As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Earl Clark, Nolan Smith, and Chris Wilcox.

• • •

_Follow Earl Clark on Twitter at __@3eaZy.___

I've got sort of a soft spot for Earl Clark. It's not that I love his skillset or his broader game. He's a rather limited player, especially offensively -- while Clark has shot 62% at the rim in his entire NBA career, he's always been unbelievably abysmal outside of that. Clark has shot (no typo) 28% over his career outside of 3 feet. If he's close enough to dunk it, he'll be okay -- get even slightly outside of that and the discomfort is palpable. He's not a very effective rebounder, and his passing is laughably poor (although he takes care of the ball reasonably well). Defensively, though? He's a scrapper of the tenth degree, and he's a relatively effective one too. His defensive statistics weren't excellent last season, but from a subjective standpoint I've always really loved watching him defend. While he lacks strength for the four, his smart contests, excellent reach, and ability to take a hit and keep his arms up make him an excellent defender against post-up fours. Against threes, he leverages his lateral mobility and general fluidity to stick with them, and it doesn't hurt that at 6'10" there's hardly a three in the league that can shoot over him.

In particular, beyond the scrappy defense, Clark is an excellent cover for the pick and roll. Examine the ridiculously excellent play here, outlined by Eddy Rivera at Magic Basketball. Very few players in the league have the sort of defensive talent that lets them show on the pick and roll, recover on the pick-man, and then proceed to weak-side block a 7'2" center without any notice or warning. It's something to behold, when he's on. The problem is, as I've outlined, Clark is awful enough on offense that he has legitimately no way to get playing time if he can't address his offensive deficiencies. His current strategy of getting through his offensive malaise essentially amounts to little more than "shootin' my way through it", which works about as well as Butch Cassidy trying to shoot his way through raging Bolivian forces. If Clark wants to have the opportunity to seriously impact a team off the bench, he has to do one of two things. He either has to work with a good shooting coach and develop some kind of long-ball move that he can shoot when he's absolutely and completely open, or he needs to eschew 3+ foot shots entirely in favor of better ball movement.

Still, with the Lakers, I think he'll be a pretty good fit. Clark exhibits in actuality what Artest does in theory -- he's a defensively vicious three-man whose offense leaves about as much to be desired as it could possibly leave. If the Lakers can wrangle a lineup along the lines of Duhon-Kobe-Clark-Jamison-Howard off the bench, they'll have an extremely solid defense coming off the bench and an offensive lineup that ensures Clark and Duhon don't imperil the team with poor shots. And if he can develop any kind of outside the basket move, playing him with Nash would be the best way in the world to get Clark to convert on that move well. I don't think he'll average 15-20 minutes with them, at least not until he develops that tertiary offensive skill. But Clark was a stealthily good pickup for the Lakers, and is going to help their defensive depth immensely going forward.

• • •

_Follow Nolan Smith on Twitter at__ @NdotSmitty._

Heh. I was a bit tricky in yesterday's riddle. When I said girls in my freshman dorm loved him, I didn't necessarily mean they loved him sexually, or wanted him like that at all (although some certainly did). I meant more that they found him adorable and loveable, in particular being fond of Nolan Smith's devotion to his then-freshman girlfriend and his jovial nature. I later found out that Smith never took most of his classes seriously (and in particular completely blew off an art class with my favorite artist), so that detracted from my personal liking for him, but he's still one of the more interesting players from Duke's title team. Consider his past -- Nolan Smith lost his father (former NBA player and coach Derek Smith) at the age of 8. The story of how his father died is heart-wrenching, and I highly recommend reading this ESPN OTL piece on Nolan Smith's depressing history. On a basketball training cruise, Nolan was aggravated with a game he played poorly and threw the basketball into the ocean. His father grabbed his wrist, took him aside, and told him he needed to work on his attitude if he ever wanted to make it in the game. Nolan nodded moodily, as children do, and his father left for a cruise-ending cocktail party.

That would be the last time they'd ever speak. Derek Smith suffered an out-of-nowhere heart attack at the party, and was dead almost instantly. How has Nolan coped with it? About as well as you can, I think. He's stayed in touch with most of his father's good friends. In fact, he ended up going to Duke not because he was particularly enamored with Coach Krzyzewski or the university itself, but because one of his father's best friends, Johnny Dawkins, was with the coaching staff. That meant he'd have a connection to his father without having to suffer the same awful experience his sister Sydney did, when she went to the same university her father did and had to suffer through the pictures of him everywhere and the constant drumbeat of "hey, your father was here" from professors and staff. Important. But Dawkins took a head coaching job at Stanford after Nolan's rookie year, and it became his responsibility to deal with his grief himself. He did a good job (and as someone who was at Duke for most of Nolan's career, I have to say the amount he matured in college from freshman year onward was absolutely incredible) and in time became the gleeful, loveable mainstay of a title-winning team.

Now, in the NBA, I'm not really sure what's going to happen to Nolan. He wasn't exactly a light's out player in college, and while his attitude was (and is) phenomenal, he's extremely undersized as a shooting guard. With a general lack of passing instincts, it's an open question whether he'll ever be able to play the point -- a question that leans to the negative. If he can't, his defense isn't nearly good enough to play solid defense on the wing, and he doesn't have Avery Bradley's core strength that let Bradley develop into the defensive talent he is. Nolan's main talent in college, his three point shot, has been somewhat lacking in the pros. He's not really used to shooting the NBA-distance three over defensive pressure, or players as athletic as the league-average guys in the NBA. His first season was something of a waste, and at 24 years old, he doesn't have a ton of time left to refine his game before the usual churn of NBA players spits him out and leaves him scrambling for playing time somewhere else. Personally, I hope he can find some kind of a role in the NBA, even if the role is pretty small. He's a nice guy, a good kid, and he's worked harder than most people know to get through the problems he's faced in his life. I don't know if he can do it, but I sure as heck hope he can.

• • •

_Follow _behind Chris Wilcox in a crowd in an effort to hide from me after I teach you math__.____

Ever wondered what I do as my day job? I'm a statistician. I do portfolio valuations modeling for a large bank. It's funny, a bit, because as anyone who follows this series closely might note, I'm quite the voracious reader. My second choice job was writing. Instead of focusing on my writing, though, I chose to focus my studies on the things I felt college could teach me that I couldn't simply master myself (advanced mathematics and analytics) rather than things I felt I could learn better hands-on, like writing and literary analysis. My day job leads me to have a relatively narrow set of on-the-job knowledge that I rarely get to bust out for this feature. But today, I can't resist. So here goes.

The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test is among the most flexible of the statistical tests I use for my job. To contextualize that: have you ever computed a two-sample t-test for means? Most social scientists and engineers find themselves needing to use t-tests often. In case you haven't, I'll try to get at the goals. In essence, the goal of a t-test is to assess whether the means of two samples differ in a statistically significant way. If you have two populations that differ in only a single aspect, a t-test helps you assess whether that single differentiator drives a significant difference in two population means. So, for instance, let's say you have two populations, split by their favorite sport. If you can reasonably assume all other aspects of the population are equal, a t-test would be a quick method you can use to determine if the advocates of one sport and the advocates of another sport have a statistically significant difference in their household income, or their average age, or any other numeric variable you wish to track. There's a catch, though. In a t-test, you're assuming normality. You are assuming that your variable in both of the two comparative samples is distributed according to the principles of a standard normal distribution.

What makes the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test so valuable to a statistical analyst is that you don't need to make that assumption. The only real necessity for a Wilcoxon is that the metric you're comparing means for demonstrates properties of cardinality. That is to say, the order of the numbers has to mean something. One must be more than zero. Two must trump one. Three above two. Et cetera, et cetera. Essentially, all it means is that you can't be using a numbering system that doesn't mean anything. You can't just be using ones and twos and threes as categories with no distinct or meaningful relationship relative to one another. The metric needs to make sense. If it does? You can compare hypothesis tests for just about anything -- even distributions that don't satisfy conditions of normality. In an NBA sense, this is useful because it allows us the levity to eradicate our natural all-normal assumptions regarding skill curve distributions and the general assignment of player importance. In a business sense, it's useful because you can more easily assess hypotheses regarding distributionally skewed variables like the decay of charge off rates and other such things. Lots of fun stuff, lots of interesting things, and lots of added value. The Wilcoxon is a gift.

"Alright. Cool story, bro. What does this have to do with Chris Wilcox?" Well... he invented it. ... okay, no, that's a bald-faced lie. He didn't. I don't believe Chris Wilcox has the slightest relation to Frank Wilcoxon, the one who actually invented the test. The only really useful part of the Wilcoxon/t-test framing, for this post, is to highlight the fact that what the Wilcoxon is to statistics is basically what Chris Wilcox isn't to the NBA. Where the Wilcoxon adds wonderful flexibility to hypothesis testing and two-sample testing, Chris Wilcox adds a 30-year-old center forward with massive defensive deficiencies and an incredibly inflexible game. He's a finisher, through-and-through -- he works relatively well sneaking to the rim in the pick and roll (virtually always finishing on a dunk) and he'll rebound relatively well in a pinch, but he has no real notable facets of his game beyond those two things. He's a subpar free throw shooter with no real post game, no well-defined defensive game (although he did better on that front in Boston next to Kevin Garnett and under Doc Rivers' schemes), and no real hope to get that much better -- after all, he's already 30, and the comprehensive history of big men who improved in their 30s is about as scant as the pamphlet on famous Jewish-American athletes from Airplane.

Still, he's a serviceable player -- just because there's a better alternative doesn't mean I don't use the t-test with some regularity to prove a point, and just because Wilcox is a relatively limited player doesn't mean there isn't a useful spot for him in the NBA. His last season was cut short with a scary heart problem, but going forward, assuming he can stay in shape (he came to training camp completely busted last season -- he needs avoid making that a habit) there's no real reason he can't ply his admittedly limited trade for 3 or 4 more years. Off the court, he seems like a nice enough fellow. He's trying to use his heart scare to spread the word on proper treatment and proper screening for heart problems. Which is extremely cool. I'm hoping he'll be a decent player for a few more years -- it's sad that he got his 2012 season snatched away from him, especially since he could've helped the Celtics numerous times throughout the run. But he'll be back, and so will the Celtics.

• • •

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. First-time guesser Jkim got a 3/3 on yesterday's riddles. Great call on Nolan Smith there. Smart fellow, this one.

• While he was a decent bench-chained three point bomber for the 2012 Lakers, with Jodie Meeks in the fold, you have to wonder if Player #148 sees the floor at all.
• He's essentially gone from the game now that he's taken that Boston job. But Player #149's memory will live on forever. (Not really.)
• One of my favorite old hands to the game, and one of the most successful undrafted players ever. May be a lawyer someday, too! "Better call [Player #150]."

Now I've just got one long Friday left and I can sleep for a weekend. Until we meet again, dear readers.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Jared Dudley, Dwight Howard, and Ryan Anderson.

• • •

_Follow Jared Dudley on Twitter at __@JaredDudley619.___

Jared Dudley is a good example of a big overachiever in the NBA. It's a well-known fact that Dudley's athleticism is lacking -- at the beginning of last season, his teammates jokingly put the over/under of Dudley's in-game dunks during the 2012 season at two dunks. Not one, not three, not four, not five ... two dunks. As this interview notes, he definitely got to two. Hilariously so, in fact. As luck would have it, Dudley converted a total of three dunks in the 2012 season, crushing expectations and basically winning his own personal Larry O'Brien trophy. No, but really. If Steve Nash wins a ring this year, I think Jared Dudley should get a copy of it for his 2012 dunk achievements. I'm not being facetious. Get it done, Steve. Seriously, though -- his athleticism is insanely lacking, and the fact that he's managed to be an effective NBA player (on teams that have primarily been fast-paced, even!) is phenomenal, and a credit to Dudley's awesome work ethic. He was one of the most efficient offensive players in the entire NBA last year, despite his only having three dunks! That's pretty phenomenal, and it's a testament to his excellent work ethic.

One of the useful things about Dudley as a player that doesn't get mentioned much is how little he takes off the table. It's one of those things most people ignore when assessing shooting guards, but with a player like Dudley, it's essential to putting him in proper context that you take some time to think about that. He's customarily had one of the most efficient shot-selection charts in all of basketball, with around two-thirds of his shots coming at the rim or from three. That includes 75 corner threes, arguably the best shot in basketball -- he scored 87 points on those 75 shots. He's a strong finisher at the rim (without having an ability to dunk, as I said), and he's got a solid (if not exceptional) free throw stroke. His defense isn't best in the league or anything close, but it's not bad at all -- he's got limits athletically (though his losing weight under the tutelage of Steve Nash has really helped that), but he plays hard and smart on the defensive end, having a particular talent at going for steals without getting too far out of position. There's very little that Dudley does actively poorly -- eventually, if you do everything at an average or barely-sub-average level, you're going to be a solid NBA player. That's about where Dudley stands.

He's also a very nice guy. As I said in the riddle yesterday, a friend of mine once met him in Sky Harbor airport. Apparently he was really kind to her, and while my friend (not a huge Suns fan) couldn't name Dudley for the life of her, he gave her some courtside tickets to a random game simply because she recognized he was a Suns player. Supremely nice. Dudley is known by most fans for his generally positive working relationship with Bill Simmons, his love for media, and an effusive personality that makes almost anyone who watches his interviews like him a lot. See this interview for an example. Jared Dudley: fat kid at heart, who's just so happened to take residence in all of ours. No, he's not an amazing player -- his shot creation is relatively limited and he really does need to be set up in his key spots to be valuable. And while he's good at smart contests, at some point his lack of raw athletic talent comes back to bite him. But he hustles, he's efficient, and he works as hard as anyone else in the game. There isn't all that much to dislike in the game or demeanor of Jared Dudley. Very solid.

• • •

_Follow Dwight Howard on Twitter at__ @DwightHoward._

Oh, lord. Today's Player Capsule (Plus) features a player I was hoping I wouldn't have to write about for a while. Not after the ridiculous season he's had, where he sunk to new depths of distasteful disregard for his fans and franchise. Did Dwight owe the Magic anything? Perhaps not, but he certainly didn't need to do the things he did. He didn't need to conduct himself the way he did, or make himself out to be the person he has. In today's feature, I examine Dwight from a more pop-culture based sphere than my usual sources for these extended capsules, going into an extensive documentation of Harvey Dent's heel turn in The Dark Knight and discussing how, exactly, Dwight's actions have disturbed me and made me question my entire feelings about his career to-date. Here's an excerpt.

Dwight Howard's transformation from a lovable happy-go-lucky superstar into a capricious jerk came virtually out of nowhere. There were a few indications that Dwight wasn't exactly as he appeared -- the multiple children-out-of-wedlock he refuses to accept are his, the stories of him exposing himself to a porn star while the porn star was on a date, the internal indications that Dwight wanted more power in the Magic organization. But did anyone really see anything like this coming? Who, one year ago, would've guessed that Dwight Howard would have effectively alienated every single Magic fan on the face of the earth and turned himself into enemy #1 in the NBA? Dwight Howard, that lovable scamp with the penchant for children's music and childish jokes? Really? A villain?

Well, yeah. He's re-contextualized his entire career in one particularly low year. I don't need to belabor the point -- we all were there, and we all know what he's done. He pushed out one of the best coaches in the league in a pressure-heavy attempt to force change, he rehabbed and partied in Los Angeles while his team fell meekly in the playoffs (couldn't have flown out to Orlando to at least attend a game?), he obliterated every vestige of bargaining power the Orlando Magic had, and in the end he was rewarded for all his transgressions with the opportunity of a lifetime. A fulfillment of every dream. He accomplished this all in an unbelievably callous, cruel, and dithering fashion. He lied or misrepresented the truth at every stage. He alienated teammates (including a locker room fight with a player who was -- not more than two years ago -- one of his best friends), crushed the hearts of Magic fans, and burned every bridge he could find. He utterly bailed on a basketball camp for disadvantaged children, for God's sake. Even LeBron never brought the children into it.

And where did this come from, exactly? Straight out of nowhere.

READ THE REST OF DWIGHT HOWARD'S CAPSULE AT HARDWOOD PAROXYSM.

• • •

_Follow _Ryan Anderson on Twitter at __@ryananderson33.____

I think most fans have a lot of misconceptions about his game. He's seen (as most tall white shooters are) as a gigantic sieve on defense with no capabilities on that end, completely lacking even the most cursory of defensive talents. Might as well not be there. On offense, he's seen as nothing more than a spot-up shooter, with no real moves or shot-creation of his own. When the Magic let him go, and offered him up for the Hornets to sign him at a relatively minuscule deal, most people shrugged and figured it was fine. After all, Anderson wasn't the future, so it's not that big of a deal, right? No defense, minor offense, et cetera. Or so they say. There are a few problems with this. Ryan Anderson wasn't just "decent" at the things he was good at. He was ridiculously incredible at them. Anderson made more three pointers than any other player in the league last season. He took almost 7 per game, and somehow still managed to shoot a hair under 40% on them. Insane efficiency combined with insane volume. Absolutely ridiculous.

On defense, I'm not going to pretend he's good -- he isn't. He's slow-footed, and he doesn't yet have a great sense of when to commit and when to help. It's a bit of a problem, from the power forward position, because it relies on the center to really shut things down defensively. (Just a note, though -- if Monty can successfully put him at the wing, that problem will cease to be quite as harmful. One poor wing defender is way less harmful to a team's overall defensive structure than a power forward with defensive troubles. ) He's not horribly ineffective -- he can block reasonably well, and he pesters the post decently as long as you aren't putting him against someone with serious inches and weight on him. The big thing, though? His rebounding is incredible. On both ends of the floor. Offensively, due to his primarily operating beyond the arc, you'd expect his game to be lacking -- it isn't, and he posted one of the highest offensive rebound rates in the game last season (which led to lots of easy layups for Anderson -- something he can convert with relative ease because he's actually very good at layups). His defensive rebounding is slightly below expectations, but that's somewhat to be expected. He played next to Dwight Howard, after all, and given his lacking athleticism he was prone to tipping out defensive rebounds to ensure a Magic player corralled them. But his rebounding was very solid, all things considered.

Hell, Anderson had a PER above 21 -- that's top 30 in the league! He's ridiculous. I'm all for looking deeper into the statistics. That PER doesn't mean he's one of the 30 best players in the league, no. But at some point you need to call a spade a spade. Ryan Anderson is a downright excellent rebounding talent, one of the better three point shooters in the game, and quietly excellent on the offensive glass. He isn't simply some Jodie Meeks style spot-up three point shooter. Tom Haberstroh once wrote a controversial article calling out the similarities between Anderson's game and Dirk Nowitzki (then the reigning Finals MVP). You know what? He had a lot of good points. Anderson's defense is problematic, and he's not going to be a player like Dirk. But combining his efficiency, quiet rebounding talent, and general skillset you have a player with a heck of a lot of talent that most people are completely asleep on. His current contract -- $8 million a year -- is patently reasonable for a player that's proved to have the skills he's had, and while his playoff runs have (up to now) been incomprehensibly poor given his talent, the sample size is so small it's hard to build a compelling case that the runs describe his game better than his excellent regular season performance.

I'm very excited to see how Monty leverages Anderson's talent in New Orleans -- they're essentially one solid point guard away from having the upside of a top-4 seed. And, to be totally honest with you, I'm very disappointed in the Orlando front office for losing faith in the wonderful young player they've developed. An Anderson-Afflalo core could've been the first step forward towards the next contending Magic team. And if the price is as low as $8 million a year, why balk? I just don't get it. Perhaps that's just me, though. I like Anderson, even though his defense concerns me -- if he can swing to playing as a large wing, a la Danny Granger, I think he has the upside potential of a 3 to 4 time all-star. A Rashard Lewis type. And people like to forget this, because of his current state, but Rashard Lewis could play. Anderson can too, even though seemingly nobody believe in him. So, at least from one scribe, here's hoping he proves the doubters silly at the hive next season.

• • •

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.

• A defensive ace, Player #145's offense leaves about as much to be desired as it possibly could. Should make a decent Laker, tho.
• Player #146 went to college with me. Literally. I never had a class with him, but girls in my freshman dorm loved him.
• Gonna spend this whole capsule talking about the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and none of you LeFoolios can stop me. (I probably won't do this.)

This has been an incredibly busy week at work, somehow. Really can't wait for the weekend at this point. Keep on keepin' on.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Chris Andersen, Nate Robinson, and Drew Gooden.

• • •

Follow Chris Andersen on Twitter by trying to read his tattoos.

The thing that immediately comes to mind for Chris Andersen is the myriad of reports and stories we all had to sit through during the 2009 NBA Western Conference Finals. You know the theme, if you were there. There were these ubiquitous 5-10 minute fluff piece about Andersen, discussing his fall from grace due to drugs and his subsequent rise out of the depths to be a productive player on a contending Nuggets team. It was a classic story of redemption and coming back from the doldrums. After getting caught up in the NBA's crazy lifestyle, Andersen came back to earth and cleaned up, so to speak. Got his affairs in order. Got everything back together. Theoretically.

In practice, though, I'm not really sure it's that simple. And it's not because of some unwarranted, unsupported "he's still using" tripe. I don't think he is. The problem runs deeper. While it made for a touching story on ESPN to highlight his road to recovery, I beg you to read this 2008 feature on Andersen's ruined relationship with his mother. It details Andersen's rise and fall in gruesome detail, discussing his upbringing (his mother, Linda Holubec, skinned snakes for belts and cooked the meat to feed their family, living in a house that was quite literally falling apart), Andersen's rise to the NBA lifestyle (and Holubec's attempts to help him get his finances in order and fix his life before the fall), the general lack of remorse from Andersen upon being caught with the drugs (a somewhat mature realization that absolutely nothing would've happened if he hadn't gotten caught), and -- this is the important part -- the fact that him and his mother were completely estranged at the time he re-entered the NBA.

The thing that bugs me about this story is that all it would take is one feature on Andersen and his mother for the uneasiness to cease. As it stands, wouldn't you think someone would've revisited this relationship and figured out if it was fixed if it actually was? I realize that you don't want to get caught up in old patterns, but nothing in that heart-wrenching story screams "old patterns" with his mom -- his mother tried to help him out of his rut, completely relocating her family to try and help him before the drug test destroyed him. According to that, as of over four years ago, Andersen and his mother had no real contact and no real relationship anymore. After all that happened in their lives, after all the promises that Andersen making it big would help his mother escape the poverty she worked hard to leave behind... nothing. Seeing a story about a former addict who is off the wagon is one thing. It's heartwarming fluff. Seeing a story about a former addict whose lifestyle has fractured his relationship with his mother isn't quite so fluffy, and begins to get more true-to-life.

Because the road back from addiction isn't simple either. It's fraught with constantly being thrown back into the habits and constant adversity. And it's cursed with the worst end-of-the-road hangover possible. That realization when you reach the end that nothing will ever really be the same. You'll never be the innocent person you were before you were consumed. You'll never fully repair those broken bonds and fractured friendships. You make a new life, because your old life is broken beyond repair. And the real moral of any true addiction story isn't one of return and recovery, but one of change and advancement. Of becoming a new person rather than a shallow imitation of the person you were before the addiction. I've never been addicted to anything of note, but I've known way too many people who have to really accept the super-happy recovery angle with a straight face. I like the sentiment of featuring Andersen as a recovered junkie, and as with seemingly everyone, I thought the story was heartwarming and fun. But dark sides are dark sides, and they shouldn't be erased for the sake of a good story.

One last thing. Andersen is getting old. His game is deteriorating badly, and he doesn't have his legs anymore. The insane block rates are becoming pedestrian. His lessening athleticism has impacted his rebounding. He's essentially a veteran's minimum player now, and as his body continues to fail him, he's only going to get worse. As his game declines, it seems the general ability of NBA fans to forgive transgressions has declined in kind. I refer of course to the not-so-ongoing investigation into Andersen's connection with sexual images of children. The problem is, he was never actually charged with anything, and the investigation seemed to unveil little more than a crazy fan setting Andersen up and harrassing him. But that didn't really stop the petty barrage of accusations and jokes about Andersen as a horrible monster. Which made me think a bit about our ability to forgive. Sometimes forgiveness is fungible. Oftentimes, it's only as legitimate as the context in which it's granted. Andersen was on a good team, and playing well. So we saw fit to celebrate his triumphs. Now he's a waste of money, and we can't resist piling on -- even if the reasons are far less than they used to be. Sort of odd, a bit sad, and all too human. Ways of the world and all that, I suppose.

• • •

_Follow Nate Robinson on Twitter at__ @nate_robinson._

Nate Robinson is the electric boogaloo of NBA players. In case you aren't familiar, the term "Electric Boogaloo" is a way-back reference to an absolutely ridiculous sequel from the 80s. Specifically "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." The movie was an absurd follow-up to the generally forgotten "Breakin'", a film about breakdancing that gave Ice T his film debut (and a role he retrospectively calls "completely wack.") The first part of the trilogy (yes, there's actually a Breakin' 3) is your everyday average 80s dancing film -- lots of parachute pants, stupid dance numbers, et cetera. The second part, though, is kind of special. A tour de force in tomfoolery. I can pretty confidently say there's no movie on the face of the earth that's more emblematic of ridiculous 80s movies than Electric Boogaloo. Seriously. It's been a long time since I've seen it, so I had to look it up, but the main characters are named Turbo and Ozone. The villain is called "Evil White Man." Every car in the movie seems to have hydraulics so they'll bob up and down during the dancing scenes. There's dance fighting. It's one of the most abject failures of a film I've seen in my life, and I still found myself amused and entertained by the sheer audacity of it.

The thing with Nate Robinson is that, although he's a pretty bad NBA player, he's got the same guilty pleasure gene that Breakin' 2 featured in full. Lots of weird stuff. There's the Shrek/Donkey stuff with Glen Davis. There's the seemingly random, unpredictable disregard for his teammates where Robinson will suddenly go full Iverson for a possession or two and try to put every team in the universe on his back. There's the dancing on the bench, something he became famous for to fans at the Oracle this past season. There's the fact that he's one of the first NBA player-bloggers ever. He's boisterous, confident, and often completely out of his gourd. And even for someone used to analyzing players solely on their merits, that's fun to watch. Sure, his style of play is pretty patchwork, and just as prone to ruining a team as it is conducive to helping it. Lots of ball-domination -- he tends to try and play 1-on-5 without the requisite skill to do it -- and a really high motor. Shot selection is iffy, not necessarily in the location of the shots he takes (35% career three point shooter) but in the blatant disregard for the open man and the "I'm going to score or get decked" mentality he brings to the table.

One underheralded thing about Robinson? His defense. He's athletic and strong, as anyone who's seen pictures of Robinson as a kid would know. (And yes, Nate -- you as an elementary school child were without question more muscular than most adult human beings are now. You're correct.) He uses that athleticism relatively well, and he's a bit of a pest. Just as he's prone to overexposure on the offensive end, he'll often get caught on defense with silly fouls and poorly timed steal attempts. But on the whole he's not a bad defender, and in a good scheme with a proper delineation of his goals, he can be a positive defensive player off the bench. All that said, I'm honestly completely at a loss to figure out what he'll be like in Chicago this season. I'm not even sure who's going to get the starter's minutes. Hinrich and Robinson are both incredibly flawed players, and Hinrich is old enough with enough prior mileage that he's probably going to be worse going forward than he is now. They're a fine selection of backup guards-off-the-bench, but watching one of them start for a quarter of the season is going to be rough for Chicago fans. I almost hope Robinson gets it, simply because (like Breakin' 2) there's some element of joy and absurdity to his game that gives him value beyond his relatively subpar play. With Hinrich, not quite sure you get that. Even if he's a slightly better player.

Besides. His middle name is Cornelius. How can you bench a guy named Cornelius?

• • •

_Follow _Drew Gooden on Twitter at __@DrewGooden.____

I watched a bunch of Synergy footage last night, trying to find evidence of his overwhelming defensive deficiencies. I came to some conclusions. Drew Gooden is a bad defender, in a vacuum, and that's clear when you watch the tape. But for some weird reason, he always seems to find himself on patently solid defensive teams -- Gooden was a pretty important player on the 2007 Cavs team that made the finals, putting in decent-if-not-remarkable defense under Brown's defensive schemes. Now, granted -- Mike Brown has made a career out of being a magician. He creates defensive schemes that make limited players look like defensive savants, essentially placing their limits in a hat, waving a handkerchief, and throwing some glitter as they "vanish" into his right sleeve. He did the same with Gooden. And, in fact, Gooden has been pretty lucky -- he made his way to the Spurs in 2009, where his flaws were worked over by Gregg Popovich. He was poor on the 2010 Clippers.

Then he came to the Bucks, where Scott Skiles pulled a Mike Brown and helped him hide his problems -- at least a bit. He has the opposite problem Rajon Rondo has -- while Rondo's offenses have never quite indicated the level of praise he's bestowed, defenses relying on Gooden have never quite indicated the level of disdain he's attached to. He's not good -- as any cursory look at the defensive tapes would show, there are problems. Generally undersized at the five (where he played the majority of the 2012 season), tons of mental mistakes, and customarily he has extremely poor defensive +/- numbers. With Gooden on the court last season, the Bucks allowed a defensive rating that would've rated out as one of the league's worst -- with him off the court, they had a defense that hovered in the top 10. Rough going. But the tape also shows a defender who doesn't kill teams as much as his reputation would indicate. At all, really. He makes mental mistakes, but he has patently solid lateral movement and a well-developed sense of when to challenge and when to lay back. He does a decent job aggravating opposing big men, and he works hard. He isn't the singular reason that a good defense is good, but he isn't a player that you can't have on a good defensive team. With a good coach and players that can shade his limits, he actually can be a defensive positive.

On offense, he's not all that great. Actually, I'd argue that he gives most of the positives you get from his few defensive skills and his tertiary talents back with the negatives of his offense. He gets high scoring numbers but does so on a shooting percentage that's simply abhorrent with usage that shouldn't be half as high as it is, and his rebounding leaves much to be desired. His ability to sink a long shot helps convince coaches that he helps teams offensively, and this is true -- especially when playing center, Gooden's tendency to fade outside the paint helps take the largest member of the opposing team out of the paint, which generally opens things up for the guards. But unfortunately for his teams, this usually results in semi-open midrange shots for Gooden, which he takes with abandon. Making, as previously enumerated, very few. I think Gooden's offense is mainly why I dislike him -- defensively he isn't fantastic but he's passable in a prescriptive, well-considered defense. His passing is fine. His ball control is shockingly good for a center. But when it comes to his scoring? Simply awful. He takes too many shots, produces shaky and inefficient totals, and gets overrated due to his offensive prominence. Most people would call Gooden an offense-first player. In a world where he actually was using his talents effectively, he'd be a Varejao-type, using his lateral quickness to impact the floor defensively and rarely touching the ball on offense, only chipping in when needed. Alas, it isn't so. And thus, I don't like Gooden at all, and really wish he'd put it all together. At the age of thirty, that's probably not going to happen, but I suppose it's a remote possibility.

• • •

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. Nick D was the first to get 3/3 yesterday. Good work.

• One of my friends once met Player #142 at Sky Harbor airport. He gave her free tickets. She says he's an incredibly nice guy.
• Oh, God. Do I honestly need to talk about this guy? Prepare for an angry tirade. Will be a Player Capsule (Plus).
• He may have derived some benefit from playing alongside Howard. But Player #144 isn't chopped liver, either.

Really busy today, hence the late capsules. Hopefully will be on time tomorrow, but we'll see. Adios.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Kendrick Perkins, Brandon Bass, and Nikola Vucevic.

• • •

Follow Kendrick Perkins. In real life. Wait, don't do that, that's stalking.

I understand the compulsion. I really do. The Magic were bad against the Celtics for a few years, primarily because the Celtics featured an incredibly good defensive attack. Ergo, it's simple to say "hey, Dwight Howard was stopped by Kendrick Perkins." It doesn't hurt that, for a game or two, Howard got into foul trouble due to aggression by the Boston wings and had his minutes curtailed, depressing his in-game totals. It doesn't hurt that, by the eye test, Perkins' contests were effective and every Howard basket seemed harder than it usually was. And it certainly doesn't hurt that the Celtics are a jawing bunch, on defense, that annoys players like Howard by getting under his skin and making him visibly frustrated. There's a real desire to look at Howard and go "alack, poor Kendrick, he guards him well!" It's the same with point guards -- when Howard or Bogut or Bynum gets their hands dirty and shuts down the paint, turning Tony Parker's forays into a journey replete with danger, it's generally reported as the point guard getting the better of Parker, or of some nebulous concept of a team's "perimeter stopper" doing the job. This isn't always the case, though -- defensive assignments are incredibly fluid, and generally, the last line of defense ends up doing a large margin of the work on the point guards.

The same isn't exactly true of big men matchups, like Perkins on Howard, because as the last line of defense they end up being (predictably) the last line of defense against the bigs as well. But the same principle isn't totally absent, either. Perkins certainly doesn't guard every Dwight Howard possession, as there are numerous possessions Howard slips his way out of Perkins' buttery grasp to make an easy seemingly-unguarded two. Or, against the Celtics, possessions where the Magic slipped Howard from Perkins to Garnett in order to take advantage of -- ... Hey, wait a second! That virtually never happened. It's almost as though the Magic didn't like the Garnett-on-Howard matchup, realizing that the 7'0" Garnett lords over the 6'9" Howard and is one of the greatest defensive players of his generation. So, wait. You're telling me that the Magic probably chose to put Howard on Perkins, thus increasing the amount of time Perkins would see minutes on Dwight. Which then ensured that if the Celtics' superior defense quashed the Magic's offense -- whether they quashed Dwight or not -- Perkins would (essentially accidentally) be seen by the mass public as having spent the most time on Dwight and be "responsible" for any failures? Well! That explains a lot!

Alright. Look. I'm being unreasonably facetious, I know. The fact is, though, the "Dwight stopper" trope has reached levels of nested absurdity too ridiculous to handle with anything other than dripping contempt. Kendrick Perkins doesn't singlehandedly "stop" Dwight any more than Jameer Nelson "stops" Tony Parker, or Derek Fisher "stops" any point guard the Lakers have ever faced. Perkins is a decent man-to-man defender -- he's an old school player, one that scraps and grabs jerseys and throws bruising elbows. He's kind of a major jerk, on the court. But he doesn't stop Dwight. He isn't even all that effective a Dwight-stopper -- in games they've both played, Dwight sports a 52% field goal percentage. His career average is 57%, so that's a bit worse than usual, but 52% and eight free throws a game from your starting center are fine totals to roll with. And in the playoffs, that number rises to 55% -- just a hair under his career playoff average. Most of the moves Dwight uses work just as well on Kendrick Perkins as they do on any center. The referees tend to swallow their whistles when Perk is around, for whatever reason, so his main usage on the court is as a physical center that frustrates big men, grabs their jerseys, and plays dirty. He's good at that, for what it's worth, but his uselessness on the offensive end combined with the fact that his defense simply isn't as effective as a physical contesting center like Bogut depletes from his worth. Until last season, he at least provided some solid rebounding -- last season that fell off, and so too did any reason whatsoever for him to play over Nick Collison. Going forward, the OKC contract I was certain would be decent has turned into a relatively massive albatross for the Thunder. Lucky him, though -- his ill begotten "Dwight stopper" reputation is probably going to keep him around, at least until Dwight falls off.

• • •

_Follow Brandon Bass on Twitter by having Billy Bass read your timeline__._

Everybody has limits. It's an ever-present truth found wherever you look in the annals of film, literature, and reality. Part of what makes characters like Neo, Dr. Manhattan, and Star Trek's Q interesting is the implications behind their ridiculous abilities. They've conquered mortality, humanity, and the inherent limits of human nature. But beyond the omniscient, all-powerful character (a somewhat uninteresting trope if approached conventionally, when the writer starts to realize just how boring an all-powerful being would have to be in order to not destroy the world) just about every story ever told relies on the implicit assumptions of limits -- whether they be about people overcoming their limits (a happy story), people succumbing to them (a sad story), or people destroying the lives of those who surround them in an effort to refuse to accept the idea that they even have limits (Breaking Bad). Part of what makes life interesting is in the realization and acceptance of one's limits -- pushing where you can, striving to improve, attempting to keep them at bay until finally becoming at peace with your own flaws and becoming the best person you can possibly be.

This whole concept of limits applies readily to any aspect of life, basketball included. An NBA player can be defined by their skills in a vacuum, their on-court accomplishments, or the things that limit their game. Depending on how you feel about a player, you can assess them through any lens. If you like a player, what's to stop you from focusing entirely on his accomplishments, providing limits only to show how incredible the player is? If you hate him, what's to stop you from focusing entirely on his limits, or how he doesn't stack up to anyone else? Any fair analysis of a player is going to focus around two things -- how limited the player is, how they've strived to succeed within those limits, and how the player has emerged in ways that stretched their limits and brought them to a level people didn't think they'd meet. This segues nicely into today's 2nd player, Brandon Bass. Bass isn't some no-limit ubermensch, no. All things considered? Somewhat limited. He's no physical specimen, although he's got a tough side to him. He doesn't have the ability to make the three, really, and he has virtually no post-up game or a strong at-rim finishing ability. His rebounding instincts are poor, as well. His shot mechanics look strange -- he puts his guide hand on top of the ball in a strange way that almost never works, which would make one wonder if he really has much of a shooting talent at all. Lots of limits.

But, as I said, there are several ways to interpret limits. For Bass, I'd go positive. For what his limits are, Bass is really solid. I'd almost say he's perfect, actually. He's not an incredible defensive player, but he works relatively hard and doesn't make excuses. He didn't fit too well into the Celtics' help defensive schemes early last season, but recouped nicely by the end and was an integral part of the Celtics' outsized postseason push. And his individual defense has always been fine (even though his reputation never quite matched how decent he was on that end). While his at-rim and post-up game leaves a ton to be desired, it's impossible to be anything other than awed by Bass' incredible command of the 10-23 foot jump shot. Bass took a patently ridiculous 7 shots a night from that range last season, making 48% of them -- given that the league average is around 38% and only a single player was able to register above 50%+ from that range on more than two shots a night, it's legitimate to say that he's among the best midrange shooters in the game. While he can't make the three, when you're dragging opposing big men that far outside the paint, you're doing a good job. While his form isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's more effective than numerous "impeccable form" long range bombers, and it clearly works for him. And those free throws! Shooting 80% from the line as a big man is such an underrated talent.

Yes, his rebounding is poor -- it's anemic, in fact -- but it's mostly a function of how far he operates outside the paint on offense. His defensive rebounding rate is only slightly below average for a big man -- it's his work on the offensive glass that really drags his numbers down. Which, again, is a huge . Looking at Bass, I don't really see a single place he can improve that wouldn't involve fundamentally changing the player he is. This isn't to say he's a star -- at his best, he's probably the 4th or 5th best starter on a championship team, or the best guy off the bench. But if you reframe his career relative to his limitations, and look at just how well he does the things he's able to do? Then you start to see a story that's a lot more special than most people think. Bass is a hard worker, a good player, and -- what's more -- a player who's made the absolute most of his potential. A guy who's done what everyone used to criticize LeBron for not doing. Which is an impressive story, even if it requires one to reorient their views on success a little bit.

• • •

Follow Nikola Vucevic on ... wait, none of today's three have Twitter?__

On the margin, Vucevic was a pretty awful rookie last year. Readers know I don't like slamming players, and I don't really intend to slam him, but he simply wasn't very good. The real key for Vucevic going forward is the same exact thing that was Nikola Pekovic's key heading into 2012. He simply needs to do the things he does well better, and cut out the things he does poorly entirely. He needs to improve in virtually every facet of his game to be a suitable NBA center. His shot selection leaves quite a lot to be desired -- he needs to be set up at the rim more, and he needs to stop posting up with stepbacks until he's actually any good at it. He needs to stop taking three of every six shots from beyond 10 feet -- he can't shoot from that range very well whatsoever. He needs to tighten up his defensive rotations, and do a better job bodying up on defense. He needs to fix his free throw form -- a 70% shooter from the stripe in college, 52% in the big leagues is absolutely not gonna cut it. His athletic limitations aren't great, especially when defending the pick and roll. He got a bit better as the season went along from that early-season problem, but not a heck of a lot. Put simply, he needs to get better. He needs to completely change how he's approaching the NBA game, much like Pekovic did between his shaky first year and his lights-out second year. Go on a vision quest, work with Hakeem, something.

Off the court, Vucevic hails from the Montenegrin region of Europe, which I found interesting and notable mostly because I took the time to watch "Once Brothers" this weekend. That's the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the broken friendship between Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac. Amazing documentary, and I'll admit, I teared up a bit at the end. Searching for any Vucevic-to-Petrovic connection brought up nothing of note, other than this May interview where Vucevic admits that he never really saw Petrovic play and grew up idolizing Michael Jordan (as did everyone) and Vlade Divac. The idea that Vucevic idolized Divac made me smile, a bit -- among the core themes of Once Brothers is the idea that Vlade Divac was demonized and pilloried in Croatia (and most places outside his hometown) for a moment's transgression and a mark of disrespect towards the Croatian flag. Well, it's not really an "idea." It's a fact. But the idea that Vucevic doesn't hold that against him, and in fact idolized him from a purely basketball perspective tugged on the heartstrings a bit. It's a nice thing to read. Also included in the highly recommended interview: Vucevic saying that he watched "He Got Game" to help him learn English, the statement that Serbia is "basically California", and notes that knowing French helped him learn English. Pretty cool. Seems like a decent dude, and I personally hope he can pull his own Pekovic and recoup his game in Orlando.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. I'm getting soft, I think. Just about everyone got high scores on yesterday's group, with @JoshsPseudonym being the first to get a 3/3. Good work.

• Could've starred in Hitchcock's "The Birds", if only he'd been alive. Maybe a bit too colorful, though.
• Seeing Player #140 play for the Bulls is going to be really, really strange next season.
• Given the sheer amount of time Player #141 has been in the league, and his insane number of teams, I was shocked to find he was only 30. Crazy.

Another day, another dollar. If only I made dollars for these. Adios, amigos.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Jose Juan Barea, Kyle Lowry, and Christian Eyenga.

• • •

Follow J.J. Barea on Twitter at @jjbareapr.

Explaining J.J. Barea's strengths and weaknesses is a bit odd, so let's lead in with some interesting trivia -- despite never going to a major university or playing professionally overseas, Barea is one of the few NBA players to have his jersey retired while he was playing. Specifically, for the now-defunct "Fort Worth Flyers" from the D-League. Barea played only eight games with the Flyers, but he made an impact -- he had two consecutive forty point games, and averaged 27-5-8 on 60% true shooting in his eight contests. This sort of speaks to Barea's game, in a roundabout way. Barea has not once posted an above-league-average PER, and on an NBA level, he's a relatively awful shooter. Barea shoots under 30% between the rim and the three, which is simply atrocious for someone who takes almost 4 shots a game from that range in only 25 minutes a night. He's a solid three point shooter, though -- he's good at slipping screens for the open three. Tends to make a better percentage when he's open. Fancy that.

Regardless. Barea's insane D-League stats relative to his awful NBA stats indicate a player who suffers a single overwhelming flaw in the NBA that utterly sabotages his game. That flaw? He's simply too damn small. Sure, there are some aspects of his game that are helped by his size. He takes a few more charges than one might expect. He's a mite bit faster -- without his speed, he might not have that singular burst that takes him past the screener on a slip-screen play (exactly what made him so useful against the Lakers in 2011). As the D-League stats clearly demonstrate, Barea is an incredible player when he's playing against guys his own size, in an NBA-style offense. (He wasn't great in college, surprisingly.) He has one of the quirkiest skillsets in basketball -- who else makes their bread on being the best unassisted at-rim scorer in the league? And yes, I'm serious. This is an actual thing. Not one player in the league creates more of their own at-rim offense than Barea. Combine that with his passing (which is honestly pretty excellent -- he's about as good as backups come in terms of running an offense and generating assists) and you have a great foundational skillset. This speaks to his talent -- he has a lot of weird skills that, in a frame more attuned to the league, would make him a superstar. Unfortunately, his size ends that possibility.

Barea is also a good example of a player for whom situation means everything. Back in 2011, when he was slicing up the Lakers defense on a pinpoint-accurate Mavericks team, everything seemed great. He seemed like a solid free-agent acquisition for whatever team was lucky enough to snag him. Now, in 2012? "Lordy, why did the Wolves give Barea a contract like that?" The funny thing about both statements is how misguided and reactionary they are. Even in 2011, Barea was hardly a great player -- he gave the Mavs 20 or so shaky minutes a night, and at the age of 26, it was unlikely he'd be developing into a better pickup anytime soon. That single Lakers series was probably the greatest series of his career -- beyond that, Barea's only actively positive moments came when Spolestra chose to play Mike Bibby on him in the 2011 finals. Now? He does the exact same thing he did on Dallas (and I mean the EXACT same thing -- in 2011 his regular season PER was 14.8, in 2012 his regular season PER was 14.9) and suddenly he's an awful waste of salary? Come on. He was a shaky contract then and he's a shaky contract now, but he's hardly useless -- he creates offense at the rim as well as anyone, and although his defensive game is essentially focused on flops and charges, it's not wildly ineffective for a guard his size. No, he's not going to be a starter, but he'll be a high-quality backup point guard and a spark off the bench for a very good Timberwolves team. Exactly what he did on the Mavericks, too.

• • •

_Follow Kyle Lowry on Twitter at __@Klow7._

Kyle Lowry is going to improve the Toronto Raptors. A lot, I think. Lowry is a really, really good player. He's effectively the best point guard cover in the game -- no other point guard gets the defensive results that Lowry does, not even Rondo or Paul (both excellent defenders, but both lay off from time to time and take games off when they're feeling under the weather). Here's a comprehensive list of the point guards that have dropped 30 points with Lowry as their primary defender for > 15 minutes in the last three years.

• John Wall (38 points, 59% shooting) on January 16th, 2012.
• Russell Westbrook (33 points, 56% shooting) on November 6th, 2009. (Lowry only played 19 minutes.)
• Tony Parker (31 points, 65% shooting) on April 1st, 2011.
• Derrick Rose (30 points, 46% shooting) on December 4th, 2010.

Pretty ridiculous, right? Especially considering the fact that that's only happened on 4 nights out of 190. In terms of defending pure point guards, you can't really beat the skillset Lowry brings to the table. He's tough-nosed, aggressive, and doesn't bite on fakes. He reaches in without overcommitting and changes his balance as quick as any player I've ever seen, allowing him to go from pressuring the ball to taking a charge in basically no time flat. He switches his momentum while moving backwards or to the side beautifully -- simply put, the man has a ridiculously adept command of every single skill that makes a guard a good defender, and he uses them all to their greatest extent. Lowry is a fantastic point guard defender. His lacking height (he's 6'0") hurts him a bit when he's forced to cover larger guards -- he's not nearly as effective on players that are 4-5 inches taller than him, or more. So players like Rondo might be more valuable, defensively, for their ability to shade over to the larger wings without too much trouble. But Lowry's a game-changer for a team defensively, and he roundly mucks up any truly point guard fueled offense his crew faces. (Why do you think the Spurs have had so much trouble with the Rockets the last few years, anyway?)

As for his offense, that's a slightly different story on a personal-to-Lowry level but about the same level of outstanding when you look at the team-centric level. While Lowry is effective, he's not a star -- his offensive game has been much improved by his late-career discovery of the three point arc (roughly a 26% three point shooter pre-2011, has shot 37% each of the last two season), but he still has the problem of his long two and his midrange shot being completely and utterly broken. His shot chart in recent years has actually looked quite a bit like Barea's -- he takes 3 shots a game from the outside-the-rim two range despite shooting around 30% from there, which he couples with below-average (but rarely assisted) forays to the rim and a suddenly effective three point shot. His passing is solid, though -- he runs an offense without complaint and finds guys relatively effectively. He doesn't turn the ball over much, a plus for his game, and he helmed the 12th best offense in the league -- and given that he missed 25 games, it's worth keeping in mind that the Rockets' offense was better with him on the court, too. Lowry is an excellent, excellent player. Combine his offensive instincts and command of the floor with his defensive presence from the guard position, and you've got a player that'll fit in well in Toronto under Dwane Casey. If Valanciunas can give that Raptors team ANYTHING, the addition of Lowry (and perhaps more importantly, the subsequent domination Calderon will exact on every other team's bench unit) should be enough to propel the Raptors into playoff relevance.

While I have a great deal of respect for his game, I personally don't like Lowry a ton, if only because I felt people tended to overlook Lowry's somewhat absurd temper tantrum at a Las Vegas referee during the lockout. After a female ref called a few things Lowry didn't agree with, Lowry proceeded to throw a ball at her torso, tell her that if she met him outside he'd "kick her a**", then after she sat down threw a basketball full speed at her head. I remember hearing some of my friends call it absurd that the referee would charge him with misdemeanor battery, but I don't think it was altogether unwarranted -- according to eyewitness reports, Lowry wasn't just being vicious to her, he was being verbally threatening to every referee at the game. And while throwing a basketball at someone who wasn't expecting it doesn't seem like that harmful when you think about, say, your family throwing basketballs at each other as children... keep in mind that Kyle Lowry is a professional athlete in ridiculously good shape. If he wanted to throw a ball to hurt someone, it'd probably hurt someone. The case was dismissed in mid-February with Lowry sentenced to naught more than 100 hours of community service and goes through an impulse counseling program. I'm glad we get to keep watching his game, because he's a really good player -- but I really hope the impulse counseling is effective. Not just for him, but for the league itself as well -- players blowing their lid like that at referees for no reason whatsoever isn't exactly a good way to attract better referee talent to a league that's sorely needing it.

• • •

Follow Christian Eyenga on Twitter at __@christeyenga8.____

Christian Eyenga isn't very good at this whole "professional basketball" thing, yet. At any level -- Eyenga was drafted straight out of the Congo, and while he spent a year playing in the Euroleague with DKV Joventut in Spain, he didn't exactly light the nets aflame -- he scored a grand total of one basket (a two pointer) and a single free throw in his four-game stint. He came to the U.S. in 2011, playing a supporting role on "one of the worst teams in the history of the human race" and producing tepid numbers in minimal minutes. He was traded to Los Angeles in the Ramon Sessions trade (which actually actively annoyed me -- the Lakers really needed another asset out of the Cavs to make them part with Luke Walton's bloated contract? Really?) and was recently flipped with other flotsam in the blockbuster Dwight Howard deal. Going forward, Eyenga is one of their possible rotation players -- he's clearly behind Redick and Afflalo in the Magic's wing rotation, but if Redick suffers any sort of injury (he avoided it last season, but he's had his troubles before), chances are high for a few games of 15-20 minute stretches for goodly old Christian.

If I had to summarize his game, I'd say he's what happens when a player has too much athletic talent for his own good. Essentially, Eyenga spent years in the Congolese leagues and the Euroleague getting by solely on his athleticism and electric youthful energy. He dunked once, he dunked twice, he dunked some more. He shot the three, every now and again, and he shot long twos because he felt he needed to. But other than hustle rebounds and dunks, there aren't a whole hell of a lot of basketball fundamentals that Christian Eyenga knows how to do. And in a league like the NBA, with viciously talented athletes at every position? Being a pure athletic marvel doesn't get you very far, especially if you don't have any other notable skills. Now, don't get me wrong -- he's an insanely good dunk artist. Just look at this one against Pau Gasol, which ranks among my favorite dunks ever. His nickname -- Skyenga -- was never more evident than that one. I think he'd be a great dunk contest player, sort of like Jeremy Evans. It's not like Evans can actually do much on the basketball court -- he dunks, and that's about it. That's Eyenga, who could win a dunk contest with his eyes closed but couldn't really contribute to an NBA team with double-super LASIK surgery.

Personally, I was hoping the Cavs would keep him. Not because I think he's really got much potential, of course. He doesn't, and chances are high he's out of the league in 2 or 3 years even if he puts together a good stint in his "last chance" years with the Magic. But with his nickname being Skyenga (and his dog to match), I was really hoping the Cavs could develop him into a decent complementary piece, enough so that his "Skyenga" name spread to Kyrie Irving. You know. "Skyrie to Skyenga for the slam!" That kind of thing. It's stupid and gimmicky, but the Cavs are the same way sometimes, so whatever. In any event, he's a fun NBA follow on twitter. Sort of a @horse_ebooks for the NBA. He posts these absurd pictures of himself making angry faces at the camera with no captions, as though he's judging you for the life you never lived. He also asks fans to "keep [him] in your heart." And admonishes bad drivers, too, in phrasing that makes less sense the more you read it. Don't forget game-finding -- everyone knows twitter is where to go when you want to find out how to buy games for different platforms. Christian Eyenga's twitter feed is all at once incoherent, endearing, and obscenely silly. He's the perfect NBA follow for anyone who likes @horse_ebooks, trust 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. Last time, I apparently picked the easiest riddles ever, because the answers were posted before I'd even had the capsules up for more than a half hour. Quick on the draw, writer-without-a-cause Adam Koscielak (who, I might note, has no access to the final capsule ordering.)

• Theoretically, Player #136 is the best Dwight-stopper in the league. Realistically, he's wasted salary.
• This fish-named Celtic has a silky-smooth midrange jumper. Unfortunately for Boston, he doesn't have much else.
• Someday, the Dwight Howard trade will be known as the [Player #138] trade. (Actually, no. It won't. He's not incredible. He'll sop Dwight's minutes, though.)

For our 2nd anniversary, my girlfriend got me an XBox 360. I have never owned a console before. Suggestions, readers?

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Rasual Butler, Udonis Haslem, Deron Williams.

• • •

Follow Rasual Butler on Twitter at @RasualButler45.

To be totally honest with you, I'm not really sure why Butler made the list. I don't really have much to say about him. I suppose the whole idea here -- write something about every player in the NBA -- wouldn't be such an absurd and ridiculous goal if there weren't some challenging ones. So here's me, trying to think about a player I haven't paid attention to in-game for seemingly years, with very little of interest on a personal level. I mean, don't get me wrong and assume the worst -- Butler is a strongly religious person, according to some NBA bios. Big bible man. He has a daughter, and does a heck of a lot more charity work than most NBA players. Very respectable, very neat, but perhaps a little hard to really say much about other than an expression of my utmost respect. So I grant that, but again, not really a subject to focus a whole capsule on. I guess there's that time he accidentally posted filthy pictures on twitter. That was kind of funny. I mean, it wasn't like "Airplane" funny or anything but it was kinda funny in the same way that awful live-action Avatar movie was funny.

Realistically, Butler has had one foot out the door for quite some time. He hasn't put up a field goal percentage above 40% since the Precambrian era (... or the 2010 season, whatever floats your boat), and despite the fact that most people know him as a sharpshooter, he hasn't put up an above-league-average three point percentage since the 2009 season. (Which was, I might add, the last time he played with Chris Paul.) Butler has a few nice skills -- he's a nice rebounder from the large-guard position, for his slim build, and over his career he's had very solid ball control. Now, granted, this is mostly because he absolutely never puts the ball on the floor. But per-possession, Butler's 2008 season was the greatest low-turnover-rate season of all time. Which is cool. You don't really want your hired gun sharpshooter turning the ball over all the time, that's just silly. That would be like hiring someone to mow your lawn and then finding that while he mowed the lawn, he also left dead bodies all over your lawn the next day. Sure, you may have done what I asked and mowed the lawn, but seriously, what is wrong with you don't leave dead bodies on my lawn I thought we had a deal. Exactly the same thing as the situation we're talking about. Definitely.

The situation of sharpshooters who end up dominating the ball and turning it over (or worse, not dominating the ball and still turning it over a lot) is a relatively common one, and it inevitably comes back to bite the teams that pick the wrong sharpshooters. For much of his career, Butler was one of the right sharpshooters. Now he's well over 33 years old, and he isn't. At all. He had a relatively prolific 10-year NBA career, and he made a startling $20,000,000 over the course of it. Butler isn't a very recognizable player, isn't a very good player (anymore), and doesn't really have a ton to talk about. As Basketball Reference clued me in on, his hall of fame percentage is a legit "0.000". Which actually got me thinking -- if you were an NBA player, and you saw on Basketball Reference that you had a hall of fame percentage of zero percent, wouldn't that feel kinda crummy? Poor guy. Well, I've got some news for you, Rasual Butler. If you're feeling bad, don't worry. There's a 100% chance that I'll feature you in a 2012 Player Capsule.

(There's also a 100% chance that I've run out of things to say about Rasual Butler. So... make that past-tense.)

• • •

_Follow Udonis Haslem on Twitter at __@ThisIsUD._

What a contract, right? At the time he signed his current deal, most people thought the Heat picked up Haslem at an incredibly solid value-deal, and a huge discount. While that may have been true at the time, in practice, Haslem's contract may come back to bite the Heat. Now, in fact, I'd argue their franchise loyalty to a Miami stalwart might've hurt them -- if they'd gone for a larger dollar figure in lesser years, then the mistake would be easily fixable. But they didn't. Now, Haslem is getting around $5 million dollars every year for the next three, despite putting up some positively dismal performances for the 2011 and 2012 Heat. Haslem is on the wrong side of 30, and unfortunately for the Heat, they'll be paying him until he's 35. In general, when a player has a down year after the age of 30 and things go poorly, you hope they'll recoup the next season. Haslem emphatically didn't in 2012, and arguably did considerably worse than he did in the 2011 season. He shot worse, he rebounded less, and he turned the ball over more. Not a good look.

The sad thing for Haslem now has to be looking at his performance and wishing he was simply a year or two younger -- back in the pre-Heatles days, Haslem was a relatively versatile, useful player. If Bosh was playing the five, the sweet-shooting longball Haslem of yore would've been a great fit for floor spacing purposes and defensive purposes. It would invert the usual orientation of an NBA offense (I.E., two shooters at the bigs to open the floor for two post-operating slashing wings as opposed to shooters at the wing to open up the floor for big guys in the post), but it'd be extremely effective with a classic Haslem season and a solid Bosh year. Now, with Haslem's big falloff, that's a pretty shaky proposition -- part of the reason people are saying the Heat need to go back to LeBron at the PF as a full-time option is because the just-as-planned Haslem/Bosh frontcourt pairing has been relatively dismal. Despite taking fewer shots than he used to take, Haslem's midrange shot went from around a 50% conversion rate to an awful 25% last season. The going rate on his long two pointers went from the high 40s to the high 30s. He stopped posting up very well (going from 40-50% to 30% from there) and his at-rim percentage went down. His scoring was down across the board, and while he rebounded well, his turnovers increased and he was rather clearly a step or two slow on defense last season.

Still. Haslem is a fan-favorite in Miami for a reason -- his hustle is unparalleled, and while he's only going to become more of an injury risk with age, I'm probably being a bit hard on the contract. He's only making 4-5 million a year, not anywhere close to the level of the awful contracts everyone put forth in their guesses. Haslem's contract is mostly a mistake in the idea that they could've had a player like Jared Jeffries, Nazr Mohammad, Kenyon Martin, Marcus Camby, or any of the other low-contract, low-year bigs they could've taken a flyer on when the Big Three came together. It's also a mistake in the idea that, had they done slightly more of a yearly total on a smaller year-length contract, they'd have (this year or next year) a valuable trade asset they could use as an outgoing expiring to snag a tertiary piece as a hanger-on in a larger trade (like the Cavs would've been in the proposed Nets-Cavs-Magic trade). Instead, they're sort of reduced to hoping Haslem gets better (unlikely, given his age) and hoping LeBron/Wade/Bosh don't fall off at all (likely for LeBron and Bosh, a bit of a high hope for Wade, but we'll see). Flexibility's the key for a team like the Heat, and Haslem's contract affords them less than they'd perhaps hope for.

• • •

Follow Deron Williams on Twitter at __@DeronWilliams.____

Deron Williams is one of the best point guards in the NBA. This is a fact. He's got elite scoring talent, putting up efficient isolation scoring numbers that put a lot of talented scorers to shame. Despite a surfeit of isolations and a ridiculous number of self-created shots, he's averaged a stunning 45-35-80 on his career (FG-3PT-FT), which is ridiculously good for a player that has the ball in his hands as much as Williams does. Among top tier point guards, he's right around the dead-on average in terms of turnovers, which is in and of itself relatively impressive -- he's taken on rapidly increasing usage without rapidly increasing his turnover rate in the last two seasons, which is a very valuable skill. His crossover is a work of art, and one of the smoothest moves in the game today -- it's a clear Iverson rip on style but he makes it work. He's among the best passers in the league, even in last year's dismal Nets situation with virtually nobody to pass to. He actively improves just about every offense he touches. His defensive potential is fantastic -- huge widebody at the point guard position, which gives him a bullish size advantage on just about any point guard that dares to enter the court. Combine that with his natural agility, and you have the formula for a brutally good defensive player.

Still. There's a large contingent of people -- including a lot of national writers -- who insist on naming Williams as the greatest point guard in the NBA, or insisting there's some legitimate argument to Williams in comparison to Chris Paul, or Derrick Rose. And silly things like that tend to beg a response. As a scorer, while Williams is good, he's hardly peerless, and I'd argue Rose, Parker, Irving, and Paul all have more potent and effective scoring abilities (even considering adjustments to their efficiency to match Deron's absurd usage). As a passing talent, Paul and Nash are clear betters to Deron, despite Deron's abilities, and you should probably throw Rondo in there as well. In terms of running a top-tier offense, well, Nash and Paul are clearly above Deron, and I'd argue that Parker's utmost importance in the Spurs' system puts him right there as well. Defensively is the only area where Deron is markedly overrated to the point of absurdity -- he has the defensive skillset to be very good, but the results simply aren't there. He gets a lot of dap for being a widebody and a former wrestler, and while that's true, he doesn't really throw his size into his man effectively on defense and he takes as many possessions off as Kobe does without getting blamed for it. His defensive plus/minus numbers have been bad for years, his Synergy numbers are awful, and by the eye test you get the same Kobe-perfected sense that (on defense only) Deron Williams was served a Thanksgiving dinner of talent and left everything untouched but the pumpkin pie. Delicious at times, but only if you ignore everything he's leaving on the table.

And I suppose that's the key. I don't love his game, but he's a very entertaining player to watch and easily one of the top-10 talents in the league. The problem I have with Williams isn't really in Williams himself, but in his insane fanbase. The idea that Williams is somehow superior to Paul just strikes me as such an extremely disrespectful address of Paul's talents, and consciously or not, it recontextualizes the way I watch Williams' game. Instead of being able to simply appreciate Williams for the brilliant player he is, I end up mentally doing exactly what the last paragraph did -- I watch and compare him to other point guards, and constantly tinker with my mental assessment of the players comparatively. Which, by the way, is about the fluffiest and least-substantial way to analyze anyone. Which frustrates me. The compulsion to constantly rank every single player we discuss and make that the be-all and end-all of analysis is aggravating, because rankings and relative value analysis can't hold a candle to individual evaluations and smart scouting. At least in my book. It's like I'm incoherently dumbing-down the way I watch Deron Williams just because I get so aggravated at trying to understand those who overrate him. It's annoying, especially when it infects the way I watch a guy who's among the best 20-or-so players in the game today.

Outlook for next season is mixed, I think. Most people are making a lot of assumptions when they say Williams is on the cusp of returning to his former glory. I'm not completely convinced. While I certainly understand the idea that last year's Nets team was abysmal, I don't think it's simply as easy as taking Williams' overall poor season and attributing it to some combination of disinterest and personal overexposure due to the awful cast around him. Deron Williams played pretty terribly during his last few months with the Jazz, due to a variety of lingering injuries. While this year's injuries (a badly strained right calf, a stomach virus, bruised ribs) have little to do with 2011's brood (a bad wrist injury), as a player ages injuries tend to linger farther and sap their core game. What's to say that those injuries won't -- as they have with, say, Chris Paul -- dog him a while longer, and lower his ceiling somewhat? While he's been an ironman up til now, his would hardly be the first career where a player with previously impeccable health finds his game sapped -- at least a little bit -- by a variety of happenstance injuries. The idea that Deron's relatively poor 2012 season can simply be erased off the face of the earth with the assumption that he'll play in a way he hasn't consistently played since 2010 is a bit assumption-heavy. I hope he does, because I think the league is a better place when Deron Williams is at his best. But there's an ever-present possibility that some level between Deron's last great season and Deron's quasi-all-star 2012 campaign is Williams' new regular talent level. That really isn't something that can simply be ignored, in any fair estimation of his career.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Yesterday, Utsav was our riddle winner, getting both Butler and Williams to the exclusion of Udonis Haslem. Today, the winner could be you!

• Andrew Bynum doesn't like Player #133. He doesn't like him at all.
• This summer addition should seriously change the complexion of last year's poor Raptors offense.
• Player #135 goes hard presently, has a dog that jumps high, and dunks like the wind. He's also barely an NBA player.

Pretty glad to get that week behind me, all things considered. Thanks for the birthday wishes yesterday. See you Monday.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Jan Vesely, Eric Bledsoe, and Carlos Boozer.

• • •

Follow Jan Vesely on Twitter by trying to be a detective.

The best aspect of Jan Vesely to this point in his career has been his ability to dunk. Seriously. Vesely was known for it before he came into the league for a reason -- it's really a thing you have to see for yourself. Vesely's aggravated assaults on the rim are something to behold. Just watch his highlight reel. When he came into the league, a commentator asked him if he considered himself the Czech Blake Griffin. In a lovable pull-out-the-carpet moment, Vesely scoffed and said that he didn't think that at all, and that instead, he thought of Griffin as the American Jan Vesely. What confidence, right? Really cool. There's a ferocity to his dunk artistry that begs analysis, and makes people apt to his game. Combine that with his hilarious interviews? If he even had a single other basketball talent, he'd be an amazingly popular star. A new-age Dirk Nowitzki, at least in quirkiness and fun. Alas, at this juncture of his career, he doesn't really have what you'd call "other skills."

A few not-so-notable facts about Vesely. This last season, he took 73 shots from outside 3 feet. He made -- I kid you not -- 11 of them. I'm a statistician, so let me assure you; going 15% on shots outside the direct vicinity of the rim is pretty bad. His handle is a mockery of the term "work in progress" -- Vesely managed to turn the ball over on 20% of the possessions he handled the ball, which becomes more horrifying the more you start to think about it. His defense was poor, in my mind. He was billed as a tough-nose defensive talent coming into the league but in practice this usually just turned into a constant drumbeat of silly fouls and blown coverages. He has a decent eye for pick-and-roll recoveries, but not a very good eye for when he needs to shade off the roll coverage and get back to his man. He has decent floor vision, but his passing ability is so defunct that even when he sees a good angle, the poor quality of his passes tended to ruin it. In a kind of amusing twist, Jan Vesely is essentially what Blake Griffin would look like if (as many commentators erroneously suggest) the actual only thing Griffin could do was dunk. He's a strangely packaged message from the basketball gods, in that sense -- if Blake Griffin was actually as talent-free as we tend to portray him, he'd look exactly like this.

This isn't to say that all of these things are designated facts going forward. Hardly -- from all accounts, Vesely is a hard-working guy who's putting a lot of effort into fixing these problems. I'd somewhat unintuitively say he should stop trying to fix his outside jumper, for now. I say that because, frankly, he has so far to go to even turn his outside-the-rim shot into a remotely passable offensive option that he's probably better off simply learning better ways to cut off a pass and get more free for rim-slashing and thunderous dunks. There's this irritating tendency of NBA players to spend a summer or two working on some aspect of the game where they're obscenely awful, improving the tiniest amount, then assuming they've got carte blanche to utilize their new "talent" at the expense of what actually makes them valuable. In Vesely's case, he's valuable because one can't guard his dunks effectively. So... use that. Leverage that talent. He shouldn't pretend that he's really going to have a passable outside shot in a few seasons -- that's a pipe dream right now, you know? So he'd be better suited to work the tertiary parts of his game -- his handle, his on-ball defense, his off-ball movement. That, I think, is the key to "fixing" Vesely's game. He's got the personality, the highlight reel, and the work ethic to be a very solid NBA talent. Here's hoping he puts in the hours and makes it work out.

• • •

_Follow Eric Bledsoe on Twitter at __@EBled24._

It's kind of funny the difference a playoff run makes. Had the Clippers not made the playoffs, this capsule would likely be about as pointed as an episode of Seinfeld. (The capsule about nothing, of course!) That's because Bledsoe's 2012 regular season was -- quite frankly -- awful. Some of his greatest hits: Bledsoe shot an incredibly poor 20% from three point range. Painful. He didn't make a single shot from 3-9 feet in the 2012 season. While he finished decently at the rim (to the tune of 59%), that wasn't a notably excellent total for a rim-finishing point guard -- the league average at-rim percentage among point guards is 59%, after all. That was compounded with a turnover percentage hovering around 25%, an assist percentage that barely cracked 20%, and a relatively poor job running the Clippers' offense. With Bledsoe on the bench, the Clippers had an offensive rating of 106. With Bledsoe on the court, they had an offensive rating of 100. Pretty huge gap, although the absurd brilliance of Chris Paul (and the lesser pieces Bledsoe played with) has a lot to do with that.

Luckily, though, the Clippers did have that playoff run and there are notable things to talk about because of it. Unless Bledsoe went on the most absurd hot streak in the history of hot streaks, his playoff run indicated that his regular season statistics aren't anywhere close to his ceiling as a player. In the 2012 playoffs, Bledsoe averaged 8-3-2 in only 17 minutes of play -- in a full 36 minute game, that's 17-6-4. Very solid. Even more solid were the percentages he used to get those numbers -- a blistering 58% from the field, featuring 43% from three. To contextualize his three point shooting -- Bledsoe made a total of six three point shots in the regular season, among his 464 regular season minutes. In 189 playoff minutes, he made three, and didn't overuse the shot. Bledsoe's increased personal offense didn't result in a decrease in his team's offense -- in fact, that aforementioned relationship between Bledsoe and the Clippers' offensive rating completely flipped in the playoffs, with the Clippers featuring an abominable offensive rating of 90 with Bledsoe on the bench and a blisteringly hot offensive rating of 115 with Bledsoe on the floor. Obviously, the sample size was smaller. But it was encouraging, if nothing else.

The key going forward is to figure out where the heck Bledsoe fits in the Clippers future plans, and perhaps moreso figuring out what the heck he actually is. A 60-70% free throw shooter in his career, chances are low that the "58-42" shooting playoff Bledsoe is the real deal. More likely, his peak would appear as something of a 45-30-75 type player, a scorer who lives at the rim with his slashing layups and free-throw drawing prowess, with a not-really-respectable three point shot that he only takes when absolutely necessary. His defense is fantastic, and much like Avery Bradley and Dwyane Wade, Bledsoe can impact a game defensively as strongly as the average guard impacts the game offensively. That's where most of his value comes. If he can bring his offensive game to "merely passable" levels, his defense should carry him into a Tony Allen-type role on a very, very good team. The problem is, as he's spent his entire career a point guard and lacks both size and spot-up prowess, it's difficult to see a situation where Paul/Bledsoe works as a primary rotation. This is especially glaring given that the Clippers have stocked up on a surfeit of awful two guards -- a washed up Billups, a washed up Jamal Crawford (for four years?!?), and "Nick Flynt Favorite" Willie Green. Paul/Bledsoe is clearly the Clippers' best option on paper, but in actuality there's almost no way it sees the court for serious minutes, especially not with Vinny Del Negro at the helm. So, while the prospect they put all their eggs in may very well have worked out, the Clippers have put themselves in a position where there's virtually no way he gets minutes or develops beyond his current state. Classic Clippers.

• • •

Follow Carlos Boozer on Twitter at __@MisterCbooz.____

Carlos Boozer poses a conundrum, to most analysts. When the Bulls signed Boozer, you were hard pressed to find a single statistically adept analyst that disliked the signing. John Hollinger thought it was excellent, I thought it was great, and most people looked at it as a high-upside signing of a big man that would thrive next to Rose. Oh, how wrong we were. There are a few things that could've indicated to us that Boozer's light's out 2010 season was a bit of a fluke -- his poor playoff run, and specifically his awful free throw shooting, in retrospect seems to be a bad omen for the first-year collapse of his outside shot in Chicago. While we always understood viscerally that Boozer's defense wasn't good, there was this unstated assumption that Tom Thibodeau would be able to fix him up and make him a useful defensive player -- he did his best, but two years into the Boozer experiment I think we can say with some confidence that even Thibodeau's genius can't overcome a player with as few defensive talents as Carlos Boozer. And finally, there's the conditioning/injury issue -- Boozer isn't the best conditioned big man around, and even though his injuries are often hilarious and ridiculous the end result is the same. A big man you can't count on to be there all season, and you can scarcely ever count on to be healthy for the playoffs. Especially when you combine that with Thibodeau minutes, though nobody knew about those before the Boozer signing.

The funniest thing about Boozer -- and the saddest, for Chicago fans -- is how poorly he fits into the equation in any estimation of the Bulls next to the Heat. Boozer is an incredibly poor defensive player if you're assessing the totality of his defense -- so many missed pick and roll coverages, so many lazy possessions where he simply doesn't figure out what his man is doing. But he has a few defensive skills, believe it or not. He's a decent cover for widebody large forwards (and some larger, less mobile centers) like Josh Smith, DeJuan Blair, or Boris Diaw, and he stays on them relatively well when he's locked in. But look at Boozer compared to the Heat, and you wonder where the hell he fits in on defense. He can't guard LeBron James -- that is legitimately insane, and one of the worst matchup ideas anyone has ever posited in their lives. He can't guard Bosh either, though, because Bosh is too quick and slippery. He gets caught on Spo's misdirection screens and ends up guarding Mario Chalmers or something every time he tries to guard Bosh. It never seems to work out well for him. On offense, Bosh is essentially tailored to stopping Boozer -- he can extend out as far as Boozer can without any real problem, and in the post his pesky challenges tend to ruin Boozer's obscenely slow setup motions and ruin Boozer's post play. As if to add insult to injury, Bosh also rebounds slightly above his career averages against Boozer. I know the Bulls had no real way of forseeing this before they signed Boozer, but the fact that Boozer has no realistic matchup against the Heat is a fact that adds insult to the injury of his immobile contract and bottoming production.

And I suppose it'd be unfair of me to keep this in my back pocket -- I really don't like watching Boozer. People complain endlessly that Anderson Varejao is the most "annoying" big man in the game, but I don't think people who say that have taken a close look at Carlos Boozer recently. Boozer is simply the whiniest man in the game today. He preens, screams, and screens with the abandon of a dirty player who virtually nobody realizes is dirty. Really. Lost in all the talk about Boozer's terrible defense is that he's terrible at defense despite being a somewhat dirty player, when he's locked in. He's got no qualms about ribbing his man, throwing an errant elbow when the refs aren't looking, or grabbing a jersey whenever he thinks he can get away with it. Somehow, despite often getting away with all of these things, he's still a horrible defender. It defies logic. Most bad defenders don't play dirty, they just play soft -- Boozer somehow manages to get away with dirty play and still be an absolutely abhorrent defender. Absolutely absurd. He flops a bit, too, but in the case of his flopping he usually does it so poorly that even the referees realize it. (Which is funny to watch, when it happens.) Off the court, I admit, I don't have much love for Boozer -- I don't outright hate him for abandoning Gordon Gund and the Cavaliers, but I can't say the chances are high that I'll ever really like him again. Unfortunately for Bulls fans, I have a sinking feeling that most of them feel the same way. Did anyone really see that coming, when they signed him in 2010?

• • •

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. And yes, virtually everyone got 3/3 on last week's capsules -- Mike, Chilai, Luke, and a bunch of others. Let's see if you can do it again, friends.

• I'm always confused as to why this 2012 Raptor is still in the league. They waived him midseason, tho -- Player #130 may be done.
• While they probably overpaid out of loyalty, it's hard to look at Player #131's contract and not conclude it to be a big mistake.
• If people gave Russell Westbrook as many excuses as they're now giving Player #132, Russ would probably have an MVP by now.

This week went by fast. The week's last capsule-dump comes tomorrow.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Hasheem Thabeet, Rajon Rondo, and Baron Davis.

• • •

Follow Hasheem Thabeet on Twitter at @HasheemTheDream.

Has Hasheem Thabeet succeeded? I find this a more interesting question for Thabeet than I do for most players. If you're looking at it from the right context, for most players, the answer is usually an unqualified affirmative. Few NBA players could make the sort of money they make in their sport elsewhere. Few NBA talents come from wealth -- by playing in the NBA and entertaining millions, they've made more money than they'd have possibly made in their lives, and opened their lives up to a plethora of new experiences they wouldn't have otherwise had. They work on their game for years and years, spending untold hours in the weight room and keeping their bodies in peak physical condition to play a beautiful game for a discerning audience. You get to be one of the several hundred greatest-on-earth at the game you love, and you get to live a ridiculous lifestyle. How cool is that?

On the other hand, you have players like Hasheem Thabeet, who have been tarnished with the label of an eternal, bottomless bust. A seven foot stiff that "wouldn't be in the game" if it wasn't for his height. A failure on the court, if nothing else. Thabeet was drafted at 2nd overall, and it's worth noting that even at the time this was seen as something of a reach. For instance, Bill Simmons called him "either a homeless man's Dikembe Mutombo or a rich man's Keith Closs Jr." Not exactly sparkling praise. People weren't really sure what to make of anyone past the first pick in the 2009 draft, and while it's true that Thabeet has disappointed relative to his draft position (I count at least 25 players selected after Thabeet that have up-to-now had better NBA careers), it's hard to really argue that at the time Thabeet was any especially hyped up or expectation-laden second pick. He was just an overdrafted player that nobody expected huge things out of. This is what bugs me about the concept of a "bust." We're necessarily decoupling the player from his humanity and turning him into a concept -- some sort of icon for severe disappointment.

Look, Thabeet is reasonably good at basketball. He's no amazing player, but he's proven to be effective in limited minutes as an off-the-bench change of pace for numerous teams. He was decent in college, if not sea changing. On next year's Thunder, I expect him to play 7-10 minutes a night and be instrumental in a win or two for one of the finest teams in the NBA. It's not great, but hell -- look at where he came from. Thabeet comes from Tanzania, and is actually the first ever NBA player from his country. He'll finish his career having made around $20,000,000 in U.S. dollars -- given the current exchange rate ($1.00 U.S. dollar = 1,572 Tanzanian Shillings as of August 29th, 2012), Thabeet may very well be among the 10 richest Tanzanians in the world! Only by decoupling Thabeet's broader life can we really come to the conclusion that he's some kind of a failure. He may not be as great an NBA player as we'd like him to be, but it's not like he's dramatically underperformed the already-low expectations he had coming in. And relative to his background, he's done some pretty amazing stuff. That's context that I think is essential to grasp Thabeet's place in both life and the NBA, and to understand what makes him interesting. Even if he's a veritably penniless man's Dikembe Mutombo. (Which he basically is. Reasonably good call, Simmons.)

• • •

_Follow Rajon Rondo on Twitter at __@RajonRondo._

Let's say I'm examining an NBA player. He's Team #1's primary man in the middle -- he played 2,838 minutes in the season we're focusing on, over 70% of the minutes available for the team. No other big on the team came remotely close. Let's say the team he plays for is a winning team -- in this case, a team that just made a conference finals! It's a really good team, but not a great team. Now, let's say Team #1 has a rather... unique way of winning games. They rated out over a full season as the 23rd out of 30 teams, defensively -- offensively, however, they were #1 with a bullet. Absolutely dominant. But their defense? Hide the children, seriously. Team #1 barely ever forced turnovers, and while they kept teams to a league-average field goal percentage, it didn't really matter that much when they can't get a rebound to save their lives. It was bad. Even though they were 23rd of 30, they were barely a point out of 25th in the league. It's rough. Very one-sided team. The thought process would generally lead to some element of blame. Some aspect of "hey, Mr. NBA Center, please play better defense. This is your fault." You look at their offensive dominance and wonder just how incredible the team would be if the center could really play defense.

What I just described was the situation of Amare Stoudemire and the 2010 Phoenix Suns. The Suns were a good team, but not a great one. And there was a strange, surreal ceiling to the Suns teams that featured him. He was fated to carry them offensively but disappoint defensively, and always bore the brunt of the blame for the Suns' constantly failing defense. After all, he was the big man. Controlling the defense is the primary responsibility of a team's largest player -- that's as close to gospel as you can get, in this sport. So, I present this question to you. If we're going to blame a primary big man for a team's defense consistently failing, why don't we blame the primary playmaker for a team's offense consistently failing? That question -- and the implications thereof -- brings us to today's main player. I don't want to bash Rajon Rondo, because I think he's a wonderful player to watch. Some call him immature -- I'd simply call him a loveable weirdo who doesn't seem to take the media too seriously. His oddness is refreshing, and while I doubt I'll get too far into it today, I highly recommend checking these videos out. Rondo is great, in a lot of ways.

But let's get real: at what point does Rondo need to bear some element of responsibility for Boston's abysmal offense? Don't cut corners -- the Boston offense is exactly that. The Suns defense I described finished as the 23rd worst defense in the league. Boston's offensive rating in the 2012 season tied the Wizards and Pistons as the 27th worst in the league. Relative to league average, it was significantly worse than the 2010 Suns, and among the worst ever to make a conference finals. If we're divvying up "credit" for the Suns performance, I don't know how you point out anyone but Amare. He was the primary defender on all those blown coverages. Amare's reputation has always included as an asterisk his defensive failings -- it's always included his inability to properly cover, and the odd habit he's got of being the primary defensive center on teams that are abysmal at defense. That's just part of the package. As for the Celtics' awful offense, how do you really point to anyone but Rondo as the catalyst? There isn't a single team in the league with the offensive weaponry of the Celtics in their stratosphere of offensive teams -- they had a 40% three point shooter, one of the best midrange big men in basketball, and a still-potent, efficient, volume-shooting wing. And various nice pieces off the bench, too!

It isn't that Rondo's a bad player, at all, but this is an honest to God curiosity for me -- why is it that basketball fans as a collective pillory big men whose teams are defensively suspect but completely excuse point guards who helm demonstrably bad offenses? The Celtics' offense is the epitome of drudgery. It's "give the ball to Rondo and let him do everything." He creates a lot of decent shots, but not a surfeit of great shots -- the Celtics offense is based around moving pieces trying to get open around a point guard who's great at passing, and taking the shot whether it's still open or not. It's a relatively uncreative design for an offense with so many good offensive pieces, and you have to wonder whether there's a better way. Rondo's passing is a work of art. It's a Dali, a Pollock, a Chavel. But in basketball, you play the game to a measure of results -- the aestheticism is compelling, and can at times be more than enough. But aestheticism shouldn't (and can't) completely erase the facts of a situation. I love watching Stephon Marbury (when he's not playing next to Duncan, obviously), but that doesn't mean I excuse the fact that he's an incredibly inefficient player.

In the same way, as fun as Rondo is to watch, you really have to wonder when people are going to catch on to the dirty little secret that underlines his beautiful game. He's a great passer, in a vacuum. But if we're assessing how much a singular player contributes to their team, it's hard to dock Rondo some for the dismal offense he's responsible for. Blame Doc some-- he deserves some for putting together a poor scheme like that around a player with Rondo's talents. But some has to be on Rondo. The idea that the Boston offense would be markedly worse without Rondo seems flawed to me -- if you took Rondo out and replaced him with a point guard that could generate more efficient offense of their own alongside worse passing like Stephen Curry or Ty Lawson, are we really saying that players like Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett would find themselves completely unable to make a shot?

The problem with assigning paramount post-aesthetic value to Rondo's passing and offense is that you are necessarily assuming that to be the case. You're saying that an offense that ranked 27th out of 30 teams would suddenly collapse unto itself, a black hole of dust and woe, if Rondo left the picture. That a team with those pieces and that bench would suddenly become the worst offense in the history of the sport. Because there's little room to fall beyond where they already are. His aesthetics are doubtlessly incomparable, and I've no problem with calling him things like the most entertaining player in the game, or the best showman in the sport. Where I find fault is when we conflate his incredible showmanship with efficient and effective usage of the pieces around him, and assign incomparable basketball value to a player whose presence isn't demonstrably sea-changing in the aspect of the game he's most attuned to impact. After all. He's an incredible player, and a very valuable piece. But the results that underly Amare's defensive failings will never leave our thoughts, and will never allow us to exogenize our distaste for his teams' defense in favor of a unbiased look at his career.

If that's the case, whither Rondo?

• • •

Follow Baron Davis on Twitter at @Baron_Davis.
__

It's rather strange to look at Baron Davis' numbers and facts to realize how little time he has left. After all, consider his age -- he's 33 years old, right now, a solid 5 years younger than Steve Nash and 6 younger than Jason Kidd. Both of those guys just got two year contracts. Unlike those two, though, Davis recently suffered what may turn out to be a career-ending injury -- he went through an exceedingly brutal injury in the 2012 playoffs where he not only completely tore his ACL and MCL, he also suffered a partial tear of his patella tendon. As Knickerblogger pointed out at the time, a tendon injury like that isn't an injury players tend to whistle their way back from -- when Antonio McDyess suffered a similar tear, he missed 72 games of the 2001 season to try and recover. He then proceeded to completely tear the tendon in the 2002 preseason and missed another entire season. Given that he's out for the entirety of the 2013 season and may still be recovering when 2014 begins, it's exceedingly unlikely Davis makes a big comeback. His numbers have been declining for years, and he hasn't really been capital-B Baron since 2008.

Still, if this is really it, what is there really to say about a player like Davis? As compelling as he's been -- the wonder of leading the 2007 Warriors to the biggest upset ever can never be taken away -- there is certainly a sense that he's left something on the table. His abysmal conditioning throughout his career didn't cause his career-ending injury, but it couldn't have helped him recover from all the minor injuries he's suffered over the years. Despite the disappointments, Davis is the 37th highest earning player in NBA history. That's a suitably absurd place for Davis to be, in-context. He hasn't been a failure, necessarily -- there have been brilliant successes in his career, and there have been awful nadirs. A bit of a disappointment in totality, but hand wringing over that doesn't erase the fact that Davis has made hundreds of millions of dollars and will likely make even more in a variety of entertaining post-retirement moves. He's a smart guy, a cerebral guy, and an entertainer through and through. If we aren't making the case that he's an all-time elite (and, well, nobody in the known universe is), that's about all one can really ask for, isn't it?

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. A friend of mine from work got 2/3, as did "my funeral" (?!?!?!?), and mgallop from the comments. Good work folks.

• The most famous Czech in Serbia, Player #127 has avoided making a serious impact in the NBA. (Yet.)
• He was a revelation in last year's playoffs, but I've got doubts that Player #128 can play with CP3.
• After Player #129 does anything on the court, the only reaction allowed is "CARLOS!"

I shall now prepare to be lit on fire by the people of Twitter. See you tomorrow if I'm still alive, friends.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Luke Harangody, Chris Bosh, and Sebastian Telfair.

• • •

Follow Luke Harangody on Twitter at @lukeharangody. (Warning: May Not Actually Be Luke Harangody.)

There aren't a ton of things to say about Luke Harangody. I like the Cleveland Cavaliers. I like most of the players on the Cavaliers. I appreciate their contributions to the team. But Harangody? I find it difficult to really appreciate the things he brings to the Cavaliers, primarily because I genuinely have no idea what they are. Samardo Samuels gives us a constant stream of beautiful yet incomprehensible slop to pass on to our grandchildren. Luke Walton gives us a bro, on those nights where we simply need a bro. Omri Casspi I don't need to go into again. But Harangody? He's the end-of-the-bench guy to end all guys. He's the last living soul I want to see on a basketball court. Perhaps somewhere there's someone who goes to Cavs games eagerly awaiting Harangody's presence. If that someone exists, I never want to meet them, because I feel like they're probably a bit off-kilter, and would probably kill on sight.

I'm not going to go hyperbolic enough to say that I'd outplay him (because I sure as hell wouldn't, and I'll get back to that later), but dear god, he is not an NBA player. To begin with shooting: he's one of the worst shooters (and worst finishers) ever to play in the league. Let me put it this way. Luke Harangody has made 102 shots in his NBA career. 85 of them were assisted. _In almost 1000 NBA minutes, Harangody has made 17 unassisted shots. __In total.___ Despite the gaudy assisted-to-created percentage, Harangody has shot an astonishingly low 37% from the field over his NBA career, including 24% from three point range. He makes a single three pointer for every four he puts up, and he's put up 80 in his two-year career. That's... not very good, folks. Glancing upon the other reasons Harangody's NBA minutes befuddle me... how about his rebounding rate? It's under 15%, which is atrocious for a big forward. At least he's a great passer, posting an assist rate of 4.2% in 2012. Oh wait. That was the 73rd worst assist rate in the entire league. Well, uh, dang.

Just about the only reason you can credibly come up with for Harangody's playing time is his exceptional ability to keep from turning the ball over, as he posted a turnover rate of 5.4% in 2012. That was the 53rd lowest turnover rate ever registered by a 10+ MPG player in the history of the league. Which, I admit, is pretty cool. It's pretty cool that Luke Harangody managed to go through 231 garbage time minutes and only have four turnovers. Does that really excuse his complete inability of any other basketball talent? I... no, not really. I don't think so. Luke Harangody is a good basketball player relative to the folks at your local YMCA, and he'd probably be a half-decent starter for a second-place team in a German league. But Harangody is akin to a constant reminder at the back of your head, this nudging note that any old average white-bred semi-athlete would look like crap in the NBA. We all know good old Johnny McFlippant at the gym, that one guy who complains that NBA players "don't work hard at all" and that he'd dominate seamlessly at the NBA level. I suppose that's why Harangody exists. It's this constant drumbeat reminder that Johnny McFlippant is completely and utterly wrong. That's how I've decided to rationalize Luke Harangody's presence in the NBA. It's Stern's constant reminder of just how embarrassing it would be if I were an NBA player. I've finally figured it out. Thanks, Player Capsules.

• • •

_Follow Chris Bosh on Twitter at __@chrisbosh._

I'm not really sure what to say about Chris Bosh, because everyone seems to write about the Heat and everyone seems to have said their piece on him already. Let's talk about expectations and reputations, I suppose. I think the most pointed observation one can make about him is that he -- even more than LeBron, more than Wade, and (perhaps) even more than the Heat franchise itself -- is the single Heat player whose public reputation reflects the weight of the Heat's collective reputation. What I mean by that is relatively straightforward, but it's a hard-to-parse statement, so I'll explain by example. After the 2011 season, when the Heat made the finals and folded against a Mavericks team that was on a historic run, very few people seemed eager to criticize Wade. When people eviscerated LeBron they didn't simply do it based on his Heat collapse. LeBron criticism was necessarily rooted in LeBron's past -- his "disappointing" runs in Cleveland, his 2010 disaster, et cetera. LeBron certainly bore the load, but the load was based on his career in its totality, not on a single run.

As for Bosh? I saw numerous people criticize Bosh as an ill-fitting piece, or one that needed to be traded immediately. They questioned his toughness and his ability to act as a center on a title team. They questioned every aspect of his game and then some, and continued to do so throughout the entire offseason. There was no real reflection on the rest of his career -- the entire criticism was necessarily centered around his single playoff run, and the team's results after the failed run. Bosh bore the brunt of the Heat's failure, in the erosion of his own personal brand and reputation as a star in the league. It lasted through the entirety of last season -- until the finals, that is. Now? Belay that reputation, Captain. As the Heat refused to fold this year and upset a favored Thunder team in an embarrassingly lopsided Finals, Bosh found his reputation take a complete 180 in no time flat. Whereas 2011 Bosh was the weak link that disappointed the basketball universe with his "soft" play and inadequate interior defense, 2012 Bosh was a crucial piece and the best big man on a title team. He's now virtually invaluable, in the eyes of NBA consigliati -- arguably one of the 10 best players in the league, and many would now assess him the greatest power forward in the league. Twitter goes nuts at everything he says, and he's seen as this changed and much-improved player off of last year's disappointment.

The problem with this 180, at least to me, is that it isn't really rooted in anything Bosh has done differently. There was one big difference between 2011 Bosh and 2012 Bosh -- one played on a team with LeBron James playing up to his potential, and the other didn't. That's about it. In the 2011 playoffs, Chris Bosh averaged 19-9-1 in around 40 minutes a game. In the 2012 playoffs, Chris Bosh averaged 14-8-1 in about 32 minutes a game. His rebounding rate was a slight bit higher in 2012, and his field goal percentage was a bit higher as well. Perhaps he passed a little more willingly. The Heat were slightly better in the playoffs defensively in 2012 than they were in 2011, and Bosh played a role in that as well, but I thought he did a remarkably decent job on defense in 2011 given his lacking credentials on that end from his Toronto tenure. I'm not sure the gap between the two years defensively is as vast as most people assess. You could chalk it up to his absence in the 2012 playoffs showing his value, but I think that's actually kind of absurd -- the Heat went 5-4 without Bosh in the 2012 playoffs, not 0-943. And beyond a single blowout loss to the Pacers, there wasn't a single other embarrassing loss in that span. The Heat weren't as good without Bosh, but they weren't some hapless hobo puppy either.

The point I'm generally trying to make is that many conflate the results of Bosh's unit with the performance of Bosh himself. Bosh is important to the Heat, don't get me wrong -- he's their only good big man, and even in the modern league's lessened emphasis on strong frontcourts, that's still a ridiculously important thing. But this sudden surge of Bosh appreciation, and this sudden desire to express a whole scale reversal of Bosh's previous reputation befuddles me. Bosh is a really good player, and he's always been one. The Heat lost last year as a result of what everyone on the team did, and they won this year as a result of what everyone on the team did. Some players played better (namely LeBron, Chalmers, and the supporting bananas), some players played worse (namely Wade), and some players played virtually the exact same (Bosh). To go from assessing Bosh to be a nigh-worthless Flintstones-era diva to some kind of incredible all-NBA talent based on the contributions of others simply seems like a hilarious flip, to me. I understand it, mind you -- I'm guilty of the same thing, for various players and coaches alike. Just not for Bosh, I suppose.

• • •

Follow Sebastian Telfair on Twitter at @BassyS31T.
__

Do you remember? Do you remember when Sebastian Telfair was young, and he had all the promise the world could offer? I do. Only vaguely, though. I didn't follow basketball nearly as much when I was a teenager, as I was when Telfair was a prospect. But I do remember one thing -- he was hyped. Telfair wasn't just another old preps-to-pros players, he was a revolution for the point guard position. In Telfair, you had the first ever true point guard drafted straight out of high school. Generally, teams considered point guard the position that needed the most development -- you needed to let a point guard evolve and forge within flames of college ball. You had to let him see multiple coaches, multiple styles, multiple casts. A point guard developed a certain language with every coach they played under, and the NBA saw them as translators. You couldn't have a translator that had only learned a single language, and you couldn't have a point guard that hadn't learned to play with multiple coaches. It just wasn't done.

Until Telfair, that is. He changed all that. Him and Livingston, that year. The first two ever. And he was set to take the NBA by storm, too -- just look at this 2004 Sports Illustrated profile. When Kyrie Irving chose to abdicate the NCAA after his maiden season, there were few who really thought it strange or unreasonable to make the jump so early. It was through the efforts of Telfair, Jennings, Wall and the like that the practice has become commonplace. But Telfair was the first, and in terms of how he was viewed before he made the leap, perhaps the most highly rated. Just about everyone seemed to think the question with Telfair wasn't how good he could be, but how good he would be. Sure, he was a little undersized. Sure, he couldn't really... er... shoot. But these concerns were tertiary -- his passing vision was incredible, his floor sense was impeccable, and the thought held that he didn't really "need" the experience of adapting to different coaches. He was good enough to bypass that completely.

Now? Well... I don't like admitting this about players, but relative to expectations, it's hard to argue that Telfair has been anything beyond an unmitigated failure in the NBA. As I said, he's undersized -- at the time he entered the league, he weighed in at 165 pounds and a hair under 6'0". That's extremely small. And as I noted... his shooting is abhorrent. Any analysis of Telfair as a player has to start and end with his shooting, which completely undermines every positive aspect of his game. He doesn't even have a remotely passable three point shot, and he doesn't really have any particularly effective jumpers from any range. The problem with Bassy isn't that he can't get open, either -- despite his height, he has a killer half-step and an insane crossover dribble that regularly floors the competition. Telfair has little trouble getting himself open, when he's handling the ball. The problem comes in the fact that even as a wide-open shooter, Telfair simply isn't a very good one. His shooting motion has had a bad hitch since day one, he compulsively rushes his shots, and he tends to chuck the ball with even a modicum of open air. Which is bad, since (as I just said) his jumpshot is terribly broken.

As for defense? Passing? Rebounding? Not great, none of it. He's good at creating in the open floor, but when you force Telfair to mold a game plan around better players surrounding him on his team, he struggles mightily. And that's sort of the point, if you're a point guard that isn't the best player on the team. The question I've had for a while -- and it's strange to ask, but it's legitimate -- is how Telfair would look in a world where he actually was the best player on a team. I'm talking a busted Euroleague squad, a decent CBA team, a good Turkish League club -- how would Telfair look if you let him combine his relentless hustle with the ability to spend every possession creating in the open court and full license to chuck with abandon? I was thinking I'd probably get my chance to see that around the middle of last season, where he'd been absolutely awful for the Suns and looked to have his ticket punched to an undisclosed overseas location.

But then something rather amazing happened, as the good folk at Valley of the Sun described here. For the last quarter of the season, Telfair apparently forgot that his career has been a disappointment. He forgot that he'd spent an entire career playing like a 3rd string point guard with obvious, glaring faults. He forgot all of that, showed his trademark confidence, and played his game. And you know what? He was really friggin' good. The Suns picked him up for the 2013 season, and it looks like the hot streak combined with his hustle may keep Telfair from the murkier waters abroad for at least a season or two longer. You know what? Good for him. He'll make double the money and have a chance to rehabilitate his career, a touch, playing for a pretty bad team with a coach that cares about him regardless. That's a good situation. And while Telfair has been a failure in the NBA, he's keeping that flicker of hope alive. After all, he's only 27. He's got time. Right?

... alright, no, not really. We can't always get what we want, I suppose.

• • •

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. We returned to some element of normalcy yesterday, where someone got each player right but nobody got all of them right. Props to Brian for being the only one to get Harangody right, and props to basically everyone for getting 2/3 of them right.

• Time's running out. If Player #124 wants to beat DeJuan Blair at anything, it's time to start... you know... doing it.
• Never in NBA history has the PG helming the 25th best offense in the league gotten as much effusive praise as Player #125.
• Harden's beard will never have a thing on yours, Player #126. Even when you retire.

Sorry for the late post. Family emergencies and four hour drives take a lot out of you. See you tomorrow.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Paul Pierce, Shane Battier, Al Horford.

• • •

Follow Paul Pierce on Twitter at @paulpierce34.

Sometimes, when writing about certain players, my thoughts run long and I end up with something far too long to turn into a subsection of these three-player packages. I’m making it a point to explicitly allow the leeway to produce those sorts of long capsules, but I’m trying to also use them as an opportunity to spread word of the project to new readers. To that end, I’m going to take these super-long post-sized capsules and spread them to different institutions we’re partnering with. Today, Paul Pierce’s capsule goes up at Hardwood Paroxysm. In it I share a personal story about a man named Max, and try to reconcile my general distaste for Paul Pierce with the facts about his life and game.

Some will bring up Pierce's gang ties for a reason they hate him. I think that's a bit ridiculous. While Pierce was fined by the league for throwing up an ersatz gang sign back in 2008, he denied it heavily and pointed out that it would be kind of absurd for a person with a foundation dedicated to keeping kids out of gangs and off the streets to be throwing up gang signs on purpose. And it's worth noting that Pierce has faced more hardship than most -- his father abandoned his family at the age of six, and Pierce has always dealt with that with a maturity far outstripping his years. You may mention the ridiculous wheelchair moment all you want -- I can name exactly zero other NBA stars who came back within the week after being stabbed 11 times. And having to go through lung surgery to fix puncture wounds to the lungs. And only getting stabbed for trying to break up a fight before it got violent. It's not exactly a common feat. Pierce exudes toughness, grit, and a highly respectable fortitude. Sure, he may be a little annoying on the court (although, again, he and Kobe are the models most expect and demand younger players emulate, so the annoying qualities can hardly be considered as such in the broad scheme of things), but his off-court steadfastness and respectability tends to indicate a person better than he generally gets credit for.

And, again. I kind of hate him.

Read more about Paul Pierce at Hardwood Paroxysm.

• • •

_Follow Shane Battier on Twitter at __@ShaneBattier._

I can't be the only person in the world who thinks Battier is somewhat overrated, right? I'll admit -- in his prime, he was a defensive force, and a genuinely talented all-defensive type that changed the game (in the regular season only) for numerous teams. His run this year with the Miami Heat has redefined his legacy, a tad. Some have taken to calling Battier one of the keys to the Heat's run, and point to his incredible work ethic and genuinely excellent ability to play the press. They also point to a downright excellent NBA finals, where Battier sunk seemingly every open three he got and played "gritty" defense for the team that won. But a single series doesn't make the man, and a single (excellent) New York Times profile shouldn't make us unable to register several evident facts about Battier's current game. While he scouts with the best of them, Battier's lost the versatile lateral mobility that made him a notably tough defensive player back when he was younger.

He's still good, mind you, but he's not exceptional. And when you combine his falling-off defense with his offense (never lights out, Battier can only convert 50% of his shots at the rim and just barely reaches the 33% mendoza line from the three point line, despite playing with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to open up the arc), you get a picture of a player who isn't long for the league. Regardless of his solid NBA finals performance. This may seem a bit caustic for a player whose personality is hilarious and whose general demeanor is a breath of fresh air. He's a nice guy. I don't personally mind him. I admit that. This general desire to disprove theories that Battier is some amazing player could be a result of a bias that's not Battier's fault. To try and explain my bias, let's go over a story.

I was at a showing of one of Duke's final four matchup against West Virginia in 2010, in Cameron Stadium. There were some frat boys sitting behind me, because at Duke, that's virtually always the case. They were talking about Duke's retired jerseys, and pointing up at them. I was working on some coursework, as it was one of the last breaks in the game and I had to get back into "doing work" mode. They suddenly get to Shane Battier. One of them yells "BATTIER, YEAH!" and slaps the other one hard on the back. Some beer splashes onto the back of my head, so I turn up and hear the following.

"What, bro?"

"Yeah, dude, that's my favorite player of all time. He's literally the greatest to play the game."

"... wait, what? Legit? What about like... Michael Jordan, bro?"

"Literally inferior."

"Haha, dude, that's crazy."

"My bro Shane is mad underrated, are you one of those #*$# who don't know the score?"

"Uh... I guess so, I think he's pretty average and stuff, I mean he's real good but like nah dude."

"Holy *#@$ dude $*#& you holy $&*#."

"Uh..."

"Shane Battier is one of the greatest players alive and you just have to live with it."

"Wait wh--"

"Easily top ten in the NBA and the only players better are Carlos Boozer and Kobe Bryant so suck my $#&@."

"... are you joking?"

"DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M JOKING, @#&%$???"

He then proceeded to storm out of Cameron stadium and throw his beer at a random bystander. ("No, sir, it does not look like you're joking.") Given that he and his friend had cheered when Da'Sean Butler was injured, I wasn't all that sorry to see him go. But it remains to this day among the most hilarious "basketball facts" I've heard someone share without shame or remorse, and has inspired within me a constant desire to make sure nobody ever thinks remotely similar things about Shane Battier again. Sorry, Shane. I don't mind you or anything, but some Duke fratstars made this my personal goal. It's nothing personal. You understand, right?

• • •

Follow Al Horford on Twitter at @Al_Horford.
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I don't think there are many people who understand how good Horford is, when he's on the court. Seriously. For the past two or three years, I've been waiting for him to have a fully healthy year where people actually watch the Hawks and start to understand how lights out he's been for that team. Nothing going. Last year in particular, Horford was injured virtually all season long. The year before that? He was injured in the playoffs, leading to constant talk of how he wasn't good enough to hack it there. After all, the 2011 Hawks went on one of the better-looking playoff runs in the last decade -- they made it to the second round, but not in a fluky sort of tedious way. They dominated the Magic, then they legitimately challenged the Bulls. And they did it with Horford injured and playing poorly. It was refreshing, in some ways, but it was also distressing -- it just contributed to the layman's view of Horford as a genuinely useless (or at least tertiary) player to Atlanta's core. Which is absurd. He's been their best player since he turned 23 and he'll be their best player for years and years to come.

There are a lot of people who don't feel Al Horford has deserved his multiple all-star nods. I think that's pretty absurd. It's true that Horford's position has been miscast for virtually his entire career -- the man's a floor-spread power forward who tends to operate from the post when he's not spotting up to spread the floor, not a bruising center that requires to be in the post at all times. But his miscast role hasn't stopped him from being brilliantly productive in his minutes. He's one of the better floor-spacing power forwards in the league, and for his career, he's shot an incredible 47% from the long midrange. Wondering where that ranks among the league? Consider this. Last season, only eight players in the entire league matched Horford's career average from that distance. Which, suffice to say, is pretty insane. He also shoots, for his career, over 70% on at-rim shots and 42% on "true midrange" shots. While he doesn't hog the ball or demand more touches, he's about as efficient as a player could possibly be with the touches he gets. His only real flaw is a somewhat lacking suite of post moves -- admittedly, the Hawks don't tend to enter the ball to him in the post in very good situations, but there's no doubt that Horford needs to get better at converting from the low post.

As for his tertiaries, you can't find much to impugn there either. He's not among the best rebounding talents in the game, but he's certainly good enough, and he'll get you a double double in decent minutes with relative ease. He's a lights-out passer, too -- in 2011 (his last healthy season), Horford sported 3.5 assists a night. That was by far the best among centers in the league. And even if you compare him to players at his natural position of power forward, the only players that season who matched him in assists per 48 minutes were Lamar Odom and Tim Duncan. His assist rate was less than a percentage point separated from Mike Bibby, who played big minutes at point guard for the finals runner-up Heat. As for his defense, that's not a place to knock him either. He's not a natural center, and the numbers show it. If you look at Horford's splits, throughout his career, he's virtually always defended centers worse than power forwards and wings. He's an amazing switch-defender. But he doesn't do an outright bad job covering centers, he simply doesn't do an excellent job. Against power forwards, he's one of the better defenders in the league -- if the Hawks would pick up an actual center to put next to Horford, they'd be much improved.

Basically? Horford was (and still is) great. The only two real knocks on his game you can come up with in good conscience is to point out that it isn't exciting and his conditioning is a mite bit suspect. He's easily fatigued, essentially. Isn't a great fourth quarter player, because he tends to be exhausted by the end of games and the moves that dominated the first few quarters fail at the close. You could argue that his poor conditioning is a contributing factor to Horford's injury woes, but that's a pretty tenuous case to make. He's an excellent player who works hard and produces at the absolute peak of what he could possibly produce. And the best part? That contract. Horford is locked in through a period that may span his entire prime making $12 million a year for the production of a slightly sub-max player. It's a ridiculous coup for an Atlanta front office that isn't used to making them, and I'll admit... I've got some hopes that a surprising Hawks team this season that finally emerges from the dredgery of iso-Joe and Woodson-style hardball forces people to pay attention to Horford. He's good, alright? Better than most people think. I promise.

• • •

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. Bunch of 2/3s, no 3/3s. Big announcement for the day? We're doing a soft rollout of a new database structure we're using to organize the capsules, located here. We're still working out the kinks, but try it out -- you can filter by team, sort by age, or do all manner of cool things to our broader list of capsules. It's really rad. Big ups to Alex Dewey, who did the backend coding of the database. Now for today's riddles.

• The Cavaliers spent absolutely nothing to acquire Player #121. It was still too high a price.
• Player #122's importance to the Heat was made explicitly obvious in the playoffs last year. But does Taco Bell know?
• One of John Krolik's favorite players. Hard to really dislike Player #123 after that documentary, unless you actually have to watch him play.