphries or Kardashian were more than a glimmer in their parents' eye! (Yes, I'm implying that Humphries and Kardashian are 5 year olds. Watching them interact with other human beings, this may not be a suggestion that's all that out of sorts.)

Otherwise, with this representing the likely end to Richardson's career, what is there to really say about his game? Not a ton. At his best, Richardson was a 3-and-D type player whose defense was never quite at the level it needed to be. His three point marksmanship was solid, early in his career, and a phenomenally effective three point season playing with a prime Steve Nash helped him parlay his shooting talent into a set of reasonably large contracts. Realistically, his defense should've been a tiny bit better -- he's a strong widebody defender with decent fundamentals. But he's also the tiniest bit short for his position, which hurts him, and his large frame (especially during his mid-career fitness swoon in New York off a litany of injuries) has always made it a bit harder for him to cover guys on the move. This hasn't stopped Richardson from having all manner of hilarious NBA moments, like his remarkably silly rivalry with Paul Pierce (clearing the way for DeShawn Stevensons everywhere to attack randomly better players). He also tended to celebrate with funny gestures and reactions when he made threes -- he's clearly a guy that enjoys being on the court, and he (to his credit) doesn't try to do vastly too much on the floor. That's respectable.

No mark Richardson made in history really holds a candle to his sad personal story, though -- it's not rare for NBA players to have been through rough times, but it's rare that they get quite as dire as Richardson suffered. He grew up learning and loving basketball from his mother's prodding, wrought of her inability to work in the aftermath of a stroke and aneurism. His mother -- a former high school player -- taught him the game and shot with him as a kid. But tragedy struck -- his mother never got to see him in the NBA or even in college. She passed away in 1992 after a struggle with breast cancer, only to be immediately followed by Richardson's beloved grandmother and shortly thereafter by his 23-year-old older brother, Bernard. His father reacted sternly, trying to instill an even harsher work ethic into Richardson. It didn't always work -- Richardson had his problems in the NBA, what with his fitness issues in New York, his discipline issues, his inability to stick with any one team, et cetera. But when you look at the things that precipitated that, like losing his younger brother in a senseless shooting in the middle of his New York tenure? You start to gain a lot of perspective and sympathy for the man.

Again, Quentin Richardson is not an amazing player. In his own words: "I'm not a 20-point scorer -- I'm whatever Stan Van Gundy needs me to be. If he wants me to focus on defense, I will." But he has his pride he puts in his work, even if his natural talents betrayed him a bit. On some level, I hope he makes the NBA again -- on another, I think he'd probably be better off in a foreign league or at DePaul finishing his degree. There are young blooded kids who deserve his minutes more right now, and while he was shakily effective last season, he's getting up there in the years and he's a player whose body can abide no real degradation of skill. Still, I have a lot of respect for Richardson, and if this really is the end -- as it appears to be -- I hope he knows that there's at least one fan out there who won't forget the world he came from and the effort he put forth to stay in the league.

• • •

_Follow Rodney Stuckey to the gates of probabilistic hell and back.__

---

As a statistician, watching a shooter mired in a bad shooting slump is (strangely) more compelling to me than watching a ridiculous hot streak. The same goes for other sports -- a hitter's slump in baseball, a quarterback's slump in football, a goalie whose defense suddenly leaves them -- these are the sports phenomenons that interest me most. There's a reason for that, and it has to do with a statistical assumption many sports statisticians and professional analysts make without much regard to introspection and adjustment. That is, the assumption of absolute event independence. I'm not a strong proponent of the hot-hand theory, no. I think it's certainly plausible, although most of the research makes me think it's a bit of a prancing unicorn. And in ALMOST all sports cases, I think semi-absolute independence is a reasonable assumption, with a large enough sample size. But I actually am a proponent of a watered down version of the cold-hand theory. That's the idea that shooting slumps, unlike hot streaks, have a non-negligible chance of breaking the traditional assumptions of independence that underlie most sports statistics, thereby engendering a short buffer of an adjustment period as the player sheds their personal attempts to "fix" their shot and return to the fundamentally decent shot that got them to their pre-slump high in the first place.

There are three reasons for this. First, a shooting slump is far more dire than a hot streak -- in terms of psychological importance, a slump is something that vastly endangers the average NBA player's ability to receive minutes commensurate with their self-perceived talent level, and as thus, it's more of a threat to be taken seriously. Second, there are far more ways to change a shot that isn't going well than there are to improve a shot that's on a hot streak -- there are all manner of things to tinker with when things are going poorly, ranging from off-hand position to jump height to release angle. It's like playing with a control panel with 20 various sliders and having all of them available to you -- you can tinker and toy with it until you find something better, and as you do so, that changes the overall complexion of your shot and potential. And finally, there's the last key -- nerves. When I get nervous about things, I get a bit shaky, a bit less sure of myself, a bit less confident in my ability to perform the task. Shooting slumps harm a shooter's confidence, which in turn could lengthen the slump and mire the player in a muck they can't escape.

In the long run, the use of independence assumptions and slump-gathered statistics used in overall valuation metrics isn't a bad thing. Never will be. Law of large numbers does dictate that things like this tend to even out over time, and the sheer number of players and events occurring at any one time make occasional slumps like the one Rodney Stuckey has started the year on (through 5 games, Stuckey was shooting 8-of-46 from the field and trying all manner of different contortions in an effort to shoot himself out of it). If you're wondering how something like that could happen at all, I'd entreat you to look at this useful applet. It's a coin flip engine, so essentially, it's the equivalent to a 50% shooter shooting shots into the infinite. Watch the "longest streak" metric. You might be surprised to find that the "longest streak" ends up being far longer than you'd expect -- in Stuckey's worst part of the slump, he missed 18 shots in a row. How likely is it that a career 42% shooter misses 18 shots in a row, given that he's shot 3956 shots in his career? You can calculate that exact probability with the Bernoulli distribution -- if you assume independence, the probability isn't nearly as low as most people would expect. You'd see a streak of 18 or more misses 8% of the time.

Which sort of goes back to my point -- while I think that probability is probably marginally higher, accounting for the impact that 5 to 10 misses may make it marginally more likely for a shooter to miss a slightly higher percentage than usual for the next 10 to 20 shots before they revert to their usual form, that probability is actually reasonably high. The amusing reaction to a player's slump tends to be far more dire and bloviating than reason would assess. A slump does not a poor player make -- we live in a world where rare events aren't impossible events, they're just rare. And when people watch slumps and revel in what it really reflects about the player, I get a bit amused. Far more interesting is to watch how the player reacts, and see if you can isolate the things they alter or the tendencies they adjust in an effort to get back on track -- that's where I find slumps to be the most interesting, and why I had an odd fascination with watching almost every moment of Stuckey's hilariously dire season-opening slump.

Having said all that, I don't really know what to say about Stuckey's game. Is he as bad as the slump would tend to indicate? No, not really. Is he good? Again -- no, not really. Years ago, Stuckey was seen as a relative savior to some of my Detroit-hailing friends, the man who would take the reins from Billups and cash in on an excess of talent. That never really happened. Although Stuckey has a promising frame for a defensive player, he's never put in an exceedingly high amount of effort on that end, and his positive adjusted plus/minus last season struck me as an outlier. His effort level has seemed consistently low to me on a fundamentally flawed level over the course of his career, although I'll be the first to admit that Synergy is down right now and I don't really have the ability to back up my memories with my usual scouting at the present moment. He just doesn't seem to have a smart grasp on when to rotate and when to stay at home, choosing to straddle the line and get burned all too often.

On offense, Stuckey's big talent is that he understands the importance of at-rim scoring to a balanced offensive attack -- Stuckey converted only 53% at the rim (in the bottom 25% of all SGs), but he took 41% of his shots there, which helped him maintain an overall moderately decent field goal percentage. Which does tend to brush some of his problems under the rug -- namely, the fact that he absolutely can't shoot beyond the midrange. He can make a few midrange shots a game, if you need it, but he's absolutely dismal at long twos and three pointers, shooting 31% last year on all shots beyond 15 feet. That's not very good. The one thing he was good at is the one thing I hate watching most -- he was great-to-excellent at drawing free throws and good at converting when he got to the line (83% is a good rate, for anyone). Which tends to be a way to get me to hate watching you. Until you slump and my fascination overrides all aesthetics concerns. Note to all shooters: if you want me to become interested in you, apparently all you need to do is go on a prolonged shooting slump. Sounds like a plan, right?

• • •

_Follow Larry Sanders on Twitter at __@LarryLuv_8.___

While Larry Sanders had an up-and-down experience in his first few years in the league, as with many Bucks, he's been one of Milwaukee's pleasant surprises in their early-season renaissance. Some expected Chicago would run away with the central division. Others expected Indiana would make a strong run at it. Others were on bath salts and ate people's faces off. (They did not have any stated horse in this race.) They were all wrong, at least so far -- Milwaukee has played better than anyone else in the central division, going 7-5 against a schedule ever-so-slightly harder than Chicago's season-opening cupcake parade. Their most impressive performance by far has come in a loss, as well -- they were ousted by the Heat in overtime (in Miami!) despite getting abysmal 13-41 shooting from their Ellis/Jennings pairing and next to nothing from Ersan Ilyasova. The Bucks have surprised many. Myself included.

The Bucks have been good, which is in and of itself rather shocking, but more shocking to me has been exactly how they're doing it. Not Ellis, not Jennings, and not even Dalembert -- the players that are leading the Bucks to respectability are simply the players left over after years and years of what seemed like poor drafting and poor trading decisions. Include Sanders in that mix. If not putting everything together, Sanders has definitely put something together -- starting on the boards. He's been a FAR better rebounder than he used to be, finally having spent a summer studying positioning and figuring out where exactly he needs to be to corral more rebounds and help his team. Whereas before Sanders would consistently find himself boxed out and totally out of the picture when the rebound careened off the board, this year's new-age Sanders has finally realized that in order to ensure any kind of a career in the league, he needs to put his athletically gifted 6'11" frame to work. That realization and an excess of confidence -- never quite there before -- has turbocharged the man's game. He's played great, and he's been one of the Bucks' biggest season-starting shockers. His offense looks good (on, as always, low usage), his passing is fine, and his defense is decent. He's startlingly engaged. He's legitimately becoming an NBA player. A beautiful transformation.

All that said? I'm not sure Skiles is really the right coach for Sanders post-crisis, or if I'm honest, Milwaukee in general. You have to wonder what exactly went through Skiles' head when he refused to give Larry Sanders much time his first two years, even in garbage time -- Sanders played under 900 minutes in each of the previous two seasons, and while he wasn't a phenomenal player, it's extremely hard to really assess how good a young player is when he barely gets minutes even in the face of massive injuries to the frontcourt, as the Bucks have been quite familiar with. His minutes and role were constantly yanked around, and I really have no idea how he got any sort of comfort developed with Skiles leaving him completely in the dark night-in and night-out on what his role was to be the next day. I read a joke on Twitter quipping that Skiles was trying to fulfill the never-before-seen idea of literally giving every single one of his big men 20 minutes per game of burn. If he was just doing that, maybe it'd be fine -- but hes oscillating them between 30-36 minute games and 0-6 minute games. It's too much variance. There's preserving guys to save them from injury and then there's simply being odd and capricious with your lineups. Skiles shuffles around young players without any real rhyme or reason -- sometimes he'll be riding the hot hand, but oftentimes it just seems that he forgets certain players are still on his bench. Look at last week -- Sanders played 21 minutes in a loss to Charlotte, putting up reasonably strong per-minute numbers. He then proceeded to play -- not a typo -- SIX minutes against the Heat. Two days later? 29 minutes against the Bulls, because that makes sense. Then he played 12. Skiles is a good coach, but at some point you need to wonder if his devil-may-care lineup assignments aren't hurting the development of the young players Milwaukee needs to develop.

There are many reasons Skiles rarely lasts long in a new city. The Bucks, even as they surprise and shock in the early going, are providing a perfect example of why Skiles that is. If you can't develop young talent or put young guys on the floor, you aren't going to build a contender in a small market. You simply aren't. And if your "developmental strategy" involves yanking young players around and acting like they don't matter, you're going to encounter a bit of resistance -- both on the player end and the organizational end. Here's hoping Skiles finally learns from his past foibles. And here's assuming he absolutely won't.

• • •

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, Rad E Cool, and wul.f for putting together the pieces on 2/3 of these, and I admit this -- the Sanders riddle was legitimately terrible.

• Player #301 draws free throws. He really doesn't do anything else of any perceivable note. Why did he have to attend my alma mater, again?

• Player #302 might be good -- as a rookie, he really surprised me. But as a sophomore (after a year out of the country), he surprised me again... in the opposite direction, a bit. At least the Swede's starting the year decently, and playing well for a team that's rather dismal.

• Player #303 is a massive downgrade from Quentin Richardson. He's young, but he's underutilized and his top-heavy team has to be looking to waive him and sign a better vet... right?

And we've hit the 300s! The end is nigh. Will again try for two today -- can I make it two days in a row? If so, check back around 5-6 ET for today's second installment.

• • •

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! This afternoon we continue with Mickael Pietrus, Andre Iguodala, and Earl Boykins.

• • •

Follow Mickael Pietrus on Twitter at @MickaelPietrus.

It's something of a pity that Mickael Pietrus has struggled over the last few years with freak injuries and game-sapping accidents. While he's never been a star-type player, or even a reliable roleplayer, he had promising seasons early in his career that made one think he had a shot to be something pretty good in the NBA. His sophomore season, Pietrus averaged 10-3-1 on just 20 minutes a game, which would translate to decent roleplayer status if he improved even the tiniest bit since then. His fourth year, he did a bit better and produced 11-5-1-1-1 averages on just 8 shots a game and 27 minutes a contest. Nothing world beating, of course -- he combined solid (although non-exceptional) perimeter defense with decent marksmanship from three and a nice knack for taking care of the ball in the few and far between times he handled it. But he's been extremely injured the last few years, which has detracted from his value quite a lot -- in the long view, he's a 36% three point shooter who's been money from the corners in his career. In the short view of last season, he was a slightly-above-average three point shooter on extremely low usage who takes 70% of his shots from three point range and provides little else of serious value. His defense has been touch-and-go since 2010, and his lingering knee problem last season dramatically harmed his defensive efficacy. The effort was still there, and he was still as intense as always -- he just wasn't getting nearly as much as he or the Celtics wanted out of his efforts.

As of yet, Pietrus remains unsigned. It's a little bit of an open question as to why, but not that much. There are two main teams that could clearly use him, right now -- the Lakers (who could use another body at the three to compensate for Artest's drop) or the Spurs (who currently have zero legitimate NBA small forwards on their roster while Leonard and Jackson recover from injuries). The big problem Pietrus faces is that of his previously-stated demands; his agent has stated outright that Pietrus is highly unlikely to accept any veteran's minimum contract for his efforts, and neither of the teams that need him really are in a position to offer him much more. Which leaves him in a bit of a jam. If he's healthy (as he's stated multiple times he is), he probably could be a helpful piece in the NBA. But he's only helpful on a team that could legitimately use a 3-and-D swingman with few tertiary skills and little room to improve -- IE, a veteran team that doesn't have the cap space to offer much beyond a minimum deal! So he sits in wait for a team to pick up his option, and hopes that by the time it happens he isn't too out of shape and out of practice to really contribute. It's rough, but he's been waived before and he's gone through the wringer. Can't imagine he'll get too bent out of shape about it. Good guy, from all accounts, and I think this video of him saying he loves the viewer in a terrifying voice will confuse and befuddle me always. Also, it's kind of a wonder more guys don't do this. Duncan and Pietrus seem to be the only two to do it with any regularity. Step up your broadcast mischief game, NBA.

• • •

_Follow Andre Iguodala on Twitter at __@mindofAI9.___

Many people don't really seem to gather exactly how good Andre Iguodala has been the last few years. Specifically, weirdly enough, the vast majority of Sixers fans I'm friends with. Evident example -- I remember talking with a friend of mine. Huge Sixers fan. It was back in the run-up to the 2011 season, during the summer doldrums. While I insisted that Iguodala was a high-quality player, he was having none of it. "He cannot score" said he. "His defense is not up to snuff" said he. "He's a ruthless, overpaid stat-padder who could be replaced by Evan Turner for less money" said he. And I shook my head, but reluctantly left the table to finish the conversation and get back to my job. As time went on, I felt that I both better understood and less agreed with his position, and a position I find relatively common among Philadelphia fans. There are three big table-legs that make Iguodala a fantastic NBA player. They are as follows:

• Andre Iguodala is the best perimeter defender in the NBA. Really. Few others are consistently anywhere close, in fact -- over the last two years, LeBron has been the only perimeter defender whose advanced metrics have touched Iggy's (although both Tony Allen and Avery Bradley at their best give them a run for their money), and LeBron has struggled with some element of disinterest in the regular season. Few seem to believe me on this, but it's a serious thing -- LeBron James is a phenomenal playoff defender and a best-in-class defensive talent due partly to his versatility and partly to his inherently smart approach he takes to defense. But he doesn't play out every possession at a breakneck pace, for good reason. He used to, when he was a younger man -- but last season LeBron seemed to come to the realization that it's exhausting and unnecessary to go as hard for a random November regular season game as one would for a playoff game in the eastern conference finals. Iguodala? At least in Philadelphia, he hardly had a possession all season he "took off". And he was the leading cog in one of the best defenses in the NBA, an all-engulfing talent that destroyed and obliterated star wing players every single night. It was uncanny. He defended the opposing team's best wing, helped on bigs, shaded rotations, and destroyed driving angles. I have no idea how he did it all and stayed healthy and engaged for the entirety of the 2012 season. It was a miracle of defensive accomplishment for Iguodala, and he should've gotten a lot more credit for it.

• Andre Iguodala is one of the best passing wings in basketball. This one is something most of his harshest critics will still begrudgingly admit, but I have an inkling that few people are aware of just how creative Iguodala is with his passing. He doesn't always break out the incredibly creative moves, and he's no savant a la Manu Ginobili. But he's EXTREMELY good. Not top-of-the-class, a la his perimeter defense. He's not the best passing wing -- I would say off the top of my head that Kirilenko, LeBron, and Kobe Bryant are inherently "better" passing talents than Iguodala (although Bryant doesn't use his talents nearly as much as the other three). But Iguodala has a creative spark that comes out every now and again, leading to beautiful plays like this phenomenal between the legs pass, this soft no-look behind the shoulder pass, or this quintessential use of a blown Thunder rotation to pass to himself for a pretty dunk. He isn't Steve Nash, but he's no Ramon Sessions either -- there's a hell of a lot of creativity behind his passing, something for which Iguodala rarely gets quite as much credit as he should.

• Andre Iguodala is one of the best finishers in the NBA. A lot of people understand that Iguodala is good at dunking. And he is -- consider last year, where Iguodala slammed in 89 dunks on 91 attempts, missing just two dunks in an entire season of action (ironically, both misses came against Boston in the playoffs, and both came in the last four games of Philadelphia's season -- he came remarkably close to going 100% on all dunk attempts in the 2012 season). He shot 48% on tip-ins, layups, and hook shots in the 2012 season, and did so despite grabbing his own offensive rebound with startling regularity. Last season, Iguodala's overall mark at the rim -- 75.2% -- was 7th overall in the entire league. If he actually would use his ability to get to the rim more often, Iguodala has the potential to be a startlingly effective scorer at this stage of his career.

As you might have realized while reading that last bulletpoint, though, there's something of a hollow problem in his offensive game. Simply put? For all the grief we give players like Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James for not going in the post and playing to their strength, we seem to fully exonerate Iguodala for -- quite literally -- having one of the worst efficiency-to-locale shot distributions in the entire league. You know how we get on J.R. Smith for shooting a lot of jumpers? Iguodala, last season, was far worse. Despite shooting 75% at the rim, only 25% of Iguodala's offense came there -- the average wing shot around 34% of their shots at the rim, for good reason. It's really efficient to do that. Iguodala preferred to coast outside the arc, shooting an absurd 64% of his shots from beyond 15 feet, something that would be quite nice if he was Ray Allen, but turned out to be somewhat of a waste given that he's not. He shot just 31% from the long two, and while he had a flukishly-good showing from the three point arc, it really remains to be seen if Iguodala can stay around 40% from three on a regular basis. Watching him do this -- game in and game out -- can be infuriating. And it can cause a lot of grief to fans that are forced to watch his semi-regular dismal offensive nights where he acts allergic to cutting, driving, or the concept of at-rim play.

The problem that most Philadelphia fans have with Iguodala -- it seems to me -- is that of poor timing and poor decisions. Sure, he's the greatest large forward passing talent the Sixers have had in the last decade. But why does he defer at every possible opportunity? Sure, he's a great perimeter defender. But why was he so fruitless at it while Iverson was at his best, and why did he only develop into a perfect complementary piece after Iverson had departed? Most of the Philadelphia fans I've met love Iverson, and for relatively good reason. But acting as Iverson's follow-up act has not suited Iguodala well, given his propensity for poor offensive decisions erring on the side of minimal usage and his generally low-key game. For every aspect of his game that Iverson imposes on his viewer, Iguodala ruminates and produces rumblings of tempered brilliance. He's a thinking fan's player who suited up to follow a player of visceral passions, and that (above all else) explains to me why Philadelphia never really caught on to Iguodala. It's like going to a wine tasting after pigging out at Taco Bell. Your crunchwrap supreme might have been delicious, but good luck appreciating a good Bordeaux while you try to get that volcano sauce aftertaste out of your craw. The tastes simply don't fit.

So, no. Really, I'm not that surprised that Iguodala got booed, and I'm not really mad at Philadelphia for booing him -- even if I think (as I do) that Iguodala is a fantastic player and one of the most underrated swingmen in the league. He's a sophisticated player with sophisticated flaws, and attempting to stomach Iguodala's complex game after Iverson's simple passions -- especially without the winning that Philadelphia fans have become accustomed to through osmosis from the Phillies and the Eagles -- was probably a bridge too far for Philadelphia. Here's hoping he finds a better role in Denver, exacts the same dominant defensive stylings elsewhere, and (of course) the obvious__: finally stops shooting so many long twos.__ Dear God, man.

• • •

Follow Earl Boykins, but don't be surprised if he escapes Tom's clutches into Jerry's lair.

When your claim to fame is that you're the Muggsy Bogues type "ridiculously small player" of your generation, you're going to have a legacy. Whether you like it or not. Look, I'm 6'4". I'm almost one foot taller than Earl Boykins -- an actual NBA player, I may remind you. This never ceases to amaze me. Consider it. He's probably shorter than most of our readers! He's shorter than me, than you, than all manner of individuals... and he not only made the NBA, he prospered in it. He wasn't great last season, and all things considered, he's probably out of the league at this point -- he's 36 years old, now, he cannot get his shot off, and he's having a lot of trouble staying with NBA quickness. I mean, he used to have trouble staying with NBA guards because he was a foot shorter than some of them. I'm pretty sure he still benches as much as he used to -- I distinctly remember seeing a story about how he could bench 300 pounds, which is insane for a guy his size. But strength isn't everything at a certain age. Now that he's gotten to the point where his natural quickness is waning and he can't stick with everyone like he used to, it's becoming more and more difficult to get him minutes. So I'm unsure whether he'll get a callback -- it's possible last season's short jaunt with the Rockets will end the ride, with this guy. But what a ride it's been.

Boykins has been -- if not phenomenal -- an insanely amusing player to watch in his 13 years in the league. Just look at what he did in the 2011 season, with the Milwaukee Bucks. Was there anyone who wasn't watching enraptured as Boykins filleted the Lakers defense in a game where the Bucks -- sans Bogut or Jennings -- demolished the Lakers by 19 points? Is there anyone who can honestly say they weren't completely floored when Boykins led the Bucks to a strong shellacking of the would-be champion Mavericks to open the 2011 calendar year? Boykins has spent his NBA career doing crazy things, and his diminutive size makes him a consistently entertaining presence to watch in a professional basketball game. His defense isn't great, given that almost every player in the league can simply shoot over him, but he's hardly useless -- his low center of gravity makes him quite adept at producing steals, and while he gambles very often, at his size the only real defensive weapon he's got is his ability to nick the ball. So I don't really blame him for gambling nearly as much as I'd blame a larger player. Look at it this way -- gambling makes sense for Boykins, because he has a lot to gain, but only a tiny bit to lose. ... Get it? Because he's tiny? I'm a riot, folks.

Anyway. Fun fact -- Earl Boykins came from the Cleveland area. This may come as something of a shocker, but given that fact, he might actually be one of the 5 or 6 best players to ever hail from that neck of the woods. You've got LeBron James, Charles Oakley, Nate Thurmond, Gus Johnson, and Stephen Curry. Boykins fits in right around those guys. He's right there! It's kind of like a race! LeBron James is driving ahead of Oakley and Thurmond in a Ferrari to their 1980 Oldsmobiles. Behind them, you have Stephen Curry trying to drive a broken-down Jetta with no tires and Gus Johnson screaming at his engine to move faster without realizing his keys aren't in the ignition. But then -- look! Earl Boykins, the boy-kin wonder, rollerskating his way into our hearts and dreams! Just like he did mine.

To conclude, I will now provide a list of every single player who has been blocked by Earl Boykins in their careers.

• Sam Cassell (x3)
• Tyronne Lue (x3)
• Mo Williams (x2)
• Eduardo Najera (x2)
• Damon Stoudemire (x2)
• Brevin Knight (x2)
• Bobby Jackson (x2)
• Dwyane Wade
• Steve Nash
• Jason Terry
• John Stockton
• David Wesley
• Sebastien Telfair
• Dan Dickau
• Earl Watson
• Wally Szczerbiak
• Rafer Alston
• Lionel Chalmers
• Ken McLeod
• Aaron Brooks
• Chauncey Billups
• Ramon Sessions
• Greivis Vasquez

This list is beautiful. It is a treasure. Thank you for sharing it with me.

• • •

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. Geezer, J, and @MillerNBA got 2/3 right. Good work to all three.

• Player #298 played himself in the movie Van Wilder. And that makes about as much sense as getting waived after starting a few games last season for a playoff team.

• Player #299 is on the slump-to-end-all-slumps to start the 2013 season. It took until the eighth game of his season for him to shoot over 50% in a single game. Really. Serious fact.

• Player #300 needs more minutes. And may get a coach fired, through no fault of his own -- his coach has been OK with his current team, but if he keeps burying Player #300, he may end up on the hot seat.

Two sets today? Will wonders ever cease? Join us tomorrow for two sets that will probably be significantly less interesting than today's two sets. Fly with the wind.

• • •

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

Good morning, dearest readers! After last week's installment of your favorite feature, we received a very encouraging e-mail which gave me a glimmer of hope in this ever dreadful, ever amoral world:

Hey Alex, huge fan here!

I've come upon a moral quandary while reading your work -- I'm a small market soul living in a big market town! While I'd like to blame my parents for conceiving me in such a soul-sucking, hope-trampling cesspool and making me a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers by pure proximity, I can't bring myself to it. I simply love them too much to do that... I guess that's some small market kindness shining through! Do you have any advice for me?

Sincerely, John H.

John, John, John... I am so happy you decided to write in to me because this is one of the very (very) few things I like to consider myself an expert on. Let me tell you the first thing about small markets - it doesn't matter where you live, it just matters how you live. You seem to be on a good start already with your kindness but you're going to have to prepare to rescind your Laker fandom and trade in your big market laurels for small market morals. The path to small markethood at heart is similar to that of the path to Nirvana - you must give up your material belongings and search your soul for the ethicality which defines the smaller markets. Only then can you truly forgive not only your parents but yourself as well, John. Godspeed.

• • •

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

Honestly, friends, I'm getting bored of having to write this week-in, week-out. It goes without saying that small markets continue to dominate the Association as we all expected. The solid team constructions of the Grizzlies and the Spurs (two best records in the league, naturally), as expected, are tearing through the league with elite-passing big men, efficient threes, and anti-coddling, old-school curmudgeons at the coaching helm. Meanwhile, the hapless big-market glitz of the Lakers has already led to another coaching change: Before they even gave him a chance, the vicious L.A. press has already ridden interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff out of town (to work as an assistant somewhere). In his place, the Lakers have hired Mike D'Antoni to try to right the ship. Surely D'Antoni will get the most out of these stars. Not so fast, though: Unfortunately for D'Antoni, his team's issues go much deeper than chemistry or system. His stars seem to have trouble buying into anyone's system (if you can't buy into class-act and defensive savant Mike Brown's rotations, there's something seriously wrong with you). It also doesn't help that the decadent Lakers management is known for panic-trading franchise players to small markets for pennies on the dollar, like they did with Marc Gasol 5 years ago.

Overall, the small marketeers are rejoicing and their owners are smoking environmentally friendly cigars made from the stolen asbestos insulation of decadent big-market buildings. Meanwhile the big market apologists in the press are surely concocting their latest defaming attack against one of our beloved stars -- remember that takedown piece they threw at our fabulous Frenchman Tony Parker? The implication that the French can be decadent makes me sick, and, as a Frenchman myself (call me ladies), makes me want to get up and express my anger though modern interpretive dance. This has been your Memphis School of Modern Dance "Expressive Outburst of the Week".

Memphis Modern Dance: Open Tuesdays Through Fridays.

• • •

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

First and foremost, I have terrible news for you - heavy favorite for the 2012/2013 NBA MVP award Mike Dunleavy couldn't come back from the devastating rumors that his father might become the head coach of the Lakers. Thankfully, someone has more than filled his shoes: Jimmer Fredette, step right up! In the Jimmer's second year in the league, he's shooting a lights out 51% from the field and is currently 12th in PER (Player Efficiency Rating) in the entire league. He's also no slacker in PERM (Player Efficiency Rating, Morally), currently sitting at 2nd behind the man who has run away with the PERM lead, Andrew Bynum. Jimmer famously attended Mormon stronghold BYU where he won the Naismith Player of The Year Award and led his community through such wholesome activities as "not drinking coffee", always wearing shirts with sleeves, and keeping that handsome face of his clean-shaven. Just look at him, up there, smiling as he prepares to set his teammates up or take a shot only if necessary in the flow of the game. It warms my heart... sorry, I drifted off for a moment there, cadets.

Anyway, some may complain about small sample size: "But Alex, what about the sample size in which Jimmer has been successful?" First of all, friend - this is Small Market Monday, not Small Sample Size Sunday, so I don't wanna hear all that mathematical mumbo-jumbo. Jimmer Fredette gave those minutes to his teammates to encourage team cohesion, and he did so even knowing that big-market shills for teams like the Clippers, jealous for playing time, would use his sacrifice against him in the MVP race. It's laughable to use it against him, and it's laughable that you think you understand sample size better than the 12th-most efficient player in the league. Until you bring a heartfelt discussion to the table, the Jumpin' Jimmer MVP hypetrain rolls on.

• • •

Small Market Mondays Game of the Night

Last week's game of the night was an absolute thriller of a match-up between the Bucks and Bobcats, one in which the 'Cats rallied back in the 4th quarter to win the game by a tightly contested 4 points. The biggest storyline of the night has to be the victorious team's leading scorer, Ramon Sessions, who - in a shameless quest for rings - left the .500 Lakers to join a winning squad in the Charlotte Bobcats. Razor Ramon paced the Kitties with 23 points off the bench, leaving Lakers fans everywhere to wonder if current starting point guard Darius Morris could score 23 points in a career. Just another big market to small market success story!

We have a heck of a slate in the world of basketball tonight, amigos. Perhaps my only regret about the evening's schedule is that our glorious Pacers don't play until tomorrow night, but that's for good reason - they need all the rest they can get to keep up with those hellacious Lakers tomorrow night. Our game of the night tonight has to be the San Antonio Spurs taking on the Washington Wizards, as it's a clash not only between basketball teams, but between ideologies as well. The successful CEO Spurs are taking on the hapless, winless minimum wage Wizards. Now, the Spurs have the second best record in the league and the Wizards have the worst - if you subscribe to the beliefs of some *cough, socialists, *cough* in this country, you'd think that the Wizards should occupy the Spurs team and force them to give up a hard-earned win to them for no reason at all.

But, thankfully, this is America where we put our success in our own hands. Look for the Spurs to teach the Wizards about small market values like picking yourself up by your bootstraps, supply side capitalism, and good old Ayn Randian individualism. Sure, the Wizards are missing their best player to injury ("Galt's Gulch" always sounded like some weird kidney ailment), but Tim Duncan tore his meniscus back in 2000 and look at the Spurs now! Multiple championships later, they've given up on making excuses and instead just make success for themselves. They built this paradise of unselfish passing on their own, without any help. Hopefully they'll teach the Wizards how to as well tonight.

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 Daequan Cook, Brandon Roy, and Jeff Foster.

• • •

Follow _Daequan Cook on Twitter at __@DC4Three.___

It's a well-worn trope -- "don't let the stars beat you." Don't let Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant kill you, so goes the wisdom. You can't just let Tony Parker and Tim Duncan tear you up. It's simply uncouth to let Melo score all of the points he needs. You need to accomplish the inconceivable. You need to shut down the stars, or make their shots impossible, and in the wake of so doing you need to allow everyone else on the team to beat you. If a good team is going to beat you, your chance will be "higher" if you simply shut down a team's stars and force the roleplayers to produce instead! Never fails, any time! Tried and true. Basketball gospel, not basketball lore -- it's reached the same apocryphal wisdom status as such hits as "shoot for the win on the road and shoot for OT at home" (regardless of, you know, age of your pieces and how harmful OT could potentially be), "bench a guy after 3 fouls even if they haven't fouled out in years (hello, LeBron), or "experience wins championships" (good players win championships -- experience alone wins you bingo night at the retirement home).

Here's the thing. Wisdom or not, I've never totally bought the idea. I understand the goal, here -- you want the defense to cordon off the star players to such a degree that a reasonably well-guarded shot by a great player's teammate becomes preferable to the great player's shot. In practice, there are two ways this turns out. In a world where a team is defensively dominant enough to "make [the roleplayers] beat you" without resorting to tricky double teams that leave incredibly high percentage options on the wings or the weakside, the whole trope is just stating the obvious -- "try to guard star players well." But in the other situation, the trope becomes actively harmful for defensive teams when they're even slightly outside the realm of "best-in-class". Because when you aren't a great defensive team, there's only one real way to effectively "shut down" a great player. Double teams. Simple, clean, ridiculous double teams to try and strip the ball or force the pass-out. Strategically, this tends to be a pretty poor play except in extremely important, high-leverage situations -- and I'd look at it thusly, even then. Let's say that a star player is such a good scorer that a single defender -- even a really good one! -- barely changes the bottom line for that player's scoring efficiency. So one-on-one coverage is useless, so to speak -- they'll be around peak efficiency even with a single very-good defender on him. You have to do double coverage or you derive no benefit. That's what most elite scorers do to defense, and where the "you need to shut him down" idea comes from.

Then you have Scrubs #1-4, surrounding the great player. Single coverage -- at least when players actually stick to their man -- generally bottles them up pretty well. None are great shakes at making contested shots, usually making around 10-20% of them... at best. But as with any NBA player, all of them can make a wide-open shot. Every single one. With relatively good percentages, too. And indeed, that's the problem! Superstars are great, but unless you're giving Durant wide-open threes on every single possession, a constant diet of double teams is going to lead you to give up dozens and dozens of wide-open shots for everyone else. And yes, maybe Durant's efficiency goes down enough to really give you a shot at pulling it out, if you double him viciously and everyone has a terrible shooting night. But when you're giving threes and layups that are open enough, there's no reason for that to be the assumption -- in fact, for the opposing team, leaving a bunch of open role-players may actually play the percentages a tiny bit better! What's the problem with actually letting Durant beat you? What's to say, in fact, that the chances of the star scoring 50 in a must-win game are probably slightly lower than NBA shooting scrubs converting 50-60% from three if you're leaving them completely wide open in efforts to double up and stifle the star?

I've yet to hear a particularly compelling argument otherwise. Perhaps the best argument in my favor would be the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, where Stan Van Gundy made the at-the-time inexplicable decision to go single coverage on LeBron, trusting that the Cavaliers would have more trouble scoring if he took away every non-LeBron option than if he doubled LeBron into oblivion. Mike Brown did the inverse, doubling Howard and trying to make anyone-but-Howard beat the Cavs. As it turned out, Rafer Alston, Rashard Lewis, and Hedo Turkoglu were more than happy to oblige if left open enough, and prove the somewhat obvious fact that NBA players can make wide open shooting practice threes if you shade too strongly on Howard. And Mo Williams, Delonte West, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas proved the also somewhat obvious NBA fact that if you simply stay at home on roleplayers and refuse to give them any open space, they have trouble producing you any offense whatsoever and your team will fold even with a godlike performance from your single-coverage guarded superstar. Needless to say, I don't think "letting the scrubs beat you" is a good strategy, at least not as it tends to be applied for below-elite defensive teams. But there's another problem as well. This one is more ephemeral, and more fandom-based.

You know that feeling you get when an elite player runs roughshod over your team? Imagine Jordan running over the 90s Cavaliers, Kobe over the 2010 Suns, LeBron over the 2012 Celtics. et cetera. It's not wonderful, but it's ever-present. A sort of "we can't really beat you" feeling you can't shake, but you can't really feel all that bad about either. But on the other hand? How hard is it to watch scrubs pick apart your team? Really! Do you have any idea how insanely awful it felt during the 2009 finals to watch Rashard Lewis, Rafer Freaking Alston (who was out of the league in two years!), and Hedo Turkoglu pick the Cavs apart? Do you comprehend just how awful it was to watch then-backup Goran Dragic completely obliterate the Spurs in a fourth quarter that very well seemed to end the Duncan years, at the time? And thus, we finally get to the actual subject of this capsule -- do you have even the slightest inkling of how freaking excruciating it was to watch when Daequan Cook buried two completely wide-open threes in a row in game 5 of the 2012 WCF, and ended up making up the entirety of the Thunder's final margin in just four minutes of burn?

Look. Much respect for Cook. He's carved out a patently decent career as a shooting specialist out of a relatively bare cupboard of talent. That's quite respectable. He's put in the hours and worked on his game and made himself into about as good an NBA player as anyone could've really hoped. He was a somewhat marginal player in Thad Matta's "Thad Five" at Ohio State. He won a three-point shootout. There are very few things he can do at an NBA level beyond the obvious "shoot three pointers" racket. But how am I supposed to really feel better about a loss if we get this loss because we triple-teamed Durant only to leave someone like Cook completely and utterly wide open in the same corner on two consecutive possessions? "Oh, wow, good thing we didn't let Durant beat us!" Why am I supposed to simply accept the conventional wisdom that letting Durant shoot a one-on-one jumper would've had a higher probability of success than two consecutive "it is virtually impossible you miss this" threes from one of the better three point shooters in the entire league? Because, well. I don't. I can't. And the conventional wisdom -- at least in this case -- is wrong. A team that isn't defensively dominant doesn't need to double just to explicitly "shut down" a specific player. It needs to figure out the best way to play the percentages and the best way to shade without throwing a full double team or leaving shots that are virtually impossible to miss. It needs to react like Stan Van Gundy reacted to the problem of the 2009 Cavaliers offense, not how Mike Brown reacted to the 2009 Magic offense. And it needs to stop giving Daequan Cook wide open threes.

They were wide open. THEY WERE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY OPEN.

(... look, I really loved the 2012 Spurs, okay?)

• • •

_Don't follow Brandon Roy's current game. Remember how he was, instead__.___

There's a certain ephemeral quality to a person's image that's always a bit tough to internalize, at least for me. I look back at the people who have left my life -- through death, drift, or decision -- and consider the way I look at them. It's never really fully representative to the depth of our prior relationship. Perhaps I'm thinking only of the good times and inexplicably gliding past the bad, as with my recent ex or my beloved departed grandparents. Perhaps I'm thinking of the bad alone, letting the sins override all comers in a mental leap for the sake of keeping things simple and eviscerating nuance. Perhaps I'm just forgetting, without any real internal subconscious motive or purpose. It all happens, and as far as I can tell, it all has the same internal reason. I'm -- in a strange way -- trying to come to terms with my own mortality, and a realization of my own flickering image through the realization of how inaccurate our snap impressions at any one moment are to begin with.

There are many things in this world we simply can't control, but chief among them is our inability to truly manage our own image. Sure, the rich and famous can try the good try, but in the end people will think of you as they'll think of you and you don't really have much control one way or the other. And as your skills fall off, your sins grow many, your life piles up and you can't do everything quite as well as you used to... things change. People lose their patience, people drift. And someday, you die -- and your image is no longer under your own power at all. People will think as they will and the only thing dissuading them from recency bias and knowledge of only your final, waning years will be unreliable second-party accounts of what you did or what you didn't do. Someday, your footprint fades. People may remember a few things you discovered, if you're really smart or really great. But they will completely forget who you really were.

But even while you're living large, nobody really knows who you are on the inside but you. By isolating my inability to provide correct and fully-nuanced snap judgments myself, I'm slowly realizing that death's treatment of your image is hardly that much worse than life's. To some extent, we're all actors in a limited-release play with no script and no real guidance to tell the audience what we're trying to do. Might as well try to enthrall while we're on stage and hope for the best, because there's never going to be an encore. And that brings us to today's second player -- Brandon Roy, the now oft-injured kneeless wonder. Image is extremely important to discuss a player like Roy. And it's important to use it to provide both a cautionary tale and adequate appreciation for who he really is. Brandon Roy is one of my favorite players ever. I also never -- EVER -- wanted to see him come back like this. I never wanted to watch as he struggles up the court, getting torched on defense and unable to get his legs under his shot. I never wanted to see what it would be like to watch a man with a truly arthritic knee fall victim to health and provide a dark reminder of how quickly a promising career can crumble to dust.

I don't like being this dark about an NBA player -- after all, it's simply basketball. But I find it viscerally awful and horrifying to watch Roy on the court right now. I honestly have had to turn some Wolves games off this year. Any higher power up there who has any say or vision into this must be a misanthrope. Only someone who hates us all would take from a man like Roy his beautiful gifts, adored by so many. He was one of the most captivating players I ever watched, and taking an eye to his current game is like being forced to grapple with the image of a person you don't want to change. A friend who's descending into depravity and horrors for no apparent reason. A loved one who no longer loves you back. A family member falling prey to madness and dementia. Nobody wants to change their image. But sometimes it's forced upon you. And all you can really hope for is that you never quite forget the electric feelings and love you held before -- the important moments, the exalted truths, the highlights of your lives together. Because you need that. I need that. We all need that.

Brandon Roy will never again be as I described just one year ago. He decided to come back. Love of the game, love of the sport, love of the roundball. A happy story, that. But the tragedy here -- insofar as basketball can provide -- is unmistakeable. A reminder of the things we'll all face, one day. Roy will have his moments. Nights of fleeting glory, possessions a shadow of the ones he used to have all day. But all things change, and nothing's static. He will never be the man he once was. He will never provide the same way he used to. He will never be Trouble B-Roy again -- he's fated to wander, a ghastly shell, a reminder of the fates no man can truly dodge.

And for that, we all suffer.

• • •

Follow Jeff Foster by practicing your mean-mugging banker face.

Around March of last season, Jeff Foster retired. This was met around the league with an air of general indifference, a sense that most had accepted him gone long ago. And perhaps that was apt. After all, although Foster was able to carve out a long and prosperous $50 million dollar career as an NBA player, he wasn't exactly a high-magnitude, high-impact player. He was a lucky man who ended up in the right situation with the right attitude over his entire career, and never really seemed to be on the verge of leaving even though he never had more than one or two NBA talents. Foster did two things -- he played physical post defense (although physical did not always mean good) and he rebounded the ball. That was it. Five of the top ten seasons for offensive rebounding over the duration of Foster's career belong to Foster. He was a phenomenal offensive rebounder, a shaky-but-sometimes-beastly sharp-elbowed defender, and about as utterly dismal from every other area of the court as a player could be without getting hoist by their own petard and thrown out the door immediately.

Were it not for Foster's fundamentally rare situation, we probably wouldn't be talking about him right now. I probably would've simply let the exclusion criteria for these 370 players leave him out, as it almost did. But in Foster's case, his situation with the Pacers demands he merit inclusion, a final note before he takes his leave and packs up into the wilderness. Jeff Foster, in the final tally, played 13 years with the Indiana Pacers. One team, his entire career. In those 13 years, Foster has managed to make a mark -- however small -- on every single important Pacers team of his era, good and bad. He was on the 2000 team, the motley crew that forced six games against a very good Laker team. He was on the 2004 team, the one that pushed the eventual champions more than a not very good Laker team did and the team that looked anointed before the 2005 season. He was also there for the fall, the nadir, and the long road back -- he suffered as any fan did with the aftermath of the brawl, and as the Pacers tore down and rebuilt, Foster eventually became the only core member of the Pacers with any experience playing winning basketball.

Longevity has its place. Foster became the Pacers' moral center, insofar as a basketball team could have one -- he became their soul. And as the Pacers crawled out of the muck and shambled towards relevance, Foster was their guidepost. He was the core of the team's identity, and the main reason they became what they were at their peak to finish last season -- a tough, gritty team with a bit of an edge but an always-respectable undercurrent guiding it. Jeff Foster isn't just a player. He's an insect set in amber, a carefully preserved reminder of the road the Pacers traveled and the direction they wanted to go. He's a player who -- despite, again, only having a single elite skill in a 13 year career -- inspired beautiful heartfelt appreciations and begrudging acceptance of his importance from Bulls fans who despised him. Jeff Foster is worth writing about, and he's worth remembering. He may not have been important on his own merits, but his impact on the overall attitude that this Pacers team brings to the table when it's rolling and his impact on the league as a whole is worth noting, remembering, and appreciating. If only just. Godspeed, Jeff Foster. May you become the greatest wingman in the world, using your single talent to lead many a-dumped men to the best rebounds of their lives.

• • •

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

• Player #295 would look awfully nice in the forum blue and gold, at least in D'Antoni's eyes. He might be washed up, honestly, but he'd likely be a far sight better than some of the refuse on their bench.

• Player #296 is the single best perimeter defender in the NBA. And in my opinion, nobody comes close.

• Player #297 is probably out of the league at this point. Goodbye, Spawn of Muggsy.

Happy weekdays. Surprise -- gonna be trying to get two sets of these things out per day, at least this week while I'm on vacation from work. Don't know how successful I'll be, but let's see if I can't get this next set up by around 3:00 ET today.

• • •

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 Shaun Livingston, C.J. Watson, and Samardo Samuels.

• • •

Follow Shaun Livingston by recouping in an impossible situation.

Shaun Livingston was traded to Milwaukee over the summer of 2011 as a piece of fodder in the curious Sacramento trade that managed to accomplish the rare trifecta of sending out a value player, moving DOWN in the draft, and ALSO taking on an onerous salary burden. I love talking about this trade, not because I dislike the Kings in particular but because doing all three of those in one trade is almost literally impossible. To fail in negotiation to the point that you are extracting quite literally no added benefit from the trade in either value players added, draft position, or salary space isn't just remarkable -- it's almost unprecedented. It isn't a very common thing. But this is a player capsule, not a "hilarious trades that make even less sense in retrospect" capsule, so I will regrettably sally forth beyond that. Livingston was traded to Milwaukee as part of the deal, as some of Charlotte's odd salary fodder to make sure the numbers worked. He entered the season with no guaranteed role in Milwaukee's depth chart. I'd say he did reasonably well, although there were a few causes for concern. He started the year with a string of good games that built Scott Skiles' trust in him, giving him a spot as one of the first few guards off the bench. Then Livingston's playing time and production lagged in March and April due to fatigue and Beno Udrih's strong finish to the season.

While Livingston didn't provide a massive impact for the Bucks, he was a steady presence and his offensive game (though scantly utilized) had several neat wrinkles. He remains one of the better at-rim finishing guards in the league -- he shot 64% at the rim last year, an excellent mark among NBA point guards. He continued his career-long trend of absolutely destroying point guards in the post, for the rare times he actually found himself matched on a point guard. He also displayed a reasonably good midrange shot, and averaged slightly more FTA per FGA than most point guards. On the downside, he produced these numbers while being woefully rarely utilized, even when he was on the floor -- he had one of the lowest usage rates among all NBA point guards and few were even anywhere close. His defense was strong, although it was far stronger when he matched up with point guards. The biggest issue with Livingston came less from his play and more from the way he was used -- the last two years, Skiles, Silas, and Brown have been unreasonably obsessed with playing Livingston as an off-ball shooting guard. He played 75% of his minutes with Brandon Jennings last year, in fact! It's mostly for his benefit, part of a concerted effort to get him more minutes to showcase his skills.

But therein lies the problem. He's really not a shooting guard. He has the size, but none of the fundamental skills really fit. His long range shooting is -- as mentioned -- awful. His passing is far better when he's got the levity to move with the ball and probe the defense himself, as he's not really used to pivot passing. He's bad at moving off the ball and awful at getting himself open when he doesn't have his dribble to rely on. And he's highly prone to turning the ball over on the catch. A lot of these issues either recede or become less noticeable when he's playing the point. But they also point to fundamental problems with Livingston's current incarnation of his game. The pivot passing problem isn't just one that plagues him off-ball, it also plagues him when he's running the show -- he's poor at plays more complicated than the simplest give-and-go, if he has to receive the ball again. And the lack of long range shooting can be problematic, especially when he's in a lineup that lacks serious outside shooting talent. Teams feel free to pack the paint and force him to chuck up long shots -- and generally, they'll either get that or a turnover.

This all conspires to sabotage Livingston's chances as anything more than a situational backup point guard at this stage of his career, with little upside as he begins to enter his past-prime years. It's not that he's a poor player -- he's solid, and he has a decent mix of talents. So long as you play him at point guard. But his borderline career-ending injury in the 2007 season (which I'd like to avoid talking about -- it still makes me really queasy) has altered his game to the point that he's never going to be all that much more than a backup, and he's got the regular issue where he's far better with the ball in his hands but almost any team that actually needs him has better players that need it more. Alas. It's a great story that he's been able to come back at all, but anyone hoping that Livingston sees a grand rekindling of his former talent may be waiting quite some time.

Just want to cover something before I leave the topic. It can't just be me, here -- doesn't Shaun Livingston now look like the spitting image of a young Andre Miller? I mean, it's uncanny. Here's a picture comparing the two -- sure, Miller has a few more wrinkles and a slightly more defined face shape due to his age, but it's INSANE how similar the overall facial structure is. Ears are similarly sized and shaped, eyes have the same general curvature, cheekbones the same height, beard the exact same style, lips the same size, and the proportions are all exactly the same. I don't know. In any event, I'm freaked out by how similar they look, and now suspect that Andre Miller was cloned in order to ensure the league would never be without his old-man game. All that needs to happen is for Livingston to stick in the league long enough to start spitting old man game. Here's hoping he does.

• • •

_Follow C.J. Watson on Twitter at __@quietstorm_32.___

I'm not a huge C.J. Watson guy, and to be completely honest with you, I think Watson's departure and subsequent replacement with Hinrich and Robinson was probably the only tangible depth upgrade the Bulls made last season. There are several reasons for this. First, his individual numbers were pretty bad. His excellent three point shooting season continued to obscure the fact that anything else he tried to do on offense ended in horrifying fashion -- he didn't even sniff 50% from the rim, and made only 24% of his 3-9 foot shots. He didn't draw fouls, and despite his offensive woes, he had a higher usage rate than 55% of all point guards -- which is absolutely absurd. His rebounding was poor, his overall tertiaries were awful, and he generally looked outmatched. Granted, he was being compared to Derrick Freaking Rose, but still. His passing needs work, too -- he's gotten better over time, but he still rates out as scarcely above average in assist rate and watching video on his passes makes you wonder how exactly he ever gets away with them. There isn't a lot of creativity there, and there's a lot of pass telegraphing that either goes unnoticed or that teams simply don't care enough to scout.

Second, though? Look at the team context. Because the Bulls looked horrendous with Watson on the court last year. Part of this was due to lineups -- Watson shared a lot of time with Boozer (around 70% of his minutes), who was also pretty awful last year. But you can't attribute everything to lineups -- in a pure starting swap-out of Watson for Rose, the lineup of Watson-Brewer-Deng-Boozer-Noah found itself outscored by a point per 100 possession over 270 minutes on the season. That's slightly difficult when the team was a really good team who -- overall -- outscored teams by about 7 points per 100 possessions. The general on/off stats bear this out -- the Bulls outscored teams by about 14 points per 100 possessions with Watson off the court and outscored teams by just two with him on the court, which is about the difference between being one of the greatest teams in the history of the league and being a borderline playoff team. Some of this is attributable to his defense. Unlike Lucas or Rose, Watson has no real ability to stay with point guards or cut off angles to the rim, and against Watson most NBA point guards found they had the ability to get to the rim with incredible ease.

But another large part of this is attributable to bad luck, as many guards had some miracle shots go in against Watson. And the last -- and largest -- part of this is the Occam's Razor answer: he simply isn't that good. In any event, there are some positive omens for him in Brooklyn. As the team is set to be significantly more offense-first, it's likely he'll have far better offensive players on the court to pass to at any given time. His poor defense will still harm the team, but probably not quite as much as it did when he was playing on a team that relied on next-level defense to blow teams out. If he can adjust to being more of a spot-up shooter -- and chucking a bit less than he does currently -- he could have a far nicer place on this team. Watson is 28, now, so his prospects of getting all that much better are minimal to none. On the plus side, he seems like a nice guy and he recently finished getting his degree. Always warms my heart a bit to see NBA guys finish their degree so they'll have something to lean on when the league passes them by.

• • •

_Follow Samardo Samuels on Twitter at __@samardo24.___

I've seen a surprising number of people openly ponder why exactly Samardo Samuels did not play more minutes last season. Although I suspect these people are secretly relatives and confidantes of Samuels rather than sincere fans of the man, I'll give these folks the benefit of the doubt and address these concerns honestly and fairly, in tried and true bulletpoint format. (I am using bulletpoints to represent, in exceedingly opaque fashion, the loaded "guns" Samardo Samuels is "packing" on the daily. I am stating this outright such that you will understand my pithy quip. I smile. You smile. There are smiles in this life.)

• Samardo Samuels shot in the bottom 25% of all big men from every range except midrange, on a dizzying array of "moves that do not work." From the midrange, he shot 9-of-15. In his career, he's an 13-of-29 shooter from that range. He was the Subway Sandwich Artist of NBA scoring.

• Samardo Samuels registered a top-7 turnover rate among NBA bigs last season. He did this despite barely ever even attempting to pass, which (when watching Synergy footage of his turnovers) makes his Synergy reels a hilariously prime candidate for wholly excessive Yakety Sax drops.

• Samardo Samuels understands defense only insofar as he understands that a player gets six fouls a game, and that fouls are an important part of the game that must be utilized at all costs. It is very important to use these fouls. #YOFO.

I hope this cleared a few things up.

One of my favorite summer storylines (in an odd way) was the unfettered glee of Cavs fans over Samardo Samuels' conditioning. And it's true -- he looked impressive. Sort of. He'd finally sloughed off his last layer of puppy-fat, and looked (if not phenomenal) at least slightly improved in summer league play. This was it. This was to be The Year of Samardo, as penned by Al Stewart and performed by Nick Cave. This hope and dream did not happen. At all. And while I was never really on-board the Samardo Express, I was interested to see if the hype would actually mean something. It did not. It emphatically did not. Which gets at an actually important point -- when you're in a league like the NBA, being in incredible physical shape isn't a marginal advantage, it's a necessity to even have a chance at being decent. The chance can still fail, and often does. When, like Samuels, you are short for the position with poor rebounding instincts and no defensive accomplishment? You can be the best-conditioned man in the gym. You're still not going to hack it on an NBA level if you don't develop your key NBA skills -- you just have a slightly higher shot at actually making it, is all.

And now, I present to you an old blog post from happier and more innocent times. It was the best of times, abreast of times. Back when we all sat in our dens and cardboard boxes and moon rovers and supped orange soda and dreamed a better life for our children. Back when nobody knew algebra and everyone knew about Alger, brah. In those days, we wondered aloud the question on the minds of a nation. "Samardo Samuels, do you partake in sex with men?"

Oh. That's good to know I guess. I was being really facetious, tho, I don't think anyone was actually wondering th--

... wait, what?

I won't spoil the whole story here. Too many sordid twists and turns. For more on Samardo Samuels coming to terms with his sex addiction, please take a closer look at Angelo Benedetti's hilarious blog post on the subject. "Keep it too urself tho."

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Props to Sir Thursday and Josh for collaborating on the riddle-solving and getting all of these folks right.

• Player #292 made two threes in last year's WCF that basically broke my back. Brought back images of 2010 Goran Dragic to float through my head. Awful stuff.
• Player #293's career depresses me greatly. I love him, but he probably shouldn't be back. Sometimes the body simply doesn't cooperate.
• Player #294 had a nice, long, prosperous NBA career. He never made a ton on a per-year basis, but when you stick around for 14 years, the cash adds up -- he made ~ $50 million large.

Also, Sir Thursday -- I'll try to update the directory today. It is actually getting a bit out of date, heh. I may try to post a final update for the week tonight, depending on how long I'm out of the house today. We'll see. If not, have a good weekend -- if so, see you later today, I suppose. (Have a good weekend anyway, though. That's required.)

• • •

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 Serge Ibaka, Jon Brockman, and Gerald Green.

• • •

_Follow Serge Ibaka on Twitter at __@sergeibaka9 .___

I understand the distaste for blocks. I really do. There are a surfeit of cautionary tales in the NBA, highlighting legitimately atrocious defensive players that have been lionized as defensive masterminds for the vast majority of their careers. Look at JaVale McGee, a player whose gaudy block totals utterly miss the point on his defensive failings. Look at Marcus Camby in his last few years, with his athleticism waning and his ability to cover pick and rolls fading. Look at Tyrus Thomas, whose high block rates have consistently hidden the fact that he's a relatively awful defender. Blocks are by definition useful -- it is a statistical fact that the opposing team shoots 0% on shots that are blocked. But it's more accurate to think of blocks as a matter of position, and a matter of percentages.

If you have a player like JaVale McGee, for every shot he blocks he has several each game where he got into position for the blocks but didn't get it, leaving the opponent open for a shot that any NBA player worth his salt could convert 70% of the time or more. Which is why being a good shot blocker isn't necessarily a positive thing for the defense -- that 0% on blocked shots is neat, but if they're shooting 70% on shots that player guards that aren't blocked, it becomes a matter of which they have more of. And even the NBA's BEST shot blockers only block one shot for every five or six field goals they guard. And if, like the defensively flawed block-masters, they're giving up easy position and easy buckets on the block attempts they don't convert? Well, that creates the equation:

You probably are aware of this already, but in case you aren't -- allowing 58% shooting is not a very good outcome for a defensive player. And these numbers will happen regularly to a shot blocker who hasn't learned how to keep his position and guard off the block. When the player keeps position well and can challenge for the block without substantially losing position -- like Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett -- they begin to add a lot more value. This is the dismal calculus behind the defensively moribund group that blocks a lot of shots but gives up open ones when they don't succeed, and this is why they don't really help a team's overall picture. A block -- in and of itself -- is a very useful tool. As I said -- the opposition shoots 0% on a blocked shot. By definition. But if a shot blocker's block position gets him out of position defensively, it can be hard to justify going for the block -- most players can't shoot 55-58% when they're guarded, and in the aggregate, it'd be better for most of these folks to focus on improving the all-around defense at the expense of the obvious block highlights. Fewer box score stats, sure. But it'd help the team, even if it isn't as visually jarring.

The thing that gets me about Serge Ibaka is that he's hardly the defensive sieve most take him for -- he's certainly not as good as some people think, but he's certainly not bad. There is a significant distinction between a player whose defense is poor-to-average and a player who's average. While Ibaka isn't in spitting distance of an elite defender -- yet -- he's a strong player with solid defensive fundamentals. His block totals are inflated and do include some questionable calls -- Ibaka's block totals are slightly better at home than away, and that's partly because he seems to get more leeway on goaltending calls when the Thunder are home. But if you look past the goaltending, Ibaka is a reasonably good defensive player close to the basket. He doesn't tend to let his block-hungry ways put him horribly out of position when he's defending a player one-on-one in the post, and that's the first step that a block wizard needs to take to become a positive defensive player in the aggregate. His main defensive problem is, ironically, the same exact problem that's dogging a rapidly aging Pau Gasol -- while Ibaka can guard close to the basket quite well and does have decent instincts to blow up weak-side play coverage with his blocks and steals, he simply cannot guard perimeter big men. At all. They either drive past him with impunity or bury a barrage of long range shots, and until he figures out a better way to defend them (or spends more time as the nominal paint-protecting center next to Nick Collison), he's going to run himself into trouble defensively. Despite his solid post defense, his inability to guard players like Bosh and Dirk and Jefferson consistently dogs him.

THAT is why he wasn't DPoY last year -- it wasn't that his block total was particularly false or unremarkable, or that he spends so much time hunting blocks he had no other defensive talents at all. He does. Watch him in the post, watch how he keeps position when he goes for block attempts -- he's improved dramatically, and he's approaching very good levels there. His problem is lacking defensive accomplishment on perimeter players and getting drawn outside the basket, not anything he's doing in the basket range. It's an important distinction, as one indicates a player who's merely average all over and the other indicates a high-quality defender with one key easy-to-exploit weakness that will hurt the Thunder until he figures it out. Also, he's an underrated offensive player who lacks a go-to move but who has a phenomenal long two point shot, electric finishing, a decent array of post moves, and a nose for scooping up offensive boards without ceding his ability to get back on defense that's absolutely crucial to the Thunder's offense -- without the extra possessions, they'd be somewhat pedestrian. But the extra possessions really help bring them over the top. Oh, also. Serge Ibaka made 12/12 shots in the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

... now, please excuse me while I go out back and vomit.

• • •

_Follow Jon Brockman on Twitter at __@MrJonBrockman.___

I'm really glad Jon Brockman made the cut. I have a TON of things to say about Jon Brockman, so it's good to finally get them out there. Brockman is the classic hammer-not-a-toolbox player -- he has a single skill. Not "oh, well, he can do ___ but also ___ a little worse" type. He legitimately can only do one thing. He can rebound. On an NBA level, he can't really do a damn thing otherwise, and last year put a strong and present emphasis on that fact. Jon Brockman:

• Shot 11-for-27 at the rim. That's... that's 40%. AT THE RIM.

• Was blocked eight times on the season. He registered one block himself. ... Not quite optimal.

• Posted a turnover rate of 16.2, one of the highest in the entire league.

On the other hand, the kid can rebound. Quite well. He earned playing time his rookie year in Sacramento by being relentless on the boards, and even as his playing time has evaporated in the last few years, his rebounding skill has remained. On his career, he's averaging an offensive rebound percentage of 15.2% (ridiculously good) and a defensive rebound percentage of 19.4% (also ridiculously good). If he had a single other skill -- just one other wrinkle to throw in with his rebounding -- he'd probably be in line for a decent post-rookie deal. But as the bulletpoints sort of indicate, he's quite lacking otherwise -- and that's only on offense. On defense he's been improperly miscast as a center the last few years, which has predictably drained his playing time as coaches realize he can't jump to contest and his lateral movement is low-tier for an NBA player. His rebounding is based more on hard work and effort than inherent athletic skill, and that effort doesn't translate well when he's guarding players that have 5-6 inches on his 6'7" frame.

He was traded this summer to Houston's veritable army of oddly sized fours, and actually ended up getting waived right before the season began. This made me sad, a bit. Not because Brockman is great, or even a good fit -- he was a good choice for a waiver by the Rockets, as he's a situational player whose situational skill is fully covered by Parsons and Asik. It made me sad because he missed much of training camp after a freak injury where a workout elastic band slipped off his foot and recoiled to hit him in the eye. He had to be hospitalized and missed much of camp, which is always sad to see -- you never like seeing roleplayers like Brockman miss camp with freak injuries, knowing that the only way they really had available to make the team in the first place was to prove that they'd improved with a good training camp. This also makes me sad because I like using the "Brock Ness Monster" nickname, even if it is incredibly played out.

And that's all she wrote. Good luck getting back into the league, Nessie.

(By the way, the intro was a joke. As probably became obvious about 5 sentences in, I had -- and still have -- virtually nothing to say about Jon Brockman. Alas.)

• • •

Follow Gerald Green by hitting the trail on the iron rail, way out there alone.

Gerald Green did a very good job on the court last year. He did a good enough job that most people don't fully recognize how ridiculously above expectations he was playing. Here are some facts about Gerald Green's patently ridiculous performance in his 5th year as a classic journeyman: Green shot in the top half of all shooting guards from every single one of the Hoopdata "cardinal ranges" -- at the rim, from 3-9 feet, 10-15 feet, 16-23 feet, and three pointers. This included 71% at the rim (the only guard/forward who took more shots and shot better than Green from that range was Manu Ginobili) and 64% from 3-9 feet. The 3-9 foot mark is good enough it deserves special mention. Most people expect that NBA players convert a lot of their shots from 3-9 feet -- it's reasonably close to the basket, and classic post move territory.

In practice, this assumption is ridiculously false. NBA big men average 39% from 3-9 feet, NBA wings average 35% from 3-9 feet, and point guards average 36% from 3-9 feet -- if you go by league averages, shots of the 3-9 foot persuasion are actually less effective than long midrange jumpers or midrange shots. Significantly so. There were 168 players last year who averaged over 25 minutes a night -- only 11 of them shot over 50% on 3-9 foot shots. The 3-9 foot post-up is an aesthetically pleasing sight, but it's one that has been becoming less and less useful over time. Which makes Green's mark last season all the more impressive -- shooting 64% from 3-9 feet completely blows away the shooting guard average of 35%, and makes the 3-9 foot shot a legitimately useful offensive weapon. Green made the Nets offense a full 4 points per 100 possessions better when he took the court last season, and being able to turn traditionally atrocious offensive ranges into legitimate threats was one of the main reasons why. (It also didn't hurt that he, again, shot above-average from every single place on the court. Wanted to space the floor? Send him out for his improved perimeter game. Wanted to get in close? The man rocked rims like a high school battle of the garage bands, wouldn't you know.)

If you really wanted to nitpick, you could find a few things wrong with his game last season. His defense was -- while statistically proficient -- partly backed by playing the weakest perimeter player the Nets could safely hide him on. It was also backed by his dismal backups -- your on/off court stats tend to look really good when your backups are completely awful, and with noted sieve MarShon Brooks behind him, Green's defense tended to look a bit better by the numbers than it actually was. Not that it was bad, just not quite as good as numbers would indicate. You also could nitpick about his sticky fingers -- when Green got the ball last season, he barely ever passed up a shot, and posted one of the lowest assist rates among all the guard/forwards in the league. But you could also nitpick by saying his usage was a bit low for someone who was having an offensive season as lights-out as Green was, so taking that criticism in context of the assist rate criticism, you get a less-critical look that's far more leaning to the side of Green doing everything he could possibly do to use offensive possessions at the expense of teammates that simply couldn't make a shot.

Pretty crazy stuff. Unfortunately for him, some of this can probably be safely considered a fluke. If Gerald Green can consistently make that sort of a percentage from 3-9 feet, he may end up being the best short-range finishing guard of this generation. I have a distinct feeling that's not going to happen. And as efficient as he was, it's also worth noting that absolutely nobody was struggling when facing the late-season Nets last year. The Nets were atrocious, and it does to some level remain to be seen what Green does on a team where other teams actually feel the need to scout for him. So far, the verdict hasn't been great out of Indiana -- his struggles have been one of the main reasons the Pacers have struggled, and while I highly expect him to rebound, it's definitely an inauspicious start for the poor guy. But I wouldn't dwell on it much -- it's doubtful he will. Green is used to far more substantial problems than a ill-starting slump on a new contract, as he's one of very few players to have been cut in every league he ever played for. He was cut by his high school team, despite being a McDonald's All-American. He was cut by the Houston Rockets. He was cut by an overseas team after 3 years abroad, and had he not gotten a D-League call-up in the middle of last season, he may have abandoned basketball altogether.

But he got called up, he performed incredibly well, and now he's a key rotation piece on an Indiana team that (while poor now) should end the season playing quite good ball. The man has fought back from a dismal start to his career and made something of himself. I have a lot of respect for Gerald Green's struggle, and while I get that Indiana fans may be disappointed with him so far, give him a chance -- the man's a hard worker who has more than put in his time. Let him prove his worth.

Good luck out there, Gerald.

• • •

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, Chilai, Der_K, and Sir Thursday correctly isolated the 3/3 guess. Good work fellas. (I believe you are all fellas. If I am wrong, I greatly apologize.)

• Player #289 looks exactly like Andre Miller now. EXACTLY. I was really confused when I started watching his new team the first game after they signed him.

• Player #290 is one of the few players Chicago lost that didn't really matter -- he was not a very good bench player and they probably upgraded on him. He's been even worse to start this season, too, so that's... that's a thing, I guess.

• Repeat after me: Player #291 went to St. Benedicts. Ergo, he does not have sexual feelings for men. In a similar story, I'm afraid of spiders, so I cannot safely use the World Wide Web.

I'm in Arizona now. Feels weird, bro.

• • •

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 Brook Lopez, Eric Gordon, and Steve Novak.

• • •

Follow__ Brook Lopez__ by engaging in chill time with the Green Lantern.

It took a while, but I've finally bought in. Thanks to constant bickering with @uuords and other Nets fans, I've come to believe something I never thought I'd say -- over the full season, Brook Lopez has a reasonably good shot at__ improving the Nets' defense. I had to watch a bunch of tape to really buy into the idea, especially since I still don't think Lopez is a positive contributor on that end. Because I don't. At all. Lopez is flat-footed and oftentimes virtually immobile on the defensive end. He covers pick and rolls about as effectively as I'd cover a whale, and his shot blocking -- while decent by the numbers -- tends to vastly overstate his ability to defend the post. He blocks shots, but he doesn't really get good position on any of the blocks, and he's got a bad habit of letting slick big men slip behind him for easy off-hand layups. Compounding the problem, Lopez is consistently slow to get back in transition, and that's not a skill that's likely to get much better any time soon -- in dealing his somewhat tricky foot problems, the chances of Lopez seriously going all-out to stop a transition break end-to-end on a regular basis are minimal to none. As with any seven footer, actually.

But here's the thing. I'm a big fan of analysis by replacement, especially when dealing with teams like this year's Nets, who are featuring key new pieces and a generally completely revamped roster. And while I think Lopez is a pretty poor defender, I also think he's dramatically better than anything the Nets put on the court last season at the center position. Consider -- the 2012 Nets were a team that was giving Johan Petro, the hollow husk of Mehmet Okur, and the shadow of Shelden Williams serious burn at the center position. On offense, Lopez -- a legitimately talented post player and a serious midrange shooter despite his enormous size -- is an obvious upgrade to anything the Nets put out in the frontcourt. But on defense, despite his faults, Lopez is STILL an upgrade. Consider his intrinsic skills versus any of those three players:

• Johan Petro is exceedingly slow -- he's as slow as Lopez, but without any of the strength. His pick and roll coverage is quite literally just as bad, and unlike Lopez, he isn't even a largebody center to make up for it. He's 7'0", but clearly stands a shade under Lopez and fouls roughly once every 7 minutes on the court, a pretty ridiculous rate.

• Mehmet Okur finally lost it in 2012. He was playing injured, sure, but the man simply couldn't move at an NBA level anymore. He couldn't jump adequately, he couldn't pretend to front a man in the post, and his pick and roll coverage was confused and hesitant.

• Shelden Williams is 6'9". According to his team-reported height, at least. I'd venture he's more of a 6'8" or 6'7", watching him on the court and comparing him to guards and the centers he'd face. I entreat you -- go find someone who you've got 5-6 inches on and see how effectively he fronts you in the post. And... yep, that's the joke.

Lopez is an exceedingly disappointing defender for his size. His mobility is such that you really wonder how high his ceiling is on that end, and his rebounding (which is excruciatingly disappointing for his size and skill level) tends to indicate a player whose defensive engagement is decidedly less than it should be. But even with his foibles, even with his flaws? I cannot in good conscience say that Brook Lopez is going to do a markedly worse job defending the post than the Petro/Okur/Williams pu pu platter Avery Johnson put out last season. Simply can't. None of those three players bring any discernible defensive skills to the table -- at least Lopez is 7 feet tall with a strong frame and a decent head on his shoulders. And now that the Nets have a team that actually has a good cast around Lopez and Williams, chances are reasonably high they can develop a system around those several "talents" that at least improves the Nets a slight bit on the defensive end. I'm dubious about claims that they'll be above average, but they could scrape league average with Brook Lopez manning the middle. Especially if they keep developing new schemes like the ones they showed off in their first game.

Some fun facts about Brook Lopez. Off the court, he's best described as a "chill surfer bro who likes comic books and jokes." Emphasis on the comic books, actually. Do you remember when the NBA commissioned Marvel to draw team covers based on various superheroes? Lopez does, and due to his being a massive comics aficionado, ESPN's J.A. Adande interviewed him to prove whether Lopez really was a comic guy or not by quizzing him on the identity of some of the more obscure covers. Shockingly, Lopez got them all without skipping a beat, including some obscure comic named "Alpha Flight" that I had honestly never heard of before. So good on him. He and his brother are also writing a comic book, which makes me think I really need to meet up with Lopez and give him some tips. I once wrote and drew a comic book approaching Rod Blagojevich through the lens of "The Grand Inquisitor" and Joe Biden's thirst for humanity's ever-present end. This, I feel, makes me an expert on the subject and a clearly credentialed advice-giving gentleman in the field of comic books. So, yeah. Hit me up whenever, Brook. I have some great tips for you.

• • •

_Follow Eric Gordon on Twitter at __@TheofficialEG10.___

When healthy, Eric Gordon is a max-level player. Most people don't remember quite how good he was with the Clippers, but it bears repeating -- in the pre-Paul era, the Clippers were 48-70 with Gordon and 13-35 without him. He vastly improved the look of that Clipper team, in a way that neither Blake Griffin or any of the Clippers' other players could. What most people don't quite understand, though, is that his main use isn't necessarily on the offensive end -- Gordon is a phenomenal scorer, and absolutely one of the best scoring guards in the game. But he's even better on the defensive end, where he has a borderline perfect combination of grit, footwork, and weight to effectively challenge just about any perimeter player in the NBA. Despite being a bit short for a perimeter player, he plays defense in the Avery Bradley mold -- gets up in a player's grill, uses his speed to stay with him without lunging, and uses his surprisingly heavy weight for a little guy to body guys up if anyone tries to post him up. What's more, he has a genuinely excellent sense of when to poke the ball away and when to stay put on his man -- he recovers well off of steal attempts despite regularly converting more of them than almost anyone in the league.

As for his scoring, he can kill you from anywhere -- his shot looked pretty off last year, but when healthy, Gordon is an absolutely lights-out shooter. His three point shot is one of the purest of any young guard, and he's traditionally been great at it -- over 35% from three in every year but last year, and a high-usage 37% on his career so far. He generally shoots an above-position-average percentage from every range on the floor, despite having spent most of his career as the primary scoring option on his (albeit awful) teams. Even if the team is awful, it takes a seriously skilled player to put up an efficient and comprehensive scoring package when faced with the number of doubles and traps that Gordon faced with the Clippers in his first few years and the Hornets last year. Additionally, he's gradually improved his ability to get to the line, which has helped his efficiency even more. I don't think there should be any real doubt that Gordon -- when healthy, exogenous to all personal complaints -- really does deserve his max deal. He's one of the better bulldog perimeter defenders in the NBA when he's locked in, he's the best shooter under 25, and he's been gradually making his game more efficient. Gordon is really, really good. And extremely slept on.

Of course, then there's the injury thing.

... And the "selling out your coach and team" thing.

... And the inexplicable comments he's made to the media lately.

So, there's that. I have a friend who went to Illinois who absolutely despises Gordon, and has spent the last 2 or 3 years vehemently insisting that eventually the NBA would be made to see what a jerk he was. I didn't really believe him, but I can safely say I was mistaken -- the Eric Gordon saga has gone on to the point that I can't reasonably assert otherwise. On a smaller scale, he's essentially doing exactly the same thing Dwight Howard did in Orlando -- he's putting unreasonable pressure on the Hornets to not only give him the money he wants, but move him to whatever city he wants for cents on the dollar! I understand that Gordon wants to go to Phoenix, and I understand that he never really had much of a choice as to whether he'd get moved in the Chris Paul trade. But completely unloading on the franchise you're (theoretically) going to play for while outright refusing to build a productive relationship with your extremely solid young coach or anyone else on the team is really not the way to go.

The lack of transparency from both sides in the Gordon affair is stunning, and while it doesn't reflect immensely well on the Hornets, there's no doubt in my mind it reflects far worse on Gordon. If he feels pain, he should be able to convince the organization of it without resorting to a media middleman. He should be able to describe it without contradicting himself. And he should be able to give a better answer than "out indefinitely" when asked whether he'd be back this season. I'm not sure whether the injuries are structural or not, and frankly, it certainly doesn't seem like he has much of an idea himself. If they are, the Hornets and Gordon need to patch things up and figure out how to address the media in concert -- if they aren't, then what the hell is going on? All that said, I really love watching Gordon, and I'm really hoping he comes back strong soon. His shooting stroke is brilliant, and there's honestly nothing quite like watching Eric Gordon play defense when he's locked in. I'll share -- here's my absolute favorite basketball-related Youtube video. Not a Spur, not a Cav, not even an NBA play -- it's Eric Gordon playing NASTY defense in the 2010 gold medal game.

Seriously, watch this clip. Watch it once, watch it twice, buy a digital picture frame and put it on eternal repeat. It's the best single-man defensive possession I've ever seen and few are anywhere close. It's art. Gordon switches onto three men in the course of one possession, single-handedly cuts off two open driving lanes, denies the ball to a good Turkish shooter, and almost steals the ball 4 times. And he doesn't even just force a bad shot -- he forces an ERASED shot, blocking the ball off a three point shooter into the crowd! Yes, yes. International game. I don't care. This is one of the gems. Get better, Gordon. Really need to see you doing this in the NBA again, because my God, it's fun to watch.

• • •

_Follow Steve Novak on Twitter at __@stevenovak20.___

This summer, the New York Knicks made several seemingly strange decisions, when it came to the personnel they signed and the direction they decided to go as a unit. To this point, it's all coming up roses for them. Kidd has been great, and with Felton looking decent and Lin looking hobbled, they look (for now) like a team whose moves were a bit smarter than the commentariat -- myself included! -- had initially expected. So, long story short, I may have been a bit over-agressive in my critique the moves, and would like to publicly admit that. The Knicks seem to be in the clear, at least for now -- my thought after the signings was less that they were individually poor moves and more that as a whole they left a team with few internal avenues for improvement with players that would only last one or two more years, if even that. Basically, the idea that the Knicks team we see now is the best Knicks team we'll see with this core. But given that this Knicks team does look like a minor contender with Melo playing like he is and the cast stepping up, that's not a terrible place to be after years of being a marginalized lottery team with an outsized payroll and a dismal organization.

All that said, there was one move I really liked for the Knicks even before I got a chance to watch this team on the floor, even if it was rather quiet. That move was signing a 28-year-old Steve Novak to a 4-year, $15 million deal. On its face, it seems pretty marginal -- and I suppose it was. But I can't get over how good of a price that is for someone with an outsized impact. Steve Novak is essentially Matt Bonner with a more conventional shot release -- it doesn't take him 15 years to get off his shot, and in fact, he's quick enough with it that he's in Korver's general sphere as one of the quickest shooters in the league. Almost every NBA player makes 50-60% of their threes in practice, but Novak's pinpoint form and incredible command of the three is almost surreal. I read once that the Spurs do a general shooting competition in practice, and someone in the front office keeps statistics on what percentages players shoot. Matt Bonner tended to win them, before Novak showed up in late 2011. After that? Novak won just about every internal three point competition for months, shooting some insane number like 95% on his practice threes. Steve Novak is REALLY GOOD at shooting threes, is the main takeaway here.

And unlike Bonner, his more conventional (albeit extremely quick) release doesn't become instantly less useful in a playoff situation -- in fact, because of his quick trigger, players like Korver and Novak actually become more useful in playoff scenarios. Essentially, if they get even a sliver of open airspace, they can hoist an open three. Matt Bonner, conversely, needs roughly twelve blocks of open space in the playoffs to shoot an open three -- the more athletic defenders that good teams have in droves always swarm him mercilessly, and with his slow release, he can never seem to get a legitimately open shot off in a playoff scenario. Novak is completely different, and while they're similarly worthless inside the arc, defensively, and on the boards... Novak's ability to shoot quickly and accurately gives him serious value in playoff situations and as a floor-spacing wizard in the regular season. The attention Novak demands helps shooters like Felton, Kidd, and Smith get more open. It helps free the paint up for more drives. And it's simply an efficient, effective, and proven offensive weapon that helps the Knicks' spacing and helps the machine work, and they locked a great shooter down in his shooting prime for less than $4 million a year. Sounds pretty solid to me. Great move by the Knicks.

• • •

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. Only four people guessed yesterday. That's the fewest we've had since, like, EARLY capsule days! Crazy. Anyway, shout-out for 2/3 guesses from Mike L, Sir Thursday, and Chilai.

• Player #286 blocks shots. A lot of them. He also was metaphorically robbed during the all-star break last year... which he responded to by coming a hair away from metaphorically robbing NBA history to end the season.

• Capsule #287 features a player whose silly Loch Ness inspired nickname is far more notable than... well, anything about his game.

• Player #288 is living the dream. Quixotic, almost-out-of-the-league journeyman to a reasonably paid spot starter. Good work. "Make that green, son."

I'm going to a Mark Knopfler & Bob Dylan concert tonight! Knopfler's my favorite ever, and Dylan's one of my favs as well. I even ponied up and got some seriously decent seats. Exciting times in the life of Aaron McGuire, folks.

• • •

“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.” -- Leo Tolstoy

Death approached the entrance to Manu Ginobili's childhood home. The lonely ghoulish figure rapped his skeletal fingers on the door, as per his usual -- once to notice, twice to affect, thrice to open. Tap. Tap. Tap. The locked door swung open on its hinges. He slid into the house, closing the door quietly behind him. A cat hissed. A gesture was made. The cat fell softly into a good night's sleep. Death was not cruel. He would not kill, at least not indiscriminately. He was tasked only to take, to claim what was rightfully his. That is Death's dictate. His curse, as some say.

Manu Ginobili had been a great player for a long time. But nothing lasts forever. No player is immune to age, to the slow churn of skills lost and injuries accrued. And Death was there to exact his dismal calculus. Another withdrawal from a major athlete's bank of tricks. Sometimes a player's bag is so full that his taking is imperceptible. Nash, Malone, Duncan. Other times, he goes a bit overboard -- he will never forget his mistaken sleight of hand with the great Muhammad Ali. Tonight, he needed to make a large withdrawal -- Manu had dodged him for several years, predicting his approach and hiding out away from it all. The game was growing tiresome.

As Death stepped through the home, he could find no sign of the man he knew was there.

• • •

There is one thing Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs that, in his absence, may never be properly replicated.

"Chaos."

In previous editions of these capsules, I've talked of many ways that various Spurs have helped their teams. I've talked of Tony Parker's cubist bent, Tim Duncan's rocksteady foundation, and Kawhi Leonard's evolving role as the one to throw the finishing punch. All of these are important and essential. Without Parker's artistic command of the floor, there'd be scant next-level cohesion on a team built around the outsized achievements of roleplayers and Death-defying talents of once-great superstars. Without Tim Duncan, there would be nothing. Without Kawhi Leonard's development from the finishing punch to the intermediate barrage, the Spurs' days as a contender may be numbered. These are all important.

But Manu brings something very different. Gary Neal comes closest, but with Neal, there's this unstated knowledge that any useful possession will end in the creation of a Neal shot -- from anywhere, mind you, but a shot all the same. Manu does not bring any specific, intrinsic skill. He is a talented shooter, a deft defender, an incredible passer. But there's a fundamentally different look that Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs with every lurch and shot he takes -- there's a wholescale impact Ginobili has on the team as a whole. The pace quickens, the heart trembles, the fans cheer raucously.

This general feeling is exemplified by one of his signature moves, one that few realize is as impossibly difficult as it is. Manu Ginobili is the master of the step-back in-motion three -- takes a dribble right, steps back into his shooting motion, launches an (often) quite well-guarded three from above the key. Some imagine this to be relatively easy. They are wrong. When you get a minute, go to the nearest basketball court with a ball, a friend, and a tape measure. Measure out an NBA-distance three-point line. Dribble around it, imagining defenders and teammates beside you. Embrace the ball, the line, and the moment. Dribble, dribble, dribble. Step-back, cradle, launch. As quickly as Manu does it, please. Wait longingly and watch as the ball sails through the air. Hold your form, if you'd like to look like an idiot.

Because nine times out of ten, you'll miss the basket by four to five feet.

Why? Because it's not a shot that normal people can make. It's not a shot normal NBA players can make. To truly master a shot like that requires a supernatural knowledge of one's own momentum, space, and distance. Few NBA players can seriously incorporate a shot like that into their games -- with the speed that Ginobili launches it -- with the remotest efficacy. Kobe Bryant, one of the few players who can profess to make shots like that with little to no regard to their likelihoods or physical impossibility, considers Manu Ginobili one of the players he most respects, and one of the few he most enjoys playing against. The feeling is mutual. Ginobili owns five signed jerseys that hang in his Argentina home. Kobe Bryant is one of those five.

"Game recognize game."

• • •

Hearing noises, Death slid to a window. Manu Ginobili was outside, dribbling in the driveway. Death could not understand how Ginobili had gotten past him, or exited the house in the first place -- Death has always been good at waiting, good at watching. He had known Ginobili was home, and he'd thought that he'd covered every exit. But apparently not. Death stared upon Ginobili's frame, as he crossed over phantasms and the ghoulish creations of his imagination. He sighed. It was time.

But he stood, captivated. Death sees your thoughts and your soul, without exception -- he saw things the way that his prey saw things, as though partial to a silver screen show of thoughts and dreams that only Death and his targets could experience. It was as though Ginobili had believed so readily, so truthfully, so morbidly that he'd brought his phantasms to life. And there he stood, besides a willowy Duncan and a semi-transparent Nowitzki. Kidd, Kobe, Garnett -- the signed jerseys on his wall -- all seemed to rise from the ground around Ginobili. He joked -- if only to himself -- and the ghosts of the living laughed with him.

And then the games began.

It was a driveway. A street. A court with no discernable dimensions. There were no fouls, there was no referee, there were only shots and passes. Ginobili would cross over behind a bush, the shrubbery a clearly-immobile screen to lose Bryant's coverage. He threw a pinpoint pass to Duncan, who made a 40-foot basket as though he was centimeters from the rim. There were images, moments, and fragments of time. And then the seminal moments of Manu's young life began to cycle. His first Euroleague title, as he drained baskets over Elmer Bennett and finished off a hard-fought Game #5 victory. His Olympic Gold, and his dizzying 29 point performance over a USA team that had no answer to his brilliance. His array of clutch shots and backbreaking threes to help the Spurs past the defending champions in 2005.

And then the mistakes, the disappointments. Good players note their successes and revel in them -- better players stew in their mistakes and use them as ammunition. The missed opportunity in 2006, the last-second foul that gave the dread Mavericks the tie and the series in a year the Spurs could've won a title -- the anguish and heartbreak replayed in living color. Losing out on a medal in his final year as an Olympian. The final game of the 2012 season, where his Spurs led going into the final quarter but discovered that the closer could not close out Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook quite that easily. The games strung together into a tapestry of ghostly memories. And then, as though the reel flickered, the memories faded, and the asphalt and concrete returned to true form once more.

But Death started in shock.

Ginobili -- as though he'd known Death was watching -- was nowhere to be found.

• • •

Manu Ginobili does not exist to impress you.

Manu Ginobili does not exist to the drone of mindless accolades.

Manu Ginobili exists to impress upon you. Manu Ginobili exists to become the player that nobody but he knew he could be, with his conscience true and public validation unnecessary. Manu Ginobili exists to use basketball as a canvas, to lay bare the contents of his soul and the beat of his heart. Manu Ginobili exists because his athletic betters getting consistently styled on by a grinning and balding Argentinian is an essential experience without which the NBA would never be complete. Manu Ginobili exists.

And thank God for that.

• • •

Running out the door, Death knew he had lost. Once again, Death had missed his shot. His prey was nowhere to be found. He spat in idle fury -- the grass below his feet turned to dust and withered. This cat and mouse game would end, someday. Death would find him, Ginobili would lose, and his dictate would be fulfilled once more. The inexplicable skills at accomplishing the impossible would fade, leaving only a flickering memory and the whispers of ticker-tape parades long past. Manu Ginobili would be mortal.

But not quite yet.

Death reached into his pocket for a cigarette, his favorite of the ironic sins. But there was something else. He drew from his pocket a note of folded paper, and unfurled it curiously as he lit his latest cancer-stick. He smiled in spite of himself. As frustrating as this stupid chase was, someday, he would miss this. Confronted with man's mortality, some speed their demise with every debauchery imaginable. Some make incremental steps towards a slightly longer life. Some become different people. And others? New tricks, clever schemes, and impossible twists abound in their favor. They will not master Death. Nobody does. But they shall stave it on their own terms, an archipelago of steely-eyed determination and grit, in hopes that their guile will impress the tides of fate.

And there had to be some respect for that. Begrudging though it may be.

Throwing the note aside, Death ambled quietly into the darkened street corner. Alone, once again.

"Not quite ready yet, friend. When I am, you'll be the first to know. -- Manu"

• • •

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the San Antonio Spurs, visit the Spurs 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 a foreign-born rogues gallery -- Luis Scola, Manu Ginobili, and Leandro Barbosa.

• • •

Follow Luis Scola on Twitter at @LScola4.

It's worth noting -- before one mentions his NBA foibles -- that Luis Scola's international career is fantastic. He was a key contributor on Argentina's golden generation of Olympic teams, and while many will remember Manu Ginobili for his unprecedented three-year triple crown of a Euroleague title, Olympic Gold Medal, and NBA title, few will recall that the exact same thing wasn't too far from happening with Scola. He was actually on the team that pushed the Ginobili-led 2001 Bologna team to a full 5-game finals, and they came within 8 points of winning the deciding game. He also led the Baskonia teams that made three straight Euroleague Final Fours in the mid-aughts. And consider this -- had Scola's team beaten Manu's team, he'd be the one with a gold medal and a Euroleague championship, and had his buyout talks NOT blown up, he could've potentially been on the Spurs roster for the 2007 title! Which would've given him the triple crown that -- currently -- has only ever been achieved by the immortal Ginobili. How ridiculous is that?

... while pretty ridiculous, it's also kind of a stretch. Scola has been great internationally, but he's hardly the player Manu is -- there's a reason people compare Manu's international cred to Jordan's stateside cred. But it's hard to understate how utterly and completely different it is to watch Luis Scola in the international game as opposed to the NBA. Absolutely night and day. In the 2010 FIBA World Championship, Scola didn't just look solid -- he dominated all comers and was about as hot as a player could reasonably be. He destroyed EVERYONE on the boards, made a dizzying array of impossible shots, and led a strikingly talent lacking shell of an Argentina team to overachieve the entire tournament. He moved the ball, worked on defense (insofar as he's able), and generally looked like a superstar. He was the runner-up tournament MVP to Kevin Durant, in my eyes, and nobody was anywhere close. Luis Scola is a brilliant player, one whose international dominance has to be seen to believed. Especially if you watch him in the NBA. The half of Luis Scola you see in the NBA is like a shadow of his international half -- a lesser shadow that has never quite lived up to his statistics and never quite had the right pieces around him.

Despite being a relatively skilled offensive player, the net result of Scola's NBA offense tends to be relatively shaky. Take last season, for instance. Despite shooting an above-average percentage from every distance of the floor, Scola rated out in the bottom 50% of all power forwards in shooting percentage. Because unfortunately for him, his offense is utilized in a way that's naturally inefficient -- he takes an incredible amount of long two pointers and 3-9 foot post-ups, and while he's good at everything individually, his offense lends itself to the sort of broader distributional concerns that make players like Jamal Crawford and Nick Young immensely frustrating. Simply far too many inefficient shots to be an overall efficient offensive player, even if he's relatively decent at every shot a team could ask him to take offensively inside the 3-point-line. He doesn't mitigate his case through bundles of free throws, either -- Luis Scola averaged less than two free throws per 10 shots taken, which is an absolutely horrible number for a big man in the modern league -- he converted well when he got to the line, but he got to the line so rarely it was hardlya huge asset. Combine that with his turnovers -- which were numerous -- and you don't have a particularly huge asset on the offensive end, at least not anymore.

This is especially glaring given Scola's lack of talent on defense, and essentially disintegrating ability to corral strong rebounds. His rebounding has gotten worse three seasons in a row, and has approached levels of startling ineffectiveness for a large player -- Scola averaged just 7.5 rebounds per 36 minutes last year, a number that put Scola among rebounding peers like Jared Jeffries, Jonas Jerebko, and the ghost of Lamar Odom. Not really names you want to be reading about. Scola's also a bit old -- he's 32 this season, and given the ridiculous miles placed on his aging legs in the Euroleague and as Argentina's Olympic/FIBA stalwart, that's not a young 32. His defense looked marginally better than usual last season, but at his age, strong defensive years are rarely going to be built on -- more likely, he regresses back to his mean as a pesky but not-particularly-effective defender. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that. Marginally useful offensive players with shaky defense and subpar rebounding aren't exactly hot commodities, but they aren't useless either -- with his general skills on offense, a team like the Spurs or the Celtics could have a better use for Scola by using him differently and putting him in a more international-style offense.

Which, ironically, speaks to the most unfortunate thing about Scola's time in the NBA -- the team that drafted him (the Spurs, of course) was always the team that could've used his talents the best, even in Scola's prime. Running international-style offense with Manu off the Spurs' bench was always fated Scola's best fit, and sat down next to Fabricio Oberto and his good friend Manu, it's possible the Spurs could've drawn a bit more of his defensive talent and tapped a bit more of his international magic. Alas. His team refused to lower his buyout to any reasonable level, the Spurs couldn't bring him over, and they ended up trading his rights for a player who never suited up in a Spurs uniform (Vassilis Spanoulis) and a player who's a 10-15 minute a night guy at best (Nando De Colo). The Spurs front office doesn't tend to make many mistakes, but trading away Scola ranks as one of the biggest they've ever made. A regrettable turn of events for the big Argentine. But he's made his money, and he has a strong and storied international career to fall back on. As well as his league-best impression of Dikembe Mutombo.

And sometimes, that's all you really need.

• • •

_Follow Manu Ginobili on Twitter at __@manuginobili.___

I'll admit, today's longform piece is probably the weirdest thing I've tried to write for the capsules yet. The Mo Williams capsule might approach it in general audacity, but I spent so long with writer's block on this one I ended up going with the absolute most ridiculous of my several prospective ideas in hopes that it would rouse me to write a piece that was as good as Manu Ginobili deserved. Don't quite know if I succeeded, but alas. Hope it suits someone's fancy anyway. Join me on a short joust through expressive fiction and fable as I attempt to rationalize out the aging process and the grind of life with Manu Ginobili, the personification of Death, and the chaos that Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs.

Death approached the entrance to Manu Ginobili's childhood home. The lonely ghoulish figure rapped his skeletal fingers on the door, as per his usual -- once to notice, twice to affect, thrice to open. Tap. Tap. Tap. The locked door swung open on its hinges. He slid into the house, closing the door quietly behind him. A cat hissed. A gesture was made. The cat fell softly into a good night's sleep. Death was not cruel. He would not kill, at least not indiscriminately. He was tasked only to take, to claim what was rightfully his. That is Death's dictate. His curse, as some say.

Manu Ginobili had been a great player for a long time. But nothing lasts forever. No player is immune to age, to the slow churn of skills lost and injuries accrued. And Death was there to exact his dismal calculus. Another withdrawal from a major athlete's bank of tricks. Sometimes a player's bag is so full that his taking is imperceptible. Nash, Malone, Duncan. Other times, he goes a bit overboard -- he will never forget his mistaken sleight of hand with the great Muhammad Ali. Tonight, he needed to make a large withdrawal -- Manu had dodged him for several years, predicting his approach and hiding out away from it all. The game was growing tiresome.

As Death stepped through the home, he could find no sign of the man he knew was there.

For more on Manu Ginobili, read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Leandro Barbosa on Twitter at __@leandrinhooo20.___

Leandro Barbosa -- the Brazilian Blur. Arguably the fastest player in the game (even at the age of 30!), Barbosa is a limited player who's quite good at a few things and quite awful at many others. We'll start with the good. Barbosa may very well be the fastest player to ever play the game -- when he turns on the jets, he's faster dribbling a basketball than the average person is in a heavy sprint. Which is absolutely ridiculous. The amount of talent it takes to be as fast as Barbosa is while dribbling is enough to make any scout salivate, and if he'd ever had a very consistent shot, it's possible he could've been a star. Could've. The problem Barbosa faced -- throughout his whole career, really -- is that he's a profoundly true-to-form example of a rhythm shooter. It generally takes him some time in a game to find his shot when he's not able to get immediately to the rim, which is deadly when you're a player who tends to average around 20 mintues per game -- if it takes you 5-10 minutes on the floor to find your rhythm, you're punting about half the time on the floor in search of it, offensively. Not great news.

His speed makes him good at driving, but it also tends to cover up that he's not particularly excellent at finishing -- which is something of a problem when your shot is sketchy and your game is built around your getting-to-the-rim speed. He's also positively atrocious at drawing contact, drawing (as with Scola) roughly two free throws for every 10 shots he takes. It's a terrible number, one primarily a function of design -- he doesn't like injury, which is wholly reasonable, but in his desire to remain uninjured he shies from all contact and contorts his body in consistently absurd ways to avoid it. His poor perimeter defense has been substantially harmful to his team throughout his whole career, and his lack of tertiary skills (relatively atrocious passing talent, decidedly poor rebounder, high usage despite his poor efficiency) makes him relatively tough to play for big minutes. This is doubly so at this stage of his career, after having suffered several minor injuries over the last few years that have sapped his speed (if only just) and left him -- while still arguably the fastest in the league -- with far less a lead over the #2 or #3 players than there used to be.

Off the court, though? He's a really nice guy, and he features an incredible life story. Grew up in abject poverty in Brazil, with a family that never quite had enough money to buy him a pair of good basketball shoes -- getting Nikes or Adidas cost his family roughly two months of salary. He rose out of it to become the first drafted Brazilian player in NBA history, which makes him essentially a national hero, among young Brazilian basketball players everywhere. It's really cool. Lots of great stuff. If you want to read more about him, there was a phenomenal series of posts back in Truehoop's early days that does about 200x more justice than I ever could at presenting Barbosa's story. It's a 10 part series titled "Rolling with Leandro", written by a journalist who found Barbosaand brought him to the U.S. to work out for teams and try to get drafted. He was basically his personal manager and his personal translator -- it's an extremely long piece, but if you ever have some time to kill and want a kind of hilarious and awesome take on what it's like to (essentially) bring an nba player into the league, this is your jam. Includes tales of Jerry West telling Barbosa he's "blessed by god", Barbosa being so obsessed with blondes that he only becomes happy about Phoenix when he realizes there are lots of leggy blondes there, and Hubie Brown cussing everyone out for no reason whatsoever at a random Grizzlies workout. If you've never seen it, I'd check it out as soon as you can.

• • •

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. MGallop and J are the two who got 3/3 right on today's players, although Chilai probably would've gotten Scola had I not been a little bit hyperbolic in the Scola riddle. My bad, Chilai.

• Player #283 will likely improve his team's defense this season simply by dint of being a larger player than the trash he's replacing. This is kind of funny, because Player #283 is a downright horrible defender.

• Player #284 looked really good as a young player, and after his performance in the 2010 World Championships, I was all in on him as one of the future mainstays at his position. It appears I was... uh, potentially really excruciatingly wrong.

• Player #285 has a shot release that's ALMOST as quick as Korver's. He's a deadly three point shooter, although he can't do much else. And yeah, his contract may have been a bit too long. But for that price, can you really fault them?

Don't forget to check out our two pieces from earlier this morning -- Alex Arnon's 3rd edition of Small Market Mondays, and Adam Koscielak's scoop on a Polish interview that sheds some light on Marcin Gortat's quiet frustrations.

• • •

Marcin Gortat recently had a fascinating talk with Przeglad Sportowy's Marcin Harasimowicz after his game against the Los Angeles Lakers. The interview is in Polish, but worry not, there's no Google Translate needed. Because you have me, a bilingual Pole on a mission to share the latest updates in the life of everyone's favorite Polish Gazelle-Hammering Machine. Additionally, the portal reports Gortat rejected an extension for the 2014-15 season, and might be traded, as the Magic, Mavs, Bulls and Celtics are interested in his services. Yikes. Gortat's comments are worth noting for anyone following the Suns franchise and its solid Polish center.

Here's the interview (full interview and my reaction after the jump). All credit to Przeglad Sportowy and Marcin Harasimowicz, of course.

• • •

A lot has changed in the Suns since last season.
Marcin Gortat: Unfortunately, in my case – for worse. I'm certainly not the player I was last season, I need to find my place in the new order. I'm still capable of helping this team, and regularly recording a double double, but when the ball sticks to one person on offence, it's hard to find a good rhythm.

Last season you've scored a lot of points off of Steve Nash pick and rolls. The team doesn't play that way anymore.
MG: That's true, but I can score in various situations. Finishing pick and rolls, in transition, from midrange, around the rim. There are a lot of options. Unfortunately, my two strongest plays – the pick and roll and post-ups have been taken away from me. It's not easy, we have a lot of plays that don't include me. And my chemistry with Goran Dragic hasn't been quite equal to what I had with Steve. These are things that we need to work on.

Coach Alvin Gentry told me that the main post option was Luis Scola. You, on the other hand, are number one on defense.
MG: Unfortunately... I've been doing the dirty work all my life, and now I have to come back to that. I will fight for what's mine. I'll try to prove to the coach that I can play an important role in the offence. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm even an option for Gentry. He doesn't even take me into consideration. The situation is critical. We're playing the same thing we've been playing last year, but the truth is we have a completely different set of players. I don't think it really works. I can't get frustrated now though, I have to stay positive.

The Suns have a lot of players that create for themselves.
MG: We have plenty of players who like to create for themselves, but it doesn't always work. We don't share the ball as much as we have in previous seasons. The ball doesn't move around the perimeter – it usually stops after one or two passes. You can't play like this, let alone win. Basketball is a team sport. Nobody ever won a game alone.

Before the season you were promising a fight for the playoffs, but from the picture painted by the past few games, the Suns don't seem like a top 8 team in the West.
MG: Before the season started, I was a huge optimist. I thought we'd play a completely different game. Right now, it doesn't look good. We still have a lot to learn, and a lot to fight for. We need to fix our team defence. We can't give up a hundred points per game. We'll see how it works out. Right now, I'm not losing hope, there's still a shot at the playoffs.

Did the coach honestly tell you what he expects from you?
MG: We've talked before the season started. He said he expects me to play defence, rebound, block shots and quarterback the defence. He also said he wanted me to set up in the paint and wait for my shots. And I'm still waiting... (laughter)

What are you expecting in the coming week?
MG: After the game against the Miami Heat, we have a longer break and some time to correct some errors in practice. It won't be easy though.

Maybe you should have an honest conversation with Coach Gentry?
MG: I don't know if it will change anything. But I'll surely have a chat with him.

While in Los Angeles, have you talked to Steve Nash?
MG: Yes, he came in for a visit in the locker room. I can only sigh – too bad he isn't with us any longer...

• • •

Just to mention it: This isn't the first time that Marcin has said something stupid in Polish thinking nobody would know. A few years back on a kid's camp in Poland, Gortat took a minor dig at Robin Lopez. Innocent, but nevertheless not the nicest thing to do to your teammate. Now, he's taken it to another level. And look, almost every Pole knows English well enough to tell an English speaker he's whining about the coach. And there are many people beyond me who can translate the interview in its entirety. Make no mistake, Gortat's comments will reach Coach Alvin Gentry, and make no mistake, the coach will not be happy. This is not what a leader does to a team. This is not going to help a team struggling for chemistry and cohesion. Gentry's rather obvious lack of trust in Gortat's offensive prowess aren't good excuses to go up in flames with this kind of an interview. And with the changes in the starting lineup Gentry has announced are coming, a part of me fears Alvin will punish Marcin by replacing him with Jermaine O'Neal, further hurting the team. That wouldn't be a good decision by Gentry, but Gortat is putting Gentry in a difficult position with these comments, and so some of the blame has to go to Gortat if this happens.

In the context of the Suns' current struggles, it's worth noting that Gortat makes a lot of good points. At the time of the conversation, which took place after the loss with the Lakers on Friday, the Suns were 4-6. Today, they're 4-7, as Gortat continued to struggle to get touches, despite being in prime position to finish off a nice play at times. Note that the Suns haven't won a game yet without Gortat scoring in double digits, and it's not easy to get to double digits when you get six shots per game. Now, this might seem to be a quibble, but note that when he's on the floor, Gortat tends to lose out on shot opportunities to Luis Scola and Michael Beasley, both to poor effect. Beasley has an atrocious command of pick-and-rolls as the ball-handler (.55 on 31 possessions per Synergy) and every possession Beasley uses in the two-man game is basically wasted. Compare Beasley to teammate Goran Dragic's stellar .95 mark on 63, good for fifth in the league. You could also point to Luis Scola's poor chemistry with Gortat (they occupy more or less the same range and Gentry hasn't found plays to capitalize on the Gortat-Scola tandem). And, in Gortat's favor, Gortat has proved that he can lead a decent team (last year's Suns) in scoring. Gortat is extremely potent moving off the ball. He can get easy opportunities and open up opportunities for his teammates in the process. And while Steve Nash is no longer there to spoon feed him, I'm more than certain Marcin can work with the entire team at getting baskets. Even viewed as a Nash product, Gortat is perfectly capable of scoring without Nash, and that alone makes him worth a shot. A shot that Gentry fails to give him.

The substance of his comments is solid; the inflammatory nature of his comments is not, and perforce puts the Suns into a dilemma. By giving Gortat what he wants, they might make the offence more efficient, but they will show him he can bully them. Or they could keep him unhappy, potentially ruining his upcoming contract. Or, of course, there's the nuclear option alluded to above: They trade him for youth and finally give up on whatever was left of the season [Ed. Note: Since there are three options this is technically a trilemma, not a dilemma. Anyway, there's the door, I'll show myself out. -Dewey]. Whatever the case, the Suns are suddenly at a crossroads here, and so is Marcin Gortat. This coming week might be pivotal in deciding the fate of both the center and the team in its entirety. The Polish Hammer has rebelled, whatever comes next might affect more than Planet Orange, but the entire NBA.