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 Robin Lopez, Tyson Chandler, and Carlos Delfino.

• • •

_Follow Robin Lopez on Twitter at __@eegabeeva88___.

Ah, Robin Lopez. Let's start with the obvious: it's a great thing for all parties that Lopez got traded to the Hornets. The Suns, the Hornets, Lopez himself -- there's basically nobody that the trade doesn't help. For the Suns, they were able to bring in an asset at a position where they were relatively bare in the form of former lottery pick Wesley Johnson. No, Johnson isn't an excellent player, but he's still got some potential and at the bare minimum he'll eat minutes at the expense of Shannon Brown and Michael Redd. Not a bad thing. For the Hornets, they put an end to the (really, really bad) idea that would have Anthony Davis spend his first year or two in the league playing primarily the center position. It's true that naturally Davis is a center, but his weight and lacking strength would make life very hard on him offensively in his first year or two when any strong NBA center wanted to guard him, and would potentially put him at risk of more injury. Lopez may not be wonderful, but he's a true center, and he should help the Hornets put together a rotation with Davis only playing half his minutes or so at the center position. Which should help his development immensely. It's not an awful contract, either, and the Hornets have crystal-clean books going forward. So that's nice.

And finally, it helps Robin Lopez. There are problems, don't get me wrong -- last season, Lopez only had one particularly efficient play-type, and it was scoring as the roll man in the pick and roll at 1.11 PPP. He only was utilized in the PnR on 14% of his offensive possessions, primarily due to the fact that Lopez spent barely any time on the floor with Steve Nash. This is actually an OK thing going forward, as it tends to indicate that last season (and to a lesser extent the season before) Lopez had to adjust to life without Steve Nash's easy feeds and pinpoint passing. The Hornets don't have anything remotely close to Nash from a pure passing perspective, and are currently set to be placing the worst passer in the history of college basketball in as their point guard of the future. Having played for the last year or so with Ronnie Price and Sebastien Telfair as his point guards helps prepare him for what's going to happen in New Orleans, and a change in scenery (with a markedly better coach) may help his game recoup a bit from a few-year lull. Which is good, because all things considered, it probably needs some recouping.

He hasn't really approached the excellent play he showed at the end of the 2010 season since the Suns' Cinderella run to the Western Conference Finals ended. Which isn't necessarily an awful thing. After all, he's an unremarkable minute-sopping backup center. What's wrong with that? The problem with Lopez is mostly injury-related and difficult to cull out from Alvin Gentry's rotation decisions. How much of his falling out had to do with Gentry's distaste for his game? How much was skill related and how much was effort? It's hard to really tell. The other thing that should be good, at least in Davis' rookie year, is that he won't be slotted in a rotation behind a 30+ MPG can't-play-anything-but-center big man as well as a stretch-five that Gentry has a weird fascination with playing. That should increase his minutes per game considerably. So too should Monty's system -- Robin has skills, defensively, and while they weren't really properly utilized in Phoenix (see here -- he had good individual numbers but the Suns system actively tried to pull offensive players away from centers rather than relying on their centers for solid contributions) I have a lot of confidence in Monty's ability to figure out how they're best applied. Lopez isn't a great rebounder for his size, and he's extremely foul prone. But he's decent.

All things considered, he should be an asset on a very solid, rebuilding Hornets team and he has the potential to be a super-sixth off the bench for a very good team sometime in the near future. Nothing in that sentence is bad at all. Off the court, Lopez is a lot like his brother. Avid comic book nerd, somewhat of a surfer bro, very amusing guy. In one of the cooler things that I've seen a player do for a team blog, Lopez sat down and answered questions for Bright Side of the Sun readers way back in late 2010 -- tons of personality in his answers. His sheepish reveal that he basically eats nothing but pasta always makes me laugh out loud, because that's exactly what my little brother would do if he was an NBA player. Dude loves his pasta. Anyway, I've liked Lopez a lot since then, even if his game has been a bit disappointing up til now. I feel like this opportunity with the Hornets is a really strong one for Robin -- there's a lot of growth potential, and a designated role that's going to be 100% available to him. Really can't wait to see how he does, though I admit it does sadden me that the Suns apparently made this ridiculous free agency video for nothing. Nevertheless, should be fun -- and can you imagine how hilarious a lineup of Vasquez-Rivers-Thomas-Anderson-Lopez will look like on the court? Goofy white dudes galore. Gonna be swell.

(Also, I swear to god, that's actually his twitter name. Let's just let that sit.)

• • •

Follow Tyson Chandler on Twitter at @tysonchandler.__

Let's start with his game. Although Chandler's stats in the pure box score are a bit pedestrian, averaging a per-36 11-11 on his career, he has an outsized impact on the court that runs far beyond his averages. Offensively, Chandler's an exercise in restraint. Sure, he could shoot midrange jumpers and threes -- after all, when he was a hyped-up high school prep kid, that was pretty much all he did! He doesn't, though. Over the last five years, Chandler has taken 120 shots from outside 10 feet in 385 games (and over 12,000 minutes) played. For context, Yi Jianlian took 227 shots from outside 10 feet in the 2011 season alone (in which he played 63 games and 1,117 minutes). To say that Tyson Chandler doesn't care for the long ball is to say that John F. Kennedy didn't care for Fidel Castro. He's virtually allergic to it. And you know what? Good for him! One of the most aggravating traits in the modern NBA is the widespread desire for every big man to become a sweet-shooting Chris Mullin clone. There's something to be said for a player who steps back, assesses his talents honestly, and does what he's good at. It's refreshing, and it's helped Chandler become one of the most efficient, limited-use offensive players around. He's currently #4 on the career field goal percentage leaderboard, and with a few more seasons like his last two, he may end his career atop it. Not on high usage, mind you, like Shaquille O'Neal did. But Chandler is nothing if not effective in his role.

Effective on offense though he may be, the true meat of Chandler's game comes on the defensive end. Chandler once said that he wanted to have a culture-changing impact on the defensive end a la Kevin Garnett. I think Chandler's mostly succeeded, though instead of Garnett's spitting rage Chandler does his job with an effusive grin. Chandler's 7'0", and his standing height in shoes is closer to 7'1". He's got a hell of a lot of strength in that body, too, with a strong core and an excellent build. Just enough muscle to push people around on the block, just enough grace to fluidly cover the pick and roll. Tyson was a transformative defensive player in New York, taking the beleaguered franchise from a bottom-10 defensive rating in 2011 to a top-5 performance in 2012. He was effective on his man, he was effective helping off his man, he was effective in the locker room. He got the team to adopt some of the defensive principles that brought the 2011 Mavericks to the promised land, and he did it all with his glowing smile. It's no wonder Knicks writers like Jared Dubin love him so much! There are some things to work on -- NOT a long jump shot, which wouldn't fit very well in his game at all. What would fit? A better ability to catch the ball in traffic, and for Woodson to stop running so many sets where Chandler ends up stranded outside the paint. He's electric at the rim, why not leverage that? It'd also be nice if, going forward, he stays uninjured. Not really anything he has control over, but this team really needs him to stay healthy to have a title shot.

Off-the-court, Chandler's straight-up awesome. There's a fanzine dedicated to him, and what's more, he supported it! For those who don't know, a zine is significantly distinct from a magazine -- a zine is a small circulation indie publication. Usually filled with pictures, some zines end up being more like small collages than anything else. They aren't really made for profitability, nor are they made for mass consumption -- they're printed in small runs, distributed locally, and usually not several-part or monthly things. They're left to history. Chandler got wind of the zine from the creator, Ari Marcopoulos, and loved the idea -- he found it interesting and engaging, and while I'm not the type of hipster-bro who is generally into zines, I just find the whole story very cool. Chandler's style (which is underrated -- one of the snappiest dressers and most stylish guys in the league, for sure) is fitting to the whole concept. It all fits. Not to mention the resultant interviews, where we learn that Tyson Chandler paints in his spare time. I paint sometimes, so I find this really cool. (We also learn that the interviewer likes to randomly drop questions about stalkers, listen to stories about a player being stalked, and then never address it at all and immediately move on. I realize this is probably not what actually happened, and the interviewer probably talked to him about it in a not-released segment. Totally sensible. But as edited, the interviewer's complete lack of a response to Chandler's immensely creepy story about being stalked looks REALLY weird, you have to admit.)

One last thing, and an essential read for anyone who doesn't know a ton about Tyson Chandler -- this early 2011 SI profile, from before he became the linchpin to an incredible title run, is required reading. There's the story of Chandler's grandfather, who at the age of 80 picked walnuts for hours every day, trying to save up enough to sell for $180 and buy NBA League Pass to watch his grandson's first year with the Mavericks -- and by extension, how Chandler thinks about that before he goes on the court and thinks about the sacrifices those around him made for him. There's the story of Chandler's youth on the farm, and how naive he was when he came to San Bernardino county -- a kid asked to borrow Tyson's new bike for a spin around the block, and Chandler happily let him, watching confused as the kid rode away with his bike and never turned around. There's the note that Chandler tries to call heralded AAU prospects up on the phone to share his own experiences with the sleazeballs of high school basketball and improve their chances of success going forward. He's an incredible defensive talent, an incredible dude, and an incredible player. He's taken a strange route through the NBA, with a lot of false starts, bust accusations, and unexpected twists. But this farm-bred gentleman is not only the most likeable player in the glitziest city on Earth -- he's also the best one. A little funny, no?

• • •

Follow Carlos Delfino on Twitter at @cabezadelfino.__

Carlos Delfino played injured last year. That much was evident to anyone watching him. The way Delfino lumbered up and down the court, dragging a messed up wrist and a painful groin injury through the season. He actually suffered the wrist injury on the first game of the year, which was some extraordinarily poor luck for Delfino. He suffered the groin injury about a month after the all-star break, when he was finally getting his shooting touch back and putting together a few weeks of solid performances. Delfino played through the injury, though, both when his wrist hurt and when his groin was strained. Is that respectable? I think it's fair to say that most sports fans expect players on their favorite teams to play through injury, no matter the cost. Not most sports writers, who tend to understand why players don't do that, but sports fans tend to react with confusion when a player takes time off to heal.

I mention all this because Delfino is actually somewhat upset that the Bucks haven't reached out to him at all since his contract expired at the end of last season. I think he has a pretty good point. If what he says is true -- and we have no real reason to doubt that it is -- it's a bit of a classless move by the Bucks organization, in my view. If you don't want a player back, you don't have to offer them a contract -- but when a player played through injuries for your franchise and stayed relatively loyal throughout a tumultuous 3-year stretch, doesn't it behoove the GM to at least give an exit interview or a call to say thanks? Is Delfino an amazing player? No. He's really good at using screens to get open, and he has a nice misdirection dribble he uses to create space. And all things considered, Delfino has refined his game into being an excellent three point bomber (currently sits at 36% from three on his career). He gets assisted on the vast majority of his threes, mind you, but his ability to get open for three is fantastic and he'd excel in a system with a point guard like Kyrie Irving or Russell Westbrook, players who have a lot of court vision when they use it but are surrounded by players who can't get open.

Outside all of that, kind of eh. He's an average defender, decent rebounder, and a subpar passer. Overall, nothing particularly special, and it's true that Delfino relies quite a bit on his point guard. But he's effective at what he does, and he did just spend almost an entire season playing through nagging injuries to try and help his team. Maybe consider calling him up, John Hammond, and saying thanks? Just a thought. Bucks fans have a good point when they note that players have a strange and foreign aversion to playing in Milwaukee, but it may not just be the climate. With stories like this one, Jennings/Jackson wanting out, and Andrew Bogut's relatively poor experience with the Milwaukee management, it becomes a legitimate question whether the market-size disadvantage is half market and half management. I suppose we'll figure that out later, but for now, it's an open question that I'm not sure Bucks fans really want to answer. At least Hammond is decent on the trading block, 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. This morning's best guesses were dual 2/3 responses from J and "Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir." Nobody got Robin right, though, which surprised me. Has everyone forgotten he's in the league? Oh well. Good job, folks.

• Player #88 is the best beach volleyball player in the NBA. As for basketball? Jury's out.
• It's rare that "I Hate You, [Player]" campaigns get traction, but the one directed at Player #89 has some followers in New York.
• There was no reason to pay Player #90 a full $28 mil past the age of 30. An underheralded but ever-present mistake, in my view.

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 Yi Jianlian, Kwame Brown, and Derek Fisher.

• • •

Follow Yi Jianlian on Sina at his ridiculously popular blog.

The fall of Yi Jianlian as a reputable NBA player came quicker than most expected. Especially considering his history. Jianlian was drafted at sixth overall by the Milwaukee Bucks way back in 2007. At the time, this was considered a reach -- just check this post-draft article at DraftExpress covering international prospects, where Luis Fernandez stated that scouts had "concerns about Yi’s defensive ability and competitiveness, which ultimately might jeopardize even his success as a contributor on an NBA team." Not as a go-to guy, which he states earlier in the article he likely won't become -- as a contributor. And this was written directly after the draft! Before Jianlian did anything in the NBA. Good call, Mr. Fernandez. Good call.

Anyway, as for Jianlian's game. Last year was Jianlian's first stint on a playoff team. As tends to be the case for players that transfer from a career of bad situations to a halfway decent team, his minutes went down dramatically. Unfortunately for his case as a legitimate NBA player going forward, Jianlian's productivity didn't go up at all with the lessened role -- in fact, Jianlian's productivity tanked. He became an even less efficient scorer, his pick and roll defense (previously decent-looking) felt worse from a subjective standpoint in his more-limited minutes, and he simply provided the Mavericks a dearth of positive contributions when on the floor. Part of his issue has always been shot selection -- he primarily plays the pick-and-pop, offensively, but he isn't very good at it. Last season in particular, Jianlian's decreased role translated to increasingly bad shot selection. For his career, Jianlian takes roughly 44% of his shots from a 16-23 foot range -- with the Mavericks last season, that number rose to a clean 59% of his offense.

I don't have a table that's easily sortable for this data, but I'm reasonably sure that nobody else in the NBA takes that high a percentage of their shots from 16-23 feet. To be fair to Jianlian, he wasn't as bad at it as some might expect -- he shot 44% from that range, which is actually very high for that area of the floor. The big problem with Jianlian's offense? He doesn't do anything else. He shot an impossibly poor 42% at the rim last season, didn't make a single shot from 3-9 feet, and shot 20% from the "true" midrange. He did make three of nine three-point-shots, though! Hooray! This sort of offense would be potentially surmountable if he coupled it with extremely good rebounding, or passing, or defense, or something. But there's simply nothing else. His rebounding is charitably described as below-average, his passing is comically robotic and passionless, and his usage rate is way too high for a big man who can't shoot efficiently to save his life. And as I said -- his pick and roll defense looked decent when surrounded by the Wizards or the pre-Bogut breakout Bucks. But on a legitimately good defensive team like the 2012 Dallas Mavericks, Jianlian looked shaky and lost. Just look at his 82games stat page, where you'll note that Jianlian's man -- at either PF or C -- had a PER of 20-25 when he was on the floor. This is especially jarring given WHEN he played -- he was pulling mop-up duty all year! He was playing against backups-of-backups! His most-used lineup was sharing the court with (NBA Champion) Brian Cardinal! What!

A few interesting facts about the Chairman. Despite the fact that he's never been a particularly excellent NBA player, he's been a pretty amazing asset for team exposure over his career. Some say that the influence of China on overseas marketing and exposure is overstated. I totally understand where people are coming from with that, but it's very hard to deny the excitement that players like Jianlian bring to the Chinese market. In his sophomore season, Jianlian came in as the 3rd forward in the Eastern Conference all-star voting, ahead of reigning finals MVP Paul Pierce, Chris Bosh in a vintage season, and scores of other more-deserving players. His first game ever against Yao had over 100 million viewers in China, which is pretty incredible, but less incredible than the fact that his second game ever against Yao had over 200 million viewers in China. He was the Chinese flag-bearer at the 2012 London Olympics, making him one of many recent NBA players to serve as their country's flag-bearer -- Manu Ginobili in 2008 for Argentina, Pau Gasol in 2012 for Spain, Andrei Kirilenko in 2008 for Russia, Yao Ming in 2008 for China, and Dirk Nowitzki in 2008 for Germany. Want to know why NBA players are awesome at being flagbearers? Read this incredibly poorly-translated article from Tencent sports, detailing the many reasons why. I don't know why the article's translation made me laugh, only that it did.

• • •

_Follow in Kwame Brown's footsteps by becoming the first pick in the 2014 NBA draft.__

What is there to say about Kwame Brown, really? He's a relatively mediocre NBA player -- he can sop up minutes without absolutely killing your team, theoretically. Note the theoretically. This is only applicable if he can stay away from injury, which is rare -- since Brown turned 23, his best season for games played was his 2011 stint with the Charlotte Bobcats, in which he played 66 games in an 82 game season. His second best? Detroit, 2009, with 58 games. Ever since he's reached NBA middle-age, he's been consistently absent for 20-35 games a year, sometimes more. This makes Brown a bit of a risky pickup. He's a mediocre stopgap when he's on the floor, but with so many missed games, Brown is a mediocre player who over a full season gives you sub-mediocre production. Brown's injury woes raise with them an interesting question of value assessment -- how do you count context in value?

For instance, with last year's Warriors, part of the problem with Kwame's injury issues was that they simply didn't have anyone to play behind him. He started the season behind Biedrins, but quickly proved to be the Warriors best non-Udoh minutes-eater at center. That was good. But he followed that up by getting injured and being out for the rest of the season -- that was bad, because the Warriors simply didn't have anyone other than Udoh that really was fit for big minutes from the position. In any respect. Which meant that any game where Udoh showed fatigue, the Warriors had to play David Lee at center or bring up D-League guys or do crazy stuff like that. In context, even a less-than-mediocre player who could've played all 66 games would've been more conducive to winning games than Brown was. If you're a good team with a lot of depth, like last year's Bulls, durability doesn't matter quite as much. Durability is in and of itself an asset when you're looking at a team that lacks depth. Udonis Haslem would be significantly more valuable on a deeper team than the Heat where durability is less valued, and a lesser player with better general health would be better for the Heat than on a team with the depth that they can play fewer minutes. Context and team depth is important to assess when you try to figure out how valuable a player is in the NBA, and in statistical analysis, I think we often fail to properly contextualize players before we try to assess their value, or how valuable they've been.

As for Brown, again -- he's mediocre. He was less-than-that due to last year's injuries for the Warriors, but when healthy, he's a decent pick-and-roll defender with a large body and fluid movement. His offensive game is and has always been comically bad, though last season he finally seemed to figure some stuff out. Namely that he can't shoot worth a damn from outside 10 feet -- he attempted only 6 shots outside the restricted area, and only a single shot outside the paint. Which is good, and led to the third highest field goal percentage of his career. Per-minute he's a relatively proficient rebounder for a backup big, and he's got a great handle. ... Alright, I mostly was joking to see how many analysts I could make throw up at once. His handle is terrible. Last season, he had a turnover percentage of 20%. To contextualize how bad that is, think of it this way -- every 5 plays Kwame Brown touched, one of them turned into a turnover. Dear. God. He also is a career 57% shooter from the free throw line, which is... not very good, you know? It was 44% last season, bested only by Andris Biedrins' nigh-unbeatable 11% free throw shooting. (You think I'm joking? NOPE.) I thought the Sixers pickup was puzzling, but then again, consider context -- Philadelphia boasts a relatively deep front line, at least in the number of bodies on the roster, so a mediocre bit-minute player that might miss a few games is less deletrious than he was in Golden State. At least in my view. In sum: not very good, not very useful, not very interesting. Next!

• • •

Follow Derek Fisher on Twitter at @derekfisher.__

I was reading Le Morte D'Arthur back in 2010, around the NBA finals. It's Sir Thomas Malory's history of Arthurian legend, for those who aren't aware. I've always been at least passingly interested in the tales of King Arthur, though admittedly not enough for me to really sink my teeth into it -- I've never read Malory's opus all the way through, and I've always been a bit more fond of T.H. White's Once and Future King and Tennyson's Idylls. But that's beside the point. I was reading Book IV, the quest for the Holy Grail -- specifically the point at which Galahad heals the unnamed, maimed, and bedridden King before finding the Holy Grail and ascending to heaven. This King is one of Malory's several manifestations of the Fisher King, a somewhat ubiquitous character in Arthurian legend. According to legend, the Fisher King is the corporeal manifestation of the domain he rules over. In Arthurian mythology, the Fisher King is always wounded -- to the legs primarily, but often the groin as well. Through the King's wounds, his lands become barren and infertile. According to legend, the Fisher King is the keeper of the Holy Grail, and to bear the Grail one must heal him. Hence his importance to the story. Given his wounds, all he can really do is fish -- leading to the name, the Fisher King.

I've always thought of the Fisher King as one of the more interesting and abstract of the Arthurian legends. Most people don't know a thing about him, even though his existence is so inextricably tied to the Grail Quest in most texts that you can't really separate the two. I think it's a bit of a shame that there's so little known about him. Fewer stories drumming home the same point about Lancelot and Guenivere, more stories featuring the Fisher King and the other forgotten and tertiary Arthurian legends. Anyway. You might wonder what this actually has to do with Derek Fisher, and I admit, that's a good question. We'll start with the quality of his play. It's pretty bad. He's among the worst shooters in the entire league, at this point -- he's descended below league average from three point range and is below all reason from anything inside the arc. His physical strength would lead some to expect he'd be a good rebounder from the guard position -- good try, he's not. His assist rate is consistently among the worst for any point guard in the NBA, and his turnover rate has steadily gone up to the point where he's now a threat to turn the ball over virtually any time he's forced to handle the ball. Derek Fisher was one of the worst starters in the entire league last season, and upon being traded to the Thunder, he became one of the worst bench players in the entire league. He's turning 38 today. He's old, washed up, done. A shell of what he once was, and he was never that good to begin with. All he can really do is flop around like a fish and get a lot of calls.

And I can say all that, and drive the point home all I want. But that doesn't make it any less true that Derek Fisher is very likely to be the worst Laker in franchise history to get his jersey retired. Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, the Lakers organization -- virtually everyone around Fisher believes him to be an essential and necessary piece to win a title, and when he was traded, Kobe was furious. Without superstars at his side, what is Derek Fisher? What can he do? Without a team with a top-tier talent at every other position, what can Fisher really offer? Does it really matter? Fisher was considered by people who know what they're talking about to be the crux of the chemistry on five distinct title teams. Without healing the Fisher King, you can't sip from the Holy Grail. That much is true. But without letting Derek Fisher make a few clutch shots, healing the wounds of a fanbase forced to watch him chuck up terrible shot after terrible shot, every single game of the regular season? No Laker team in the last decade could sip the championship bubbly. So there you have it. Ever since I happened to read just the right excerpt of Malory's text right after I watched Fisher drill essential threes to steal what turned out to be the deciding game in Boston, I've associated the two. Sure, it's a bit of a convoluted comparison, and it doesn't really address several of the really important facts about the Fisher King -- the ephemeral changing connections with the grail itself, how the fishing aspect is merely a Christ-symbol replete with Catholic tie-ins, how symbiotically he exists with the Holy Grail. All true. But I've still called Derek Fisher the Fisher King from there on out, and I can't possibly be the only one.

... Well, this is awkward.

• • •

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. Sorry for the delay on this one -- I'm not feeling great, and yesterday was a hectic day at work. The riddle champion of Tuesday's post was Krishnan, who got the first and third players right but missed my forgettable second. Everyone always forgets Kwame.

• The best way to lure Player #85 into a room is to fill it with comic books and floppy hair wigs.
• I don't think there's a single non-Dirk player on the 2011 Dallas Mavericks I liked more than Player #86.
• This Buck was in and out of my fantasy team all year. Probably a bad decision, as Player #87 was terrible last year.

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 Darko Milicic, Ryan Hollins, and Russell Westbrook.

• • •

Release Darko Milicic on Twitter at @FreeDarko. Wait, what?

I was pretty amused, yesterday, when people picked Hasheem Thabeet for this riddle -- that is, the riddle implying that this player was a true bust. I don't know if that's totally true. Yes, I know -- Thabeet is pretty awful. He was taken 2nd in a draft where 25 of the players after him are distinctly better than he is. That's pretty bad. But if I'm going for a #2 pick that's absolutely busted out in the NBA, I'd go for Darko Milicic any day. And not just for his lacking on-court. By all accounts, Darko is a pretty aggravating individual off-the-court -- he has a nasty temper, a highly inflated sense of self, and has never in his career been particularly coachable. The temper can be funny, sometimes -- it's led to two of the best NBA videos ever. But does anyone REALLY want that on their team? (Other than the certifiably insane David Kahn, who once called Darko "manna from heaven.")

In terms of properly representing what a bust really means, Darko hits every conceivable benchpost. Was he drafted above legitimately good players? Definitely -- he was drafted before Dwyane Wade, David West, Chris Kaman, Chris Bosh, Boris Diaw, Carmelo Anthony, Leandro Barbosa, Mo Williams, Matt Bonner, and many others. (With, of course, the last player on that list being clearly as good as the first player on it.) It wasn't like he was picked at 10th with nobody of note after him -- the Pistons passed up on several generation-defining talents to lock up the services of Mr. Manna. Does he have a bad attitude about it? Sure -- he's got a Kwame-esque immaturity about him, and a lack of understanding. Even in his most successful personal run in Minnesota, he couldn't quite get away from his personal issues -- Minnesota superstar Kevin Love was happy the Timberwolves got rid of "bad blood", naming no names but heavily implying Darko and Beasley as the objects of his distaste. And in terms of true talent level, and peak production? Darko Milicic is really, really bad. At his best, he's a maybe-OK defensive player that hogs the ball without actual scoring talent. He's a "maybe-average" passing talent that combines that average passing with awful rebounding and turnovers galore. That's Darko's "skillset."

Put it all together, and on-court, he's a mildly serviceable backup center. That's about it. But any mention of Darko (especially here) would be remiss in not at least paying some homage to the old standard of inscrutable basketblogging, FreeDarko. While most of the writers who wrote for FreeDarko have dispersed and still write the occasional piece, the whole collective is done, now. They've hung up their galoshes for good, which is sad, but I thought it was a little fitting and a little beautiful how everything ended. As Darko finally reached a franchise that believed in him and gave him free reign to become an accomplished NBA player, the folks at FreeDarko finally got too busy to keep the site running at the quality they wanted and shut its doors for good. This doesn't mean, of course, that Darko was truly freed. The point of FreeDarko always seemed to me that the Darko we expected -- this mysterious Serbian big man of impossible talent and skill -- was trapped within the confines of history and adversity. And that Darko, we can safely say, will never be freed. Hell, that Darko may have never existed. But it expanded and consumed and grew into an image beyond itself, beyond reality, beyond reason. And it underlined the writings of one of the better collectives and communities we've seen in a long time. So I tip my hat to FreeDarko, knowing that even if the reality of their mission was made irrelevant long ago, the fact of it still remains.

• • •

_Follow Ryan Hollins on Twitter at @TheRyanHollins.__

Dear Mr. Hollins,

Hello, sir. My name is Aaron. I am a loyal fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers. You may remember this particular organization, as it's the one at which you plied your trade up until the middle of last season. One and a half years, we were together. Not in a physical sense, obviously, but rather in the quasi-metaphoric understanding that comes with being a sports fan. When you burst onto my screen, I rooted for you. I hoped you would do well, and make Cleveland proud. I hoped that life would be better. For you, and for me, and for this world. These are the hopes that filled my head, swam through my bloodstream, and would've been readily apparent to anyone with X-Ray vision specially tuned to sift out every human being's hopes and dreams. This was me, for a time.

How did you get into the NBA? I say this seriously. I don't know if I truly understand. I know, I know. You're tall. You're very tall, actually, and you do have some talent. I have no doubt that if you were allowed to spend the next four or five years in college, you'd eventually average something along the lines of 10-3-2. In college, mind you. Let's talk about the NBA. What is it, exactly, that has allowed you to stay in the league? Your height and god-given gifts make you one of the best thousand basketball players on the face of the earth. Bully for you. Really. I don't think I'll ever be one of the 1000 best anythings in the world, all things considered. Certainly not wage-earners, certainly not statisticians, certainly not writers. It is a glorious accomplishment for you to be as you are. I realize and accept this.

But... why?

You see, Mr. Hollins, I have spent two years watching you outright ignore rebounding opportunities. I have spent two years watching you pretend that pick and roll coverage consists of staring blankly at your man for a few seconds, shuffling hesitantly from side to side, then simply standing like a tree as players glide past you and lay up a shot with no resistance. I have watched you "hustle" for loose balls only to explicitly redirect the ball to the other team, then outright refuse to run to the other end as they dunk on your teammates. I have seen you grow some of the worst facial hair in the history of the human race, and I have seen you needlessly egg on a seriously disturbed individual. For what purpose, I don't know. And in fact, I don't know the purpose to most of the things you do.

This isn't an indictment on you personally. You run an excellent basketball camp, sir, and other than the somewhat disturbing incident with Charlie V, I have no reason to think you an aggressive or mean-spirited person. But your basketball talents are just... what? Seriously, what? I watched you play almost 100 games with my favorite franchise. I don't get it. I don't understand how you can be 7'0" and sport a career rebounding percentage under 10%. If you are unaware, that means you rebound less than 10% of the shots you can possibly rebound. You are seven feet tall. I must state this again, in bold-face type: you are seven feet tall. Did you know, Mr. Hollins, that there have been 27 guards in NBA history -- players who are all below 6'5" -- that have had three or more seasons with rebounding percentages greater than 10%? Are you aware, too, that you are tied for having the fourth most seasons by a center with a rebounding percentage under 10% in NBA history?

Mr. Hollins, I do not understand this. I fear I never will.

Sincerely,

Aaron T. McGuire

• • •

Follow Russell Westbrook on Twitter at @russwest44.__

Sometimes, when writing about certain players, my thoughts run long and I end up with something way too big to turn into a subsection of these three-player packages. I’m making it a point to explicitly allow myself the leeway to produce those sorts of really long capsule, but I’m trying to also use them as an opportunity to spread word of the project to new readers. To that extent, I’m going to take these super-long post-sized capsules and spread them to different institutions we’re partnering with. Today, Russell Westbrook’s capsule goes up at Hardwood Paroxysm. In it I grapple with my fundamental problems with Russell Westbrook, and use Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan to try and frame the way I see Westbrook's broader game. Tried not to get too deep into the political theory, but I think it's a rather fitting example in this case. Check it out!

Here's the thing, though, that typifies both democracy and the Westbrook style. It works. Yes, there are warts -- I'm not one to say democracy's perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But the warts on democracy are pinpricks compared to the hulking construct of woe and misery that comes with a lawless sovereign. There isn't quite that gulf with Westbrook, but there's a chilling sense that as he takes his tentative steps forward and grows into his role, he and his teammates discover that the "pure" point guard announcers are so quick to build up is a bit of an illusion. It's not a necessity any more than a Hobbesian tyranny is. When Westbrook is "good" Russell, he completely changes the game for his team -- the Thunder emerge like Team USA, simply playing a different brand of basketball than anyone else. No, they may not win by 83 -- they may not even win at all.

But they utterly change the game.

FOR MORE ON RUSSELL WESTBROOK, SEE TODAY’S PLAYER CAPSULE + ON HARDWOOD PAROXYSM.

• • •

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, our two best guesses were from J and Corn, both of whom got 2/3. Once again, neither got 3/3, but if you combined their guesses they'd get them all right.

• My scouting report says that Player #82 has trouble guarding many players, but has the most difficulty with "chairs."
• A lot of people though Player #83 was Player #79, but this guy is significantly less of a bust, in my opinion.
• Ah, the Fisher King. Prepare for me to go a bit Arthurian on you for Player #84, folks.

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 Gordon Hayward, Grant Hill, and Markieff Morris.

• • •

Follow Gordon Hayward on Twitter at @gordonhayward.

I'm not totally sure about Hayward, yet. This isn't meant to be a super negative comment on his game -- Hayward's got quite a few valuable skills, which we'll get into. But call it a looks thing, a hobbyist thing, a college thing -- I don't really know. I just don't know if I trust Hayward's game. I know many Jazz fans (bless their hearts) who think Hayward is some reincarnation of Manu Ginobili who is going to produce Manu-type numbers for the duration of his career. All due respect to Mr. Hayward, that's ridiculous. While Hayward's percentages are similar from three, there's a reason the Jazz need to pick up designated three point gunners -- whereas Manu tries to take 37-45% of his shots from behind the three point line (and hits extremely efficiently from that range), Hayward only takes about 20% of his shots from that range. They both have a pet skill that's good for their position -- Hayward his rebounding, Manu his passing -- but Manu is an impossibly better passer than Hayward is a rebounder, and with the current glut of developing rebounding guards/forwards (a la Kawhi Leonard), Hayward simply doesn't stand out that much for that alone.

What stands out with me, for Gordon Hayward, is the full package -- I'm not exactly sure what he can do to push his game to the next level, or if he really can do anything. But the whole is greater than the somewhat mediocre sum of its parts. Much like Lou Williams, actually -- where Lou adds value to his game simply by doing nothing wrong, Hayward adds value to his game by simply doing nothing terribly. He's not an awful defender, although I don't buy the overwhelming opinion from Jazz fans that he's a really positive defender. While he's super athletic and certainly has the tools, the numbers have indicated he's been absolutely terrible and re-watching him on defense you tend to find some less-than-salutatory trends regarding his patterns on the pick and roll, and how he chooses to defend the three point line. While he's very athletic (possibly the most athletic white dude in the history of the league), he oftentimes lets that determine his entire game plan, and lays off way too much assuming that his superior athleticism is going to save the play. Rarely does. Still, the point stands -- even if he isn't a fantastic defender, he isn't an awful defender. And other than that? Passable rebounder, decent passer, very low turnovers (especially for someone asked to handle the ball like he does), solid three point shooter, dependable free throw shooter (who gets to the line!), and extremely durable.

Still, even given all these positives, I just have this general distaste for the idea that Hayward is some reincarnation of Manu Ginobili. Partly because Manu is still, even after all these years, dreadfully underheralded. Partly it's because it feels like people are comparing Hayward and Manu simply because Hayward happens to be a white guy who can shoot the three and pass, and that's all most people see Manu as. Manu has a similarly wide-ranging skillset, with very few negatives. But he simply does everything better. He's a better three point shooter, in his prime he was a far better defender, he's better at controlling the ball, he's more efficient, he shoots more, he rebounds better, and comparing their passing is like assessing the sophistication of Dora the Explorer to that of Breaking Bad. This isn't to say Hayward is bad -- as you probably gathered from the last paragraph, I think people sleep on him a bit. It's worth noting I'm not sure he'll get that much better than he is now. He took a quantum leap forward last season in the eyes of many, but the per-minute numbers tend to indicate he didn't make tremendous steps. And it indicated he mostly just played more minutes. Well, Hayward's at 30 minutes per game, and assuming a linearly increase in his usage of talent -- already so effective -- is a bridge too far for me. I think he's effective, interesting, and a player that's going to be a little better when he reaches his prime. But I suppose where I differ from Jazz fans is the assertion that I'm simply not so sure he's got all that much room left to climb.

Off the court? Hilarious. He's this generation's Tim Duncan -- not in basketball talents but in nerdy off-court gaming pursuits. Hayward is a very good Starcraft player, having played competitively during the lockout. He also got a tiny bit of flack for saying -- in the same link -- that the stress of playing in the NBA is similar to the stress of playing video games competitively. Not quite what you're going for, Gordon. Preeeeeetty sure Kobe would disagree with you there. Pretty sure basically everyone in the known universe would disagree with you there. But good try. He also is a level 60 monk in Diablo 3. Before you ask what that means, I must reveal that I am a level 60 wizard in that particular game. It's plodding, and I've stopped having all that much fun playing it because the worlds don't vary enough (or, well, virtually at all) for my taste and getting through the final difficulty level is bloody impossible without gearing up to ridiculous levels. But anyway. It took me about 30 hours of playing time to get my character to level 60 (the max level you can reach in the game), if I remember right, and I'm betting that if he got his character to 60 he's probably made it his goal to get through the game in full. So he's probably pretty damn far in that game. Also, for the record, if you took all the animals of the world and put them in a no-holds-barred deathmatch, Hayward believes the noble gorilla would win it all. Personally, I'd say the hippopotamus. Sure, they have a funny names, but they've got heads like sledgehammers, feet that can crush ANYTHING, and they're faster than humans on land. They also have very few weak spots. Barring that, I'd go with the big cats -- Tigers, Panthers, Jaguars, et cetera. Those guys are vicious, cunning, and durable. And they're natural hunters. Hey, Blizzard? Are you listening to this? Let's make this a video game. I've even got a title for it. "Gordon Hayward's Apocalypse Farm: The Reckoning." Let's get this done, fellas.

• • •

_Follow Grant Hill on Twitter at __@realgranthill33.___

I'm going to try and make this one quick, because Grant Hill makes me sad. All things considered, there's very little reason for Grant Hill to sadden me -- he's made over $140,000,000 playing the game of basketball, and he's made probably double that through his golden smile and his advertising chops. He's a 40-year-old who is still technically playing the game he loves, and his popularity intersects multiple NBA generations. He's got culpable excuses for his lack of a ring, having only been on one remotely contending team in his 17 year (yes, it's really been that long) NBA career. He's on a team with the best point guard in the game once again, and a team with a legitimate shot at winning the West (albeit I'm using legitimate to mean "at all existent", as I don't REALLY think the Clippers can beat the Thunder, the Spurs, or the Lakers -- but we'll see). He probably won't play much, if at all, but if the Clippers shock the world and win a title he'll have his ring and can ride off into the sunset to become a coach or a business owner or, honestly, whatever the hell he wants to do. He could even take the advice of another Duke guy and open a cream puff shop.

But it's a cold comfort. Because Hill's career will always leave me wanting. Grant Hill is eighth on the all-time triple-double leaderboard. That's ahead of Jordan and Clyde Drexler, which is rather impressive, because Hill hasn't had a triple double since Clinton was president. Seriously. His last triple double occurred in the 1999 lockout-shortened season, against the Stockton-Malone Jazz. This isn't some kind of fluke, either -- Hill was phenomenal in his first six years, while he was with Detroit. His career averages as a Piston are 22-8-6, with 47% shooting from the field and 75% from behind the line. With, again, 29 triple doubles. Make no mistake -- those are star numbers. The once-in-a-generation sort. He was also a really solid defender, in my view, though we obviously don't have synergy statistics or per-possession defensive stats for his time with the Pistons. Despite all this, Hill's career was derailed when (in his 6th season) Hill played through a bad ankle injury and stayed on the court until the ankle utterly gave out on him, breaking badly. But he wasn't totally to blame for it. Reportedly, the Detroit organization openly wondered whether he was "playing soft," and just funneled him stronger and stronger painkillers to keep him on the court.

I don't want to sugarcoat it -- if Hill is telling the truth (and we have no reason to believe he's not), anyone who remains from that Detroit training staff should be fired. This league is about the players. It's not about running them into the ground like that, or making them feel forced to play hurt. The ankle ended up destroying his career, as everyone knows. He was barely able to play at all in Orlando, and spent the next six years as low-down awful as he was amazing in the first six. And as he's slowly revived his career in the same way Antonio McDyess has (and as Brandon Roy may), there's this sense of surreal separation between the Grant Hill of then and the Grant Hill of now. It's like invasion of the body snatchers, in reverse -- the mind's the same as it always was, and the body's form is as it's always been. But the talent, the vitality, the strength -- it's gone, long stolen by his ankle and infections. It's not just the health -- it feels like the soul of Grant's game was wrenched from his person long ago.

So I look at Grant Hill and I watch him play and I feel glad that he's had a long, profitable career. I like Grant Hill, and other than Kyrie Irving and Gerald Henderson, there's not a single player from my alma mater I've ever liked more. But there's an element of sadness, this nagging sense that Grant Hill's ankle stole from us a once-in-a-generation talent. Some would say we can't miss what we've never seen, but that's simply not true. When Hill was a Piston, he showed himself to be exactly that. I miss the years he's never had for the years the world forgot. That's Grant Hill for you. A shadow, a shade, and a pressing and present reminder of the things fate takes away.

• • •

Follow Markieff Morris on Twitter at @T3.__

Markieff Morris looked really good to start the year. Most people don't remember this, because honestly, it didn't last long. But he totally did. Morris shot a silky-smooth 48% from three point range in December and January. He's not a great defensive player -- he fouls too much, letting his hands stay on the offensive player well after they've received the ball and gotten position. He also gets beaten on the pick and roll with startling regularity. But his three point shot -- while clearly cooler than 50% -- is relatively solid and even though his finishing isn't remarkable he's got post offense that one can imagine someday being an asset. Suns fans didn't particularly like the number of spot-up shots Morris took, and indeed, he went a little too hard on those. In some sense, this year's hot start from three point range doomed him -- same with Brandon Jennings' rookie year, when he started the year making an insane number of threes and has continued from then on shooting as though his "true" talent level would be that of a 40% three point shooter. In that sense, Morris' over-focus on his three-ball and spot up shots was exactly what we all should've expected. Hot hand theory doesn't just apply in a possession-only or game-by-game level -- it also exists in the macro level, where a player with a prolonged "hot hand" often inadvertently torpedoes most of a season trying desperately to return to a level of shooting they'll never reach again. Sometimes, in fact... it lasts entire careers. (Shout out to J.R. Smith! Whoa buddy!)

I do have my doubts about the Suns as a team that develops players well, though, and that's a problem going forward. While I understand that their last few drafts have been somewhat disastrous, what was the last Suns draft pick that the Suns really developed well? In 2010, you had Gani Lawal, an athletic talent from Georgetown -- he proceeded to play two minutes in a single game in the league, and is currently playing in France. You have Earl Clark the year before, a player the Suns gave up essentially as a throw-in to the Magic... only to have Clark develop (finally) into a decent defensive player and a very useful cog. You have Robin Lopez, who stagnated for years with the exception of a solid run in the 2010 playoffs, and who the Suns gave up for virtually nothing. You have Rudy Fernandez, who -- despite being the kind of shooter the Suns longed for years to put around Nash -- they gave up for actually nothing, as Sarver traded Fernandez and James Jones away for cash alone. (By the way, that's classic Sarver! Can't wait for him to trade the draft picks he gave up for Nash away to random teams for "cash considerations.") Beyond that, the Suns haven't really had any notable hits from a player development standpoint in the last while, and that's a problem.

It makes me wonder about the development of Morris, because he's easily the highest upside young player they've had in their organization for a long, long time. They really need to do a good job with him -- if he develops right, he could be their next linchpin. A Morris-Gortat core with Kendall Marshall as a tertiary piece doesn't sound all that bad to me, but only if Morris lives up to every inkling of his potential. What evidence do we have that he'll even live up to a modicum of it, with the Suns (and by extension, Alvin Gentry's) record of player development ? Virtually none. Hence the worry. Especially since his biggest issues are on the defensive end, where he gives up 60% shooting and 1.2 PPP when he's defending the post, per Synergy. Seriously, what? That's incredibly bad. According to Sebastien Pruiti, that's in the bottom 7% of NBA players. Ridiculous. Morris simply needs some time to develop and some work in the weight room. I trust the Phoenix training staff to keep players healthy and maximize the physical gifts of Markieff Morris to keep him on the court. But I sure as hell don't trust them to develop defense where none now exists, or to develop his offense to a better distribution of post-ups and spot-ups. And that's the problem that worries me about Markieff. It's okay, though. No worries. This is Sarver we're talking about. He'll probably get picked up by the Boston Celtics for "cash considerations" within the hour.

• • •

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 had several 2/3 guesses last Friday, but nothing more. Shout out to Adam Johnson, J, and W -- all of whom got 2/3.

• There are busts that aren't really busts, and are a lot better than they get credit for. Then there's Player #79. Heh.
• You know how I hate Mike Bibby more than any player ever? I might've been lying. As a Cavs fan, Player #80 was worse.
• He'd make a bad fashionista, but Player #81 is a good NBA player. Will be a Hardwood Paroxysm crosspost.

Wow. What do you even write about what Team USA did to Nigerian basketball last night? Do you start with addressing Carmelo's 37 points in 14 minutes? Do you talk about all the threes? The 80+ point margin of victory? There's very little of substance to be said about the obliteration that took place on the London hardwood last night.

Oh sure, there's already plenty of talk about sportsmanship, or about whether Team USA should be considered bullies, or that this might be a strong argument for the implementation of an under-23 rule. This talk will continue as the tournament goes on, even though these discussions are well played out, just like the talk continued and the played itself out before in 1992, as The Dream Team rattled off their campaign of dominant performances bordering on mockery. I have no doubt that better, and more interested writers than myself likely have much to say about these topics, and how this game does or doesn't play into the grand narrative of something or another.

So I'm just going to talk about tennis instead.

To my best estimate, I played tennis for around seven years, probably until I was about 14 or so years old. I don't remember anything about it. I don't remember how the scoring works, don't remember many of the rules, and if you handed me a tennis racket asking me to go a round, I wouldn't really know what to do with it. As you can probably infer, I was not an exceptional tennis player. For all my lessons and matches, I never felt that I tangibly improved past the basics of the game, and I lost nearly ever single match I ever competed in, usually by a large margin. Yet I pressed on, largely because I had to participate in some sort of athletic activity and had resigned myself to the notion that tennis failure was simply my lot in that particular span of my young-and-unathletic life. Not a lot stands out when I look back on my years of tennis. Much of it is blur of frustration, sweat, interminable heat, and a coach who was so relentlessly cheery in the face of my failure that it started to seem almost insulting. I don't even remember most of my matches, as short and deflating as they often were. But I do have one vivid tennis memory, the tone of which seemed to more or less sum up my court career.

• • •

I had a competitive match against an opponent from another country club across town, and when I got dropped off, a little lost in a strange building and slow to find my way to the tennis courts, I was informed her parents hadn't brought her yet.

“Her?” I thought, with the kind of mixed hesitation that comes with receiving news that can't be divined as either good or bad. The youth tennis matches were co-ed, so it wasn't unusual for guys to play girls, mixed doubles, that sort of thing. But now, for someone whose pre-match temperament had acclimated to a sort of resigned defeat, a general mood of “let's just get this over with?” There was real fear. How old was this girl? Was she my age? What if I lose to a girl? Sure it happens all the time, I know a lot of girls good at tennis. But what if I lose to a girl? The internal dialogue rolled on, as I grew more and more nervous waiting. My 14-year old self figured the realistic best-case scenario would be that it would be a girl around my age, she would be athletic and talented, and I could take some pride in her whipping my butt and putting me away quickly. You would think the best-case scenario would be that I would beat her, but again, such was the broken state of my tennis confidence. In my mind, the most ideal scenario would be being beaten by a good opponent, girl or not, and there would be no shame in that. I might even seem downright progressive in my gracious defeat!

Just then, my opponent's mother's SUV pulled into the parking lot, and she stepped out. The mother, I mean. My opponent couldn't step out, not on her own anyway. Being what appeared to be a little girl not a year older than 9, she required assistance out of her seat and onto the ground. Her mother carried her bag and racket for her as she led her to the courts, Angelo Dundee in Nike shorts and a tank top. Both of them looked serious. This was not good.

Indeed, this was the worst case scenario. What does an almost comically untalented underachieving failure of a tennis player do in this situation? If I beat her, I have to own up that one of the few W's in my column was against an elementary schoolgirl only barely bigger than my racket. If I throw the game, it's an L to a little girl, and knowing that I threw the game. And then there was the worst possibility. What if I go out there and I compete and I give it my all, and she crushes me? What if I'm destroyed in humiliating fashion in front of adults, coaches, and other little kids? What if I have to acknowledge to the rest of the world that I wasn't even able to outplay a little girl, nearly small enough to fit in my backpack?

Since this is a basketball blog, and this is an Outlet piece regarding the USA/Nigeria game, you probably already figured out how things went once we took the court. My fears of proper etiquette turned out to be simply wishful thinking, as I was run ragged, broken, and cast aside by this girl. I don't remember the score, but if you asked me to guess I'd be willing to wager I didn't score a single point. I felt helpless at the mercy of her dominance. As she whizzed all over the court, inordinately coordinated with a racket it really seemed like she should have had difficulty swinging, I found myself questioning my faith. Was this God's punishment for a sinful world? How can I believe in a loving God when this is happening to me? Is there any joy in the world at all? Will someone test her for baby steroids? Please don't let there be anyone watching.

And just as soon as it began, it was over. I lost in resounding, dizzying fashion, and had to shake her hand at midcourt, smiling gamely as internally I combated the feeling of wanting to strike a small child for the first, and only, time in my life. She simply grimaced up at me, mean-mugging like Kendrick Perkins, squeezing my hand the hardest her little hands could squeeze, presumably trying to grind what was left of my spirit into dust. I left the court, and to the best of my recollection, that was the last time I ever played tennis. The all-encompassing nature of my failure at the sport, and the absolute degree of competitive humiliation was such that I saw no reason to press on.

• • •

The point of this story is to say that I don't regret it one bit. I was really terrible at tennis, and at some point you just have to face that there are things you are good at, and there are things you are not that good at. There are things you may be relatively good at, but ultimately quite bad at when faced with stiffer competition. Anyone who has ever played or been decent at any sport knows the feeling of entering into competition with an opponent you know is talented, and not fully understanding the depth at which you are over your head until it's far too late. Some people encounter this against little girls on a tennis court, some encounter it against Carmelo Anthony at the Olympics (Personally, I'd take Carmelo Anthony). Sometimes, oftentimes, you're just over-matched, and you have to be realistic, take your licks, and move on. I guess what I'm saying is I won't blame the Nigerian Olympic basketball team if they decide to take up judo; or race-walking.

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 Jason Maxiell, Hamed Haddadi, and Al Jefferson.

• • •

Follow Jason Maxiell on Twitter at @JasonMaxiell.

I'm going to assume that most of our readers have graduated something. Not primary school, mind you -- college or high school is where it's at. Assuming you have, I'm also assuming most everyone has a sense of what it's like to hit that lull that comes gently wrapped with every student's senior year. You know what I mean -- if not from your own experience, from that of your friends. There's this feeling that wells up inside the heart of the graduate to-be. Essentially, if you're so close to the finish line, why expend that much effort finishing it out? Colloquially called "senioritis", the so-called disease presents with symptoms of missed assignments, comically lacking study habits, and incessant tardiness. The thing that amuses me about it is that it isn't simply something endemic to school -- I've seen two of my coworkers retire among the five jobs I've worked in my life, and the exact same thing applied to their work. As soon as they knew their retirement was coming through, their work became slipshod and their work ethic crumbled. Whether it was a fellow transcriptionist in college or a business analyst at a large organization, no presence was safe from the crumbling work ethic of the nearly-departed.

You may be wondering what this has to do with Jason Maxiell. It strikes me as a little weird, but when I watch Maxiell play, I don't get the sense that he's a player long for this league. I get the sense, actually, that he's essentially got senioritis. He's going to be gone pretty soon. It just looks like Maxiell plays with a foot out the door. Not out the door of the Pistons, necessarily, but of the league in general. This isn't incredibly surprising, on a broad scale. He's never been a particularly fantastic player. But his age is frankly rather shocking when you look at his play. Honestly? I thought he was over 30 when I was watching some Synergy footage to start this post. 32-33 was my guess. But no, he's 29. The problem with Maxiell isn't his age so much as his conditioning -- while he was an effective player in his youth as a raw athlete, as his athleticism wanes his ability to contribute anything tangible to a basketball team has waned just as badly. Why? Simply put, Maxiell never developed any real skills beyond his athletic dominance. He can't shoot a free throw to save his life, he has no pet post moves beyond his dunks, and his rebounding is incredibly anemic -- for a center or a power forward, it really doesn't matter which. So when the athleticism wanes, his entire game goes downhill.

As for the defense? As a young player, Maxiell was a reasonably competent defender. As he's aged and lost his leap, he's also lost a lot of mobility and quickness, which has turned him from a "bad" perimeter defender to a "holy crap, are you kidding me" perimeter defender. Open shots galore, if you put him on a strong shooter like Pau Gasol or Tim Duncan. His post defense is better, because he doesn't need to move as much, but it's still not good. This is all pretty sad, actually, as years ago Maxiell really looked to be a strong prospect. Undersized, sure, but a blue collar worker and showed flashes of being a potentially excellent defender. As his weight's ballooned and his conditioning has fallen off, he's lost the speed and leap that helped him stay a step ahead of his assignment. And then his size -- extremely small for a center, and even small for a forward at 6'7" -- comes to rear its ugly head and his defensive competency ends. He's still got the basic instincts, but with lessened speed he simply can't measure up to his old defensive chops. And it's because of this -- and, of course, his ridiculously poor touch and worsening finishing abiltiy -- that I wonder if Maxiell is even going to get a new contract after the Pistons ride out his current expiring deal. We'll see, I suppose.

• • •

_Follow Hamed Haddadi on Twitter at @HamedHaddadi15. (Do it. Really. He's cool.)__

Hamed Haddadi is 27 years old, so he hasn't reached the "falloff" stage quite yet. His skillset? Decent. He's a really good rebounder, which is great, and last season he finally showed off an improved field goal percentage courtesy of a more controlled selection of offense. Before last year, he tended to take a third of his shots as long, just-inside-the-three-point-line jumpers. He simply wasn't very good at them, converting under 33% of them in every season prior. This year, he revamped his offense a tiny bit simply by refusing to get suckered into taking extremely long jump shots. Still lost the ball a lot (seriously, a lot -- he'd average 4 turnovers a night in a world where he kept his averages up for a full 36 minutes), especially on post-ups, but he converted a better percentage and got his free throw form back to a well-above-average 70% after a poor season from there the year before. And his rebounding/shot-blocking was as effective as ever. His per-36 numbers impress, as 12-12 with 5 blocks is an impressive sum for a backup center. The issue with Haddadi is less the skillset, which is great, and more the ability to play big minutes. There's a reason he averaged only 6 minutes a contest last season, and it's not that Lionel Hollins hates him.

Haddadi's conditioning is simply not very good for an NBA big, and even a modicum of floor time tends to exhaust the poor guy. Haddadi's NBA career high for minutes is 21, which is remarkable given how productive he's been in his limited minutes. He simply lags out and gets tired if you leave him in too long, and Haddadi's defensive game is a little bit rough around the edges. He's got size and talent, but as with many of the players we've been covering recently, his decreased mobility makes it hard for him to cover guys with serious NBA quickness. In particular, Haddadi gets tired covering teams that run the pick and roll into the ground, which made him doubly ineffective last season against San Antonio. He only saw a combined three minutes in the four SAS-MEM games last season, and in those minutes, he got winded quickly. Green and Parker ran pick and rolls straight into him, and he simply couldn't cover. That's the issue with Haddadi -- other teams are aware of his conditioning, and while he's an effective per-minute player, if you run your offense with the express purpose to exhaust Haddadi (and take advantage of his mobility concerns) you'll usually succeed.

As for the personal aspect, Haddadi is Iranian. Just as Omri Casspi is cool for being from Israel, I do hold happiness at the knowledge that Haddadi was able to make it from Iran. And just as I respect Casspi for overcoming obstacles and boundaries, I respect the hell out of Haddadi. There isn't quite as personal a touch with Haddadi, as I'm Jewish, but the respect is still there. And on the subject of politics -- one important thing to note with Haddadi is the controversy he was involved in back in 2010, where Clippers announcers Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith both got themselves suspended a game for making absurd jokes on-air at the expense of Haddadi's ethnicity. Unlike what some in the media and blogosphere thought at the time, the suspension wasn't simply because the two of them dreadfully mispronounced Iran. At all. The suspension was rooted in two key problems -- the first was the dismissive nature of their comments regarding Haddadi, and the second was a tasteless joke likening Haddadi to Borat and saying Sacha Baron Cohen should play him in a movie. For the first, I think it's a reasonable gripe. There's nothing crazy or ridiculous about a decent player coming out of a country that rarely produces them, and the idea that we should be shocked or appalled that someone from Iran made the NBA is as ridiculous and culturally stunted as the idea that we should be shocked that someone from Israel or the Virgin Islands or any other unusual country makes the league. It's ignorant at best and dismissive at worst.

As for the joke... the whole Borat film is about a quasi-Kazakh culture. Kazakhstan and Iran are separated by two nations, and feature completely different cultures. Even if Borat was a perfectly respectable representation of Kazakh culture, the comparison wouldn't make sense. But it's not -- it's a quasi-insulting (though admittedly somewhat funny) mockery of their culture, and by essentially saying that it's a mockery of the entire middle east, you're taking an already somewhat offensive concept and making it that much worse. I think you can make an argument that the suspension was unwarranted, but I've yet to really hear anyone make it. (Though, now that I've posted this, I expect a twenty page rebuttal from @SherwoodStrauss defending Lawler and Smith.) I might be a little over-inclined to defend Haddadi here, though, because I really like Hamed Haddadi. Not as a player, necessarily -- I love his skillset, but the conditioning is extremely problematic. No, I really like him because he actually interacts with fans, even if the fan didn't mention him in the tweet. I mean, look at this. It's hilarious. He's a really funny guy to follow on twitter -- makes a lot of jokes (mostly good ones) and uses smiley faces like they're going out of style. Very worthy follow, I think, and seems by all accounts to be a ridiculously nice guy. Brightens my day. Big ups to Leigh Ellis of the Basketball Jones for pointing me in Haddadi's direction.

• • •

Follow Al Jefferson on Twitter. Wait, don't, he doesn't have one.
__

For an offensive-minded center, you can do a hell of a lot worse than Al Jefferson. Don't look at the overall percentage, where the sub-0.500 field goal percentage may make you think he's poor. Al Jefferson shoots above average from every shot location, which is pretty phenomenal. His field goal percentage is low not because of some failing of his own but because the Utah offense essentially needs him to be taking as many long shots as possible. The Jazz are a solid team with a lot of great talent, but until they track down a three point sniper that can really fill it up outside the arc, they're going to have problems -- they currently rely quite a lot on Al Jefferson's ability to spread the floor by taking long shots. Not threes, obviously. Jefferson's no three-point bomber. But Jefferson took 8 shots a game last year from outside 10 feet -- a ridiculous total. But in the same way that Tim Duncan sets up the Spurs offense by taking his long set shot and Kevin Garnett sets up Boston the same way, the Jazz absolutely need a center who can make shots like that. With no reliable three point shooters to spread the floor and a whole lot of cutters, the Jazz have never really had any reliable way to create spacing without Big Al's long balls. Which explains the distribution, and how an excellent center who's an above average shooter from every location on the floor somehow manages to shoot under 50% in a solid season.

As for the defense, well, I implied as much in the first sentence, where I told you he was offensive-minded! That's the problem with Jefferson that really bugs me. I'm a firm advocate for the belief that the defense of a center matters infinitely more than the defense of a guard. My thought has always been that in a very general sense, since the hand-check revolution, a defensively skilled big man is about four times as valuable as a defensively skilled wing, and that wing is about four times as valuable as a defensively skilled guard. The same holds true in an inverse sense, for how harmful a poor defender can be -- a defensively incompetent big man is about four times as harmful as a defensively incompetent wing, and that wing is about four times as harmful as a defensively deficient guard. The logic goes like so -- a center not only can patrol the paint, they essentially have to. In the modern NBA, post hand-check, even the most skilled defensive guard on earth can't really hope to keep Tony Parker ahead of him. The responsibility for guarding players like Tony therefore falls to the last line of defense -- that is, the big men. Wing players end up with a bit more leeway, as fewer wings have the speed to take full advantage of the current rulebook, but they too suffer from the problem at hand -- if a wing player drives and gets past their defender, the last line of defense is again tasked with picking up their man. You know. The big man.

The "four times" number is a bit arbitrary, but the point remains -- the big man has to clean up mistakes. In the modern league, that's basically the only way for a defense to function. Big men need to be able to function as the primary cog in the defense, because if they can't, functioning as a good defense becomes difficult. In a defense like Miami, LeBron and Wade hawk passing lanes and switch enough that they essentially function as big men -- in a possessional sense it's sometimes obscured but in last year's playoffs we finally saw LeBron perform openly as a big, in Bosh's absence. Bosh has developed into a very solid "final presence" in the paint, and while I mock Joel Anthony, he has value as a defender only. Al Jefferson? He's a really bad defender, and because of that, I have trouble thinking of him as anything more than a slightly-above-average center. Defense is simply that important as a center, and while Jefferson is a prolific shot-blocker... he's one of the worst pick and roll defenders in the league, he essentially pays no attention to the weakside whatsoever, and just doesn't rotate. His athleticism is lacking and his effort is worse. So despite his offensive talents -- which are incredible -- he's not an overly valuable player to a playoff team in this league. I can totally understand people who disagree with me, as Jefferson's offense is really really good. And almost underrated. But personally, I can't shake the feeling that the defense undermines it all. Sorry, Al.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Commenter J wins this set, getting a perfect 3/3. Good work, J! I really need to make these harder.

• Another Jazzman here. Funny looking, but I know people who are virtually in love with Player #76.
• Honestly thought he'd retire this year -- Player #77 completely and utterly fell off last year. Instead? New LA contract! Yay!
• Seemed like a lotto steal early in the season, but fell out of the rotation by the end of the year. Still think Player #78 can be good.

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 Kevin Love, Jordan Crawford, and Marc Gasol.

• • •

Follow Kevin Love on Twitter at @kevinlove.

We can't really deny it anymore. Kevin Love is one of the best players in the league, and a budding star. Saying that feels strange to me. Way back when in 2011, I actively doubted Love's legitimacy. Not as a good player, mind you. From his first year, there were signs that Love was a legitimately talented (and very good) NBA player who had a future as a starter at worst. Many people looked at Love and wrote him off, either due to his low playing time or his low athleticism. He certainly isn't a guy who looks like an NBA player -- he's a bit pasty, and entering the league he seemed a tiny bit chunky. But his talents are myriad, and his flaws are finally starting to be addressed. We'll start with his strengths. First, Love is the best weakside rebounding talent in the NBA. Bar none. He doesn't sky for boards as an athletic marvel a la Dwight Howard, but his ability to covertly make space and throw his weight around to get in position is unparalleled. And he does it all without being particularly tall -- shockingly enough, Love measured up as 6'8" without shoes, making him shorter (without shoes) than LeBron James. But he's still a fantastic rebounder.

In fact, I'm of the opinion that in a pure battle to assess the better defensive rebounder, Love's command of the boxout and ability to use his weight to make space would actually make him a better rebounder than Dennis Rodman was. His body control is exquisite, and he's overcome so many physical handicaps to become a superstar that I'm not sure I'd bet against him in a well-scouted rebound-off between him and the Worm. I'm not 100% sure about this opinion, but I don't think it's blasphemous to think it. Offensive rebounding, obviously, would go to Dennis -- but defensive? Not sure. Love is too damn good. And that isn't simply his rebounding that's incredible -- Love's talents stretch beyond, as he's the best shooting big man in the league today. I don't say that lightly, either -- his three point stroke has gotten better every single year. While he's no great shakes as an isolation three point shooter, he's developed his shot to a designed consistency that makes it one of the strongest spot-up shots in the game. He's a post scorer who gets it done, especially from his pet area in the low block -- and has enough gusto that he generally rebounds and putbacks any shots he happens to miss or get blocked. Which, by the way, has happened less and less. As his role's evolved over his career, Love has been blocked fewer and fewer times per season.

He's come a long way from his rookie year, where a startling 11% of the shots he put up were blocked. Last year, 6% of his shots were blocked -- right below the league average for power forwards. He's put a lot of work into making his post moves harder to predict, and it's paid off in spades. On defense? This is where I can finally give Love his now-deserved due. While Love has been a relatively awful defender for years, last season under Adelman's system, Love finally started to put together a few key skills that evacuated him from the "bleeding liability" stages of defensive development. He's got quick feet, for someone who comes across often as an unathletic schlub, and if you watch him on defense you'll note just how quick those feet can get. Just as he's developed to get better at throwing his weight around in the post, Love has gotten significantly better about sliding over to the weakside to help on the pick and roll. He's developed into a reasonably good post-zone defender, as well -- when Minnesota zoned up and allowed him to cover the paint (quite often the case), Love proved startlingly effective at quashing easy post-ups and keeping in close quarters to slow offensive players in the post. Love's lacking athleticism will always handicap him on the defensive end, but by utilizing him in a zoned defensive scheme, Adelman was able to turn Love's defense from a punch line to a reasonably solid positive. And when you're as effective at rebounding and scoring as Love is, all you really need to solidify your status as an elite player is a merely passable defensive skillset. After years of work, Love's finally got that.

And with it? He's got validation as one of the best players in the game, legitimately. Now that he has some defense, the video game numbers finally have some crunch. Which is a good thing, as he's a pretty funny dude. I will say, although I'm not overly fond of his oddly franchise-threatening comments about Minnesota, there is one thing in Love's personal wheelhouse that will always keep me smiling. I refer to his big-brotherly relationship with Ricky Rubio. There's Ricky learning the intricacies of the English language. There's the storied rookie backpack play (with a guest appearance from Uncle Brad!). There's the trash talk -- which deserves special note. As an older brother myself, I completely understand Love's tactics here. Let the younger have their moment in the sun, and bluster about how they'll dominate the competition. You don't respond in the moment, you just wait. Then later, after totally trashing them in whatever they were nettling you about, you come back with a retort 10x better than one you could've done at the time. Admittedly, this is a high risk/high reward play -- if you actually lose, you've basically given up all ability to contradict the original taunt and instead leave yourself open to further, strengthened taunts that you can only respond to with toothless retorts of the "well... well... I'M OLDER! Nyeh!" sort. But if you win the game, any retort you make is just that much sweeter. Solid, solid play by Love here. Nine out of ten for the classic execution and the thoughtfulness. Exactly what I'd expect out of a man whose closest mentor is Brian Cardinal.

• • •

_Follow Jordan Crawford on Twitter at __@jcraw55.___

I've constantly noted the lack of elite talent at the two guard position -- beyond the golden (and rapidly aging) triad of Kobe, Wade, and Manu you have a relatively bare stable highlighted by James Harden, Eric Gordon, and not-a-whole-hell-of-a-lot-else. The position makes up for it by having about 20-30 versions of the same archetype -- not really elite, nor very good, but essentially your garden variety Jordan clone. Takes hard shots, makes a few, forgets to impact the game in any other way. Very easy to overrate for casual fans and very easy to watch. Jordan Crawford qualifies as one such player, although it's worth noting that he's significantly worse than most of them. I hate to put players down like this, but lord, I just can't stand Crawford's game. It's prone to be overrated due to his capacity for "big" scoring nights -- and after all, he averaged nearly 20 points per 36 minutes -- which makes people forget all the nights he simply can't make a shot to save his life. "Look at his scoring -- it's so prolific! He can't be that bad, right?" Don't be sure about that! Crawford is what one would call a "shoot-always" guard, despite the fact that he's a reasonably effective passer when he deigns to give up the ball. Crawford put up 872 shots in just 27 minutes per game, which is actually pretty incredible.

In the past decade, only four players have managed that kind of a pace -- Crawford, this season's awful incarnation of Brook Lopez, 2010 J.R. Smith, and 2009 Charlie Villanueva. Not a good look, all things considered. It'd be one thing if he was doing it efficiently, but the blistering inefficiency with which Crawford plies his trade really takes it over the top. Crawford is well below the position average from three (28% for Crawford, 35% for the average 25 MPG SG), just below average at long twos (39% for Crawford, 40% average), above average in the 10-15 foot midrange (44% for Crawford, 40% average), very below average at close non-rim shots (32% for Crawford, 38% average), and a tad below average at the rim (61% for Crawford, 63% average). The by-distance percentages look better than you'd expect looking at his overall numbers (40% from the field, 28% from three), but they're a bit misleading -- Crawford takes very few shots from the ranges he's average at, instead choosing to ensure that one of every three shots he takes comes from three point range (where, again, he shoots 7% less than the position average) and an additional one of three from the long midrange. The overall average-ness of his percentages would tend to indicate that, indeed, if he cleaned up his shot selection he'd be a league average offensive player. I'm not sure about that, though, as it would take a full-scale remodeling of his tendencies and traits for him to achieve that. And even then -- he's a pretty massive liability on the defensive end, he's (while better than Nick Young) no great shakes as a rebounder from the guard position, and he doesn't pass very willingly. Is he an NBA-quality backup on a middling team? Sure. Would he dominate in Europe, if given free reign? Absolutely. Is he a starter? Pretty sure the answer is "no way," Jordan comparisons or not. But I'm open to being surprised.

According to NBA.com, Jordan Crawford majored in liberal arts, which I honestly didn't know was possible. Perhaps as a statistician with a minor in economics, I lack the culture that underlies that major. But... seriously, what? I always thought "liberal arts" was simply a large designation of majors, not a major in and of itself. According to the Xavier website, they generally only offer a degree in majorless liberal arts to transfer students and part-timers. It appears from my cursory research that a no-major liberal arts degree tends to involve some element of customization in the student's learning plan. I actually have a friend who majored in "fairy tales" when at Duke (not a joke, she actually majored in this, it's a real thing) with the help of her advisor -- it's not an actual major the school offered, but it's how she set up her degree. So, may she has the same sort of customized "liberal arts" degree. The question I have, though, is what exactly his custom degree was focused on. How to stop worrying and love to chuck? The baking life aquatic? Keeping cool white boys around? So many options. What do you think? (Question goes double for the folks at Truth About It, who I'd bet would know better than anyone. A small shout-out, here -- the Wizards coverage they provide is simply incredible. It rivals that of any blog I can think of. Weidie, McGinnis, Mobley, and the rest of their excellent stable -- their writers all do a wonderful job, and if you're a Wizards fan who aren't reading them, you're a Wizards fan whose life is incredibly flawed. Read them early, read them often. You won't regret it.)

• • •

Follow Marc Gasol on Twitter at @MarcGasol.__

Marc Gasol's season was interesting, last year, if not a bit depressing. He started the year on an absolute tear, leading to the big Spaniard's first all-star appearance of his career, then simply wheezed out down the stretch and found himself forced to limp across the finish line. The numbers reflect that -- before the all-star break, Gasol put up a line of 15-10 on just under 50% shooting, along with his patented brand of muck-it-up, tough-nosed defense. After? Gasol's line plummeted to 14-7 on 47% shooting, and his defense fell off. This culminated poorly in the playoffs. While his scoring output came back after he realized he was being guarded by Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, his rebounding fell off the proverbial cliff -- seven boards in 37 minutes per game is not going to cut it for a grind-it-out team like the Grizzlies, and part of what helped the Clippers pull off the tight series was Gasol's inability to lock down the boards in the same way he did in the Grizzlies' 2011 run. Not to mention the defensive end, where Gasol simply wasn't as effective as he had been all season for Memphis.

All things considered, I don't think it's fair to fault him entirely for the performance. There's a good reason pure centers rarely play over 36 minutes a night -- it's absolutely exhausting to play the center position in the modern league. This reflects in how coaches allot minutes -- collectively, guards have combined for 208 individual seasons averaging greater than 36 MPG in the last decade. Forwards total 213 such seasons. Centers, even including players designated forward-centers, in that timeframe? 17. No typo. Were you to charitably split the guards and forwards into the five cardinal, positions, you'd get somewhere on the margin of one hundred 36+ MPG seasons at every non-center position. Then, for centers, just seventeen. It's astonishingly low, though it makes my point -- playing a center is really really hard. You get fouled hard seemingly every other play. Opposing centers push you around in the post, and wing players fling their bodies into you looking for foul calls. You're also simply bigger than the other players -- it's hard to lug around a seven foot frame up and down the court thousands of times in a season. Then you add in workouts, the travel in uncomfortably small quarters, and the grind of a full season? Few centers have frames that can really support that kind of a grind. Few people, really.

Marc Gasol, to his credit, did not complain at his over-36 a night minutes load -- Darrell Arthur was injured, you see, as was Zach Randolph. Without Marc on the floor, the Grizzlies spent much of the season parading out a semi-hilarious potpourri of big men. And Marc's skills are considerable. His defense, as mentioned, is wonderful -- very solid widebody defender individually, and he puts in his effort on help defense. His large size and weight does negatively impact his help defense, as it harms his mobility and ability to properly recover onto his man if he evacuates for a weakside shooter. But don't let that lessen your view of him -- Gasol's defense absolutely defines the Grizzlies when they're at their best, and although he has his challenges, he's an incredibly smart defender that always seems to make the best possible decision on a coverage. Great shutdown paint defender, when the Grizzlies run modified zones, and a passable offensive player. Not a creator of his own offense, really, though he's a good passer when he's on -- he's more of the "set me up and I'll drop it in" sort, at his offensive best when Mike Conley is setting him up at the rim or with a nice pocket pass in-rhythm. He's got a nice little hook shot and a decent close-range turnaround he likes to rely on -- both are effective, if not moves he tends to do more than a few times a night.

But, again. The minutes load got to him, and by the end of the year, Gasol was completely gassed. It was an unfortunate end to what's been a prolonged, two-year coming out party for one of the most effective two-way centers in the league. I'm no Grizzlies fan -- I mean, cripes, what Spurs fan would be after 2011? -- but I've always really liked watching Gasol play. And not just for the basketball, which is entertaining as hell -- it's the little things, like his awkward fist-daps and the way he walks around during timeouts. It's partly his size, partly his funny proportions, and partly the fact that he looks like one of my old Spanish teachers, a little. And partly the fact that he does things like this when he thinks nobody's paying attention. He's a goofy dude, a good player, and although his season may be looked at as a disappointment by Grizzlies fans, I think that's a mistake. Expecting an athlete like Marc to take a workload like that and show no signs of wear at all is unrealistic at best and completely ridiculous at worst. Next season, with Arthur back in form and a full year's contribution from Randolph, I expect Hollins will be able to keep Gasol from getting quite so worn down. And with it, I expect the Grizzlies to be a hell of a lot of a harder out than they were this year. Should be fun, at the very least.

• • •

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 got a 3/3, but only with help! Smitty Weberjagermanjensen (who, as always, was number one) got every player right, but he originally missed the boat on #3. It was only with the help of noted riddle-guessing talents Weagle and J that he realized the error in his ways, and fixed the Bynum/Gasol mix-up. Good job team. (I think I need to make these harder.)

• Good at dunks, though I admit to finding it rather scary that a Google search for Player #73 brings up "[Player #73] eats babies" as a "related" search. I know it's a T-Shirt, but... seriously, what???
• Player #74 seems to actually twitter-search his name and respond to EVERY SINGLE MENTION, even ones that don't use his twitter handle. I know this because he replied to my untagged statement about the zoo. Seems like a nice guy!
• Great post game, varied offensive skillset, solid fundamentals. All that said? Fans of Player #75's first franchise STILL like him a hell of a lot more than fans of his former and current.

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 David Lee, Kevin Seraphin, Jerryd Bayless.

• • •

Follow David Lee on Twitter at @dlee042.

David Lee sneaks up on you, a bit. If you're making a list of the best big men in the league, Lee will never deign to crack it -- his stats are on-the-whole phenomenal but his game is on-the-whole average. He's an above average offensive player from most areas of the floor -- for his career, he generally shoots in the 40% range on 16-23 foot twos (though clocked in well below that at 36% last season), near 50% from the true midrange, around 44% on close-but-not-at-rim shots, and in the high sixties on at-rim conversion. That's very good from midrange and very good at the rim, while semi-passable from the long midrange and pretty awful at his post-move, 3-9 foot shots. This reflects in how he distributes his shots -- Lee is pretty good about staying away from doomed post moves and sticking to what he's good at. Strong moves to get as close to the basket as possible, in-rhythm midrange shots, and just enough floor spacing to draw a big out of the paint every now and again. He's good in isolation, good in the pick and roll, and good at keeping the ball under control when he runs his own plays. Still, though. Does his game really help his teammates?

This is what I've really struggled with. I've never really watched a game with Lee and thought, "wow, Lee's play has really opened up the floor for his teammates." The problem with Lee's game is that, as a player, he's extremely slow and lumbering. He's also relatively easy to telegraph. This doesn't necessarily make him easy to guard, per se -- Lee's been relatively slow his whole career, which has made him adapt to the extra coverage he gets. Lee can finish in traffic, or make shots while guarded. In some ways, it makes his offensive game that much more impressive. But the problem with Lee is that his slow frame means that his offensive talents don't really help the guards around him that much. Sure, Lee's midrange is great, but it never really spaces the floor very effectively. His man plays off him until Lee is guaranteed to shoot, then lunges in knowing they'll have time to recover if Lee decides to pass it. Alternatively, if he tries a fancy post move, defenders have about twenty years and some change to prepare their angles for a clean and easy block. Why do you think he shoots so poorly from 3-9 feet, and always seems to be among the league's big-man leaders in percentage of shots blocked? (No, Virginia, not blocks -- percentage of THE PLAYER'S shots that get blocked.) Lee's game is potent, and his offense is very impressive for a man his size. But his lack of speed and mobility do no favors for his teammates, and while his stats have always been rather excellent, I've never been quite as big on him as most.

The other reason -- also connected with his mobility -- is his defense. While Lee hustles for rebounds with the best of them and gets into scrums like his life depends on it, his lack of quickness and length will always impact his ability to really contribute on the defensive end. This isn't to say he doesn't try. Lee puts effort in on the defensive end, and he doesn't at all strike me as a Carmelo-type who simply falls asleep and takes plays off. But he just isn't that good, you know? Physically he can't hack it on the defensive end, despite his fantastic offense. He has a very poor sense of when players are rushing past him when he's on the weakside, and while he tries to stay to his man, his poor fundamentals like his footwork and physical failings leave him doomed against 90% of the big men in the league. He is a relatively decent rebounder -- or rather, was. He's actually been relatively bollocks on the boards since he arrived in Golden State, and while he was a phenomenal rebounder in New York (both per-possession and in the aggregate totals), there's little sign that's extended to his Golden State days. Still, I'm very excited to watch him this coming year. Bogut is a defensive game-changer, to the point of hiding Lee's crummy defense. And I have a feeling that Lee and Bogut will space out offensively very, very well. Assuming they both stay healthy, mind you. Perhaps not the fairest assumption, but one we'll always make before injuries inevitably defer the dream.

• • •

_Follow Kevin Seraphin on Twitter at __@kevin_seraphin.___

It surprises many, but Kevin Seraphin is actually a really solid basketball player. He's not a star, no -- Seraphin's ceiling is probably of the 14-8 sort, sopping up minutes as a big-time glue guy on a contender. But you can do things with that in this league. Offensively, he's got a minor repertoire -- he's essentially bunk beyond 10 feet, with poor free throws and no consistent jump shot to speak of. But within that range? Look out. Seraphin is hyper-athletic, strong, and multifaceted -- he's the owner of what might be the best currently-employed hook shot in the NBA, and his at-rim finishes are as breathtaking as they are efficient. Poor rebounder, as of yet, but he has a bit of time to figure out how to box out. Probably never going to be a double-digit rebounds kind of guy, though -- very important that the Wizards place good rebounders around Seraphin, to hide that aspect a bit.

On defense, it's definitely a credit to his genetics and childhood coaching-- the raw skillset Seraphin has shown in his scant years is the league is extremely nice. He sets -- according to teammates -- the toughest screens in the NBA. There are some issues -- he bites on too many pump fakes, needs to build a bit more bulk, and needs to develop better instincts on when to help. But Seraphin's pick and roll defense is quite effective even at his young age, and he has the athletic tools to be an absolute beast. And unlike many hyper-athletic prospects, Seraphin isn't too old to still make good on his potential. He actually only began to learn the game of basketball at the age of 15 -- at 7 years into his basketball learning, Seraphin is dropping games like this excellent one against the best defense in the league like it isn't a huge deal. But it is. Seraphin's toughness, hard work, and talent have carried him to a very interesting spot, and one that Seraphin surely wouldn't have expected seven years ago. When, remember, he didn't know a damn thing about the game. Fancy that.

Now, some funny Seraphin stuff. Kevin Seraphin is on the book as a big supporter of the segwey -- he bought one off JaVale McGee back in late 2011 and proceeded to drive it essentially everywhere, taking his newfound means of transport out to the Washington Monument, around Georgetown, and (according to some sources) to practice. Also, Seraphin used it to (as he said) "drive around the house." To be honest? If I were to get a segwey -- and this will never happen, but let's suspend reality -- I'd probably do the same thing. Can you imagine how hilarious that would feel? The bleeding edge inefficiency of driving a segwey around a personal home slays me. Seraphin is also the proud owner of two interesting pets -- a snake named Snakey and a bird named April. While I admit that I don't know French and can't understand a word he says in the bird video, the information is invaluable to me. After all, after JaVale McGee burst our bubble on the belief that he owned a platypus, I needed proof that at least one NBA player used some portion of their wealth to buy interesting pets. I needed it. And for providing that, Seraphin has instantly become my favorite Wizard. Good show, Kevin.

• • •

Follow Jerryd Bayless on Twitter at @jay_bay4.__

Well, I'll be damned. For once, a player's stats completely took me by surprise. I watched a bunch of tape through Synergy sports, though, and I can safely conclude that the 42% shooting from three point range that Bayless put up isn't an error in my data. I really thought it was -- Bayless has up-til-now been a relatively awful shooter from distance, with his previous best season a barely-average 33%, and every season prior to that being in the mid 20s, early 30s. Still. I realized he'd had a better year last season, but THAT much better? All things considered, last season was something of a revelation for the relocated Arizonan. Bayless seems to have ironed out some of the kinks in his shot (although his shot selection still drove me nuts when I watched Raptors games). He's always had the potential to do that, mind you -- he's shot over 80% from the free throw line over his career, and when you're that accurate from the line, you usually have at least the potential to be a good three point bomber -- but it was only last season that his outside shooting really started to match the intuition on his shot.

For the first time in his four year career, Jerryd Bayless posted an above-average PER and a WS/48 above 0.100. Although he was a bit turnover prone in prior seasons, he was able to finally find a good medium between overhandling and passing, posting the best assist rate of his career coupled with one of the lowest turnover rates. There are still some issues, though -- we like to talk about players doing what they're best at and taking the ball inside, but Bayless is simply not of that brood. Over his career, he takes only one or two shots per game at the rim, and there's a good reason why. The secret with Bayless is that he's simply not a good finisher, and he doesn't have a go-to shot in the 3-9 foot range that he can really rely on. He's also doubly prone to turnovers when he drives it into the paint -- Bayless is at his distributing best when he's precipitating his moves around the perimeter and dropping pretty passes to cutting bigs. The reason, so far as I can explain it, is that his size and ball control is compromised when he's moving too quickly. He's a good standstill passer, and a good passer when he's moving leisurely, but the tradeoff between a Bayless pass made in rapid motion and one made in casual motion is that he simply can't make unpredictable (or even hard-to-predict) angles when he's moving quickly. This leads to him telegraphing his pass something fierce and losing his handle more often, hence the poor shooting and the constant turnovers in the painted area.

Still. His issues driving and finishing in the paint notwithstanding, if Bayless keeps his three point shot up to his recent standards, he should be a decent player in the NBA. Offensively, he has talent -- he's above average from the long two as well as (now) the three, and takes the majority of his shots from that range in an effort to spread the defense for his big men. Generally to some success. Defensively, he's pretty awful, though that's rather par for the course for shooting guards stuck in point guard frames. When he tries to apply defensive pressure he genuinely struggles to stay out of foul trouble. And although I love summer league, this is worth noting. Bayless was the MVP of the 2009 summer league. He proceeded to be a marginal, 14 minute-a-game stopgap the next season despite being healthy for virtually the entire season for a Portland team struggling with injuries. Summer league is a trip, and a great experience -- but all that said, even the highest success in the summer league is no guarantee of stardom -- or even anything more than stopgap production -- in the big leagues. Very little translates like you'd expect. Well, except a Jimmer/DeMarcus reality show. That probably translates about as well as you'd expect.

• • •

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. If you combine J and Brian -- one of whom got Lee and Bayless, the other who got Seraphin -- you'd have a 3/3, but as-is you've just got two 2/3s and a sense that they coulda been contenders. Alack.

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 Gary Forbes, Mario Chalmers, and Lou Williams.

• • •

Follow Gary Forbes on Twitter at @GForbz3.

Interesting story for Mr. Forbes. He's an American, but his origin is different than most NBA players -- Forbes was born in Panama, a rare spot for NBA talent, and reared for the league by way of Brooklyn. Before he played in the NBA, Forbes became one of the greatest players in U-Mass history (normal, though interesting because of the doldrums that program's been struggling with in Calipari's wake), plied his trade in the D-League (common), and Europe (less common). No, Europe isn't uncommon in a broad sense, but for an American-raised player to go overseas, do the D-League, and still make the league is pretty rare, and quite respectable. It takes some hard work and soul searching to make the league after that many rejections, and bully to Forbes for making it over and (in truth) finding real ways to contribute. Especially given his notable limitations -- Forbes, believe it or not, has Type 1 Diabetes. And thrives with it.

For what should be obvious reasons, Forbes didn't initially advertise this fact. Why should he? It's a great accomplishment, to be sure, but look what happens to players who openly advertise or show honesty in their health failings. When Andrew Bogut said he was operating at 85%, media hyenas ripped his comments apart and the Milwaukee front office was mad at him. Seemingly every year, a solid draft prospect gets their stock absolutely destroyed by injury factors beyond their control (Sullinger, Blair, et cetera). What's really stopping teams from assessing based on things like diabetes, or depression, or other chronic conditions? I totally get why Forbes didn't advertise it. After the fact became public knowledge, though, Forbes relented -- he proceeded to use his story as one to inspire, taking it to the American Diabetes Association and sharing his outlook on life with the disease. (For those wondering: eat right, exercise constantly, and don't let the illness detract from your dreams). Sort of heroic, in a sense -- being a professional athlete requires a pretty crazy training schedule, and juggling that with such an ubiquitous health problem in modern society is undoubtedly difficult.

As for his game, it's not incredible by any stretch of the imagination, but it's certainly NBA replacement-level. He's a scoring shooting guard who's passingly efficient (about 14-16 points per 36 minutes, usually spotting a role of about 10-20 MPG). He's a very good rebounder for a guard, and a decent acumen for passing. He's an OK three point shooter, though his percentages are a bit wanting at scoring from inside the arc. A bit more turnover prone than you'd perhaps want, but as long as he's not your primary ballhandler, you should be OK. He isn't a good defensive player, mind you -- while he was better in Toronto under Casey than he ever was under Karl in Denver, he still detracted from Toronto on that end of the court, and his lacking athleticism and length will hurt him for the rest of his NBA career. But he's certainly not bad. A bit old for a third year player (27), but not bad. Now, Forbes one of the many varied forwards and guards milling about in Daryl Morey's remarkably incoherent Houston Rockets "roster", as a tertiary piece in the Kyle Lowry trade. While I'm not 100% on board with Forbes as an NBA talent that's going to revolutionize a roster, I really like his story -- there's something about overcoming massive obstacles like his diabetes that really makes me smile.

• • •

_Follow Mario Chalmers on Twitter at __@mchalmers15.___

I think Mario Chalmers is a bit underrated. Not horrendously so -- he's a limited player in a lot of ways, and has several incredibly aggravating tendencies that detract from his positives. But Chalmers brings value to teams if he's used effectively, and part of the success story of the 2012 Heat wasn't simply that LeBron went murderous on the league when the playoffs began. It was that Spolestra finally, after almost two years, realized that Mario Chalmers was their best non-Wade guard and gave him the minutes to reflect it. Seriously. People may not agree with me on this, but I believe it strongly -- I think that the Heat would've probably won the title in 2011 if Spolestra had benched Mike Bibby and played Mario Chalmers. As someone who doesn't particularly like the Heat, I was absolutely happy that Spolestra decided to go with that rotation -- he played Bibby 20 minutes per game to Chalmers' 24, and it seemed even worse at the time. But I do think that if he'd given 10 of Bibby's minutes to Chalmers, the Heat probably win that title. Why? A few simple reasons. First, J.J. Barea destroyed the Heat in 2011, but only when Mike Bibby was on the court. When Chalmers was on, Barea did virtually nothing, because Mario Chalmers is actually a pretty good defender.

No, seriously. Stop laughing. Chalmers plays relatively physical defense, for a guard, and works hard to make sure whoever he's guarding has trouble getting to their pet spots on the floor. It's not a physical thing, entirely -- Chalmers is actually listed at the exact same height and weight as Bibby. The thing is, Chalmers has a lot of active quickness -- that is, the ability to move quickly in response to an opponent's movement, and to use the lateral quickness that most players use for isolation offense in order to switch positions quickly and freeze up offensive players. He's also a relatively decent shooter -- 38% from three isn't that bad, especially when he's putting up four of them a night. It's true that he's assisted on 90% of those threes, per Hoopdata, but that's still not all that bad a number for Chalmers. He's a solid if not remarkable finisher, and he doesn't hog the ball. Which is an important trait on a team that has LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh on it. This paragraph would lead the uninitiated to wonder why, then, Heat writers and players are so incredibly down on Mario. I think there are two main reasons.

Out of all the players in the league, I don't think there's anybody whose turnovers are quite as visually stunning as those of Chalmers. The best way to put it is that when most players turn over the ball, it's a mistake -- some random "whoops" moment where they usually just lost control for a split second. No big deal, but sad. When Chalmers gets a turnover? It's an event. It's a SportsCenter play-of-the-game. It's Mario Chalmers doing a backflip while trying to thread a pass through two referees and accidentally throwing the ball into the Indian Ocean. It's Mario Chalmers flashing a smile while trying to dribble the ball off his head as he composes an aria. It's Mario Chalmers handing the ball to the opposing point guard, giving him a pep talk, and standing like Jesus in the middle of the court while the play goes on at the other end. Mario Chalmers has the most hilarious turnovers in the game. I don't think there's any real doubt about this. And in turn, although his turnover rate isn't remarkably awful (though it IS pretty bad), Chalmers tends to be remembered more for his turnovers and fouls (which are pretty funny too) than the many good things he does on the court.

The second, and probably more important reason people seem to dislike him? He's apparently really, really obsessed with his own talent. He actually thinks he's the best player on the Miami Heat. Mario, you're underrated, but come on. That sort of mindless exuberance tends to color the impression people have of you, which would tend to explain why Heat journalists and players don't like him that much. And constantly yell at him. Given all these stories, I think the problem is clear -- Chalmers is taking lessons on how to live his life from Juwan Howard. "Chill out, Mario."

• • •

Follow Lou Williams on Twitter at @TeamLou23.__

Lou Williams is better than you think. Probably. If you're an average NBA fan -- or even an average Philadelphia fan -- you probably think of Williams as yet another cog in the conscience-abandoned chucker machine. Instant offense off the bench, but not really anything better than you'd get from players like Jamal Crawford, Nick Young, O.J. Mayo, or any of the other offensive-minded bench talents. No tertiary stuff, no external benefits, nothing. Just a chucker. ... Or so most people think. The big problem with that is that it's simply untrue -- while Lou Williams fits that general archetype of player, simply lumping him in with those folks is an incredibly stupid mistake. In terms of production and what Williams does to help a team, he's more akin to an in-control and subdued Monta Ellis, or a level just scantly below Kevin Martin. I got some blowback early in the season for picking Lou Williams as one of my picks for the all-star game, with my pick being soundly panned by most. But I maintain that even with the season over, Williams was pretty damn close to the All-Star game -- I'd go with Kyrie over him, now, but Williams had a really good season.

You may look at his stats and laugh at the supposition that Williams is really that much better than those other myriad instant-offense scoring guards. After all, what's so special about Lou? A few key things. First, despite having a very high usage rate year-after-year, Williams is absolutely amazing at taking care of the ball. Absolutely phenomenal at it. Last season in particular he was absolutely incredible -- for the year, Williams put up a turnover percentage of 7.2%. To contextualize how good that is, among guards playing more than 20 minutes a night and playing more than 10 games in a single season, Lou's full-season mark of 7.2% ranks 24th all-time. That's pretty insane. (And yes, I'll go over Jodie's spot on that list in due time.) While Lou's rebounding is rather crummy, his passing is (like Monta Ellis) relatively effective. And while it often seems like Williams chucks up shots with abandon when you watch him play, his free throw drawing talents combined with his effective stroke on isolation threes makes him a ridiculously efficient scorer, putting up a per-36 total of 21 points on 17 shots per game. And before you ask why he doesn't play more, I'd note that Williams is also one of the best in the league at avoiding fouls -- he averaged just 1.4 per game last season, and never had a game with five or more fouls. He also creates the majority of his offense on his lonesome -- Williams was able to score efficiently on that absurdly low turnover rate despite being assisted on only 40% of his shots, well below the league average of 50%, with that number being in the neighborhood of less-efficient burst scorers like Monta Ellis, Jamal Crawford, and Gary Neal.

So, how does all this -- none of it incredibly special in it's own right -- differentiate him from other burst scorers from the guard position? Simple. It all applies to him. You can find a burst scorer who has some passing talent (ex: Monta Ellis), or a burst scorer with a low propensity for turnovers (ex: Jodie Meeks), or a burst scorer with great efficiency (ex: Danny Green). But you simply can't find one that does it all. Williams consistently does all of these things, all the while barely getting injured at all and staying far, far away from foul trouble. When the Hawks were able to pick up Williams from the bargain bin on a 4-year $21 million dollar deal, I was shocked. I realize his defense isn't fantastic. It's a cliche, but he really does gamble a bit too much, and he doesn't effectively utilize the quickness that makes his crossover so deadly on the defensive end. Too focused on the steal, not focused enough on preventing the shot. There's also the inverse confirmation bias -- Philadelphia refused to run actual offensive sets or action at the end of close games, so Williams got a reputation for poorly-thought-out heroball (though I'd argue that was mostly the fault of Doug Collins, last season). He's also reached something of a peak -- at 26 years old, it's quite unlikely Williams gets THAT MUCH better going forward. But seriously... around $5 million a year? You're talking about one of the best burst scorers in the league, in his prime. You're talking about a position that publications like Wages of Wins have been saying NBA decisionmakers overpay to some level of grotesque state of hyper-indulgence, and you're telling me that all the man could get was $5 million a year? ___Less than the old midlevel?!

Yes, suffice to say, I think the Williams acquisition was a great steal for a Hawks team that should be a lot better than most people expect. If Horford stays healthy, Williams can pick up 90% of the slack from Joe Johnson at (literally) a fourth of the price. Devin Harris should strengthen their point guard rotation, and add a healthy Horford to that team, and you have exactly what you normally have -- a solid 4-5 seed that'll put up a fight. Except... with incoming cap space, instead of books locked down til the day I die. Good show, Danny Ferry. It's also nice because Williams is actually from Atlanta -- the hometown connection is always fun, when a player gets to play 41 games a year in front of local friends and family. Should be fun. Off the court, Williams is mostly notable to me as one of the two or three best rappers in the NBA. I realize that's sort of damning with faint praise, as being "the best rapper in the NBA" is akin to being the best "mystery" flavored dum-dum at the dentist's office, but hey, I'm serious. He's actually pretty alright. Go listen to his stuff, you probably won't be THAT disappointed. And even if you are, you should read this line-by-line analysis of Lou's freestyle, because it's ridiculously hilarious and easily worth some time.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. We got one three out of three from commenter Brian, though I'll also shout out LexThunder for being the first one to realize that "Gary Forbes" is the most CEO-ish name in the NBA, by far. Congrats, Brian! And good working together, folks. Teamwork!

More soon. Also, shout-out to reader Adam Johnson, who emailed asking if my sign-off from the last post was inspired by this excellent JaVale tweet. Yes, Adam. It was.

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 Dorell Wright, JaVale McGee, and Kevin Martin.

• • •

Follow Dorell Wright on Twitter at @DWRIGHTWAY1.

Dorell Wright is a decent player. He's not exactly an incredibly high upside player, but so long as he can hover around what he's done the last few years, he'll stick in the league a long time. Most people assume that Wright's 2012 season -- in which his playing time collapsed, his shooting percentages dropped, and his aggressiveness waned -- was a disappointment in the context of his broader career. I'm not so sure that's true. To be sure, it wasn't quite as impressive as his fantasy gold-mine in the 2011 season, where Wright played the fourth most minutes in the entire league and took an insane amount of three pointers, to great effect. But it had its own positives. Like, for instance, his rebounding, which improved from a career-low rebounding percentage of 12% to a very solid 14%. While his efficiency dropped, he also dropped the number of possessions he used up, which theoretically could've helped the team a bit even if it was absolutely frustrating (as a fan) to watch him throw away open shots with regularity. His turnovers dropped precipitously as well -- Wright had only 51 turnovers in 61 games, an impressively low sum. In fact, only two other players produced that few turnovers in that many minutes -- Richard Jefferson and Thaddeus Young.

This isn't to say it's all good. Wright's defense was decent to start the season, but only for a few games. He suffered a left knee contusion in a January game, and from then on out, Wright returned to his tentative self on defense. Most people forget this, but early in Wright's tenure in the league, he was a massive injury risk -- most of Wright's early seasons are spotted with missed games and surgery-related ills galore, which tends to explain Wright's passive approach to defense. Early this season, off his 82 game stalwart year, it seemed like Wright's passive approach had waned, but a quick reminder of his injury demons brought back the passive tendencies on the defensive end. A pity. While he's no athletic freak, he has relatively decent timing and great length, which makes most coaches/fans imagine that he could be much better on the defensive end. To be fair, the hesitance from injuries is a perfectly reasonable barrier to his becoming a plus defender. But it's still a problem. Also an issue is Wright's hesitance on offense, as I touched on in the first paragraph -- often in 2012, Wright would simply refuse the ball if he wasn't feeling it. This is a respectable trait in some ways -- a player determined not to let his lacking offensive performance harm his team -- and a less-than-salutatory bad habit in the more overriding sense that as a poor defender, offensive contributions are what he's supposed to be doing.

I'm not sure I love the acquisition of Wright by the Sixers, all things considered. I understand they're trying (somewhat foolishly, in my opinion) to convert natural SF Evan Turner to be their SG of the future -- but even then, Philadelphia's two best remaining players with Brand's defensive rock gone are Andre Iguodala and the still-inexplicably-benched Thaddeus Young. There aren't going to be a ton of minutes for Wright to play unless they trade Iguodala (something that reports say is exceedingly unlikely) or play Wright at SG (something that his size and inactivity on defense say is extremely silly). While I think Wright could thrive in the sort of free-form "Lou Williams" role on next year's Sixers (and, indeed, his stats are very similar to Lou's), that's going to require a lot of lineup wrangling on the part of Doug Collins to make sure Wright is properly featured and properly supported. A tall task for Collins, though if you have faith in his role as a talent facilitator and Philadelphia's very own pied piper, you might be excited about Wright. He's not quite as good as the ridiculously underrated Williams, but he fulfills the same role and if Collins manages the minutes effectively it's unlikely that the switchover is going to harm the team at all.

• • •

_Follow JaVale McGee on Twitter at __@JaValeMcGee34.___

Here at the Gothic, we find McGee to be a sometimes-muse, inspiring both strange fictional pieces and pieces inspired by his altogether hilarious postseason run. There isn't really anyone like him in the league today -- nobody else quite embodies McGee's combination of odd detachment and preposterous antics the way he does. And I mean that seriously. Have you ever watched a JaVale McGee interview? It's an experience. The way he simply refuses to look at the camera, the detached devil-may-care approach to his team and the game discussed, the refusal to acknowledge his personal antics? I don't agree with whoever titled that video, necessarily -- it isn't really all that awkward, it's more a simple detachment endemic to he who doesn't like talking about himself. But that's the problem. JaVale seems to love talking about himself, at least on Twitter, where he engages in all sorts of silly, absurd antics. Whether that's retweeting himself, spouting off about his Pierre alter-ego, or asking his followers to find him a Denver segway shop, McGee's personal antics are as outgoing and creative as his interviews are detached and lifeless. And as the riddle indicated, he's the greatest planking talent of all time.

Which, in some ways, makes McGee a nigh-perfect representative of the latest generation. Not simply of NBA players, but of this generation of human beings in general. There's been an increased prevalence in the visibility of hyperactivity disorders like ADHD and autism spectrum disorders like Asperger's -- not necessarily because there's been significantly_ more_ of either illness, but because screening techniques have gotten increasingly sophisticated and cases that would once have been fringe cases not-to-be treated have become treatable and accepted. This isn't to say McGee is autistic, or deals with ADHD -- he might, but that is completely unrelated to the point here, and it's absurd to speculate when you simply don't know. It's simply to say that in how McGee treats the press and lets loose on twitter, McGee perfectly represents this new generation of kids and teenagers. There's the trouble concentrating, the alternatingly brilliant and boneheaded moves, the difficulty looking reporters in the eye one-on-one. All of this reflects, in a strange way, the generation in which McGee was reared.

There may have been players -- lost to history -- who could've gotten away with treating the press as JaVale McGee does. There have been players who make an art of boneheaded play interspersed with moments of imaginitive joyous perfection since the league began -- that's part of the human condition. But in this age of proper screening, and incredible visibility into the lives of NBA players? JaVale can't escape the image -- he can't simply retreat as Moses Malone did and expect the media to ignore it, or expect the scatterbrained plays to be ignored on SportsCenter. It gives him a special notoriety now that he wouldn't have achieved in any prior generation. Just as disorders of the mental sense -- personality, autism spectrum, hyperactivity all -- are better screened in the modern era, the media deluge in effect "screens" better for players like McGee. It's an occupational hazard of playing in this generation, I suppose.

As for his game, while I used to hate it, I've come around to it. I realize how frustrating he is to watch for fans of the Washington Wizards, and I realize that if he was on a team I actively rooted for I'd probably despise him. His lacking effort is storied, and his devil-may-care attitude towards the press doesn't help matters. But as I wrote in the piece I linked to at the start this capsule, I really feel as though McGee's insane on-court play is due not to a deficit of brains but rather an exceedingly impressive surfiet of imagination. His talent is undeniable, and his knack for turning the simple into the difficult (not boxing out in preference to skying above multiple seven footers for rebounds, taking the ball up the court instead of getting prepared to receive a lob, going for a spinning under-the-basket hook shot instead of a simple dunk) strikes me less as a player who'll never put it together and more as a player whose idea of "putting it together" is simply on a different plane of existence than we are.

JaVale McGee may not be an easy player to watch, especially if you watch enough basketball to realize how dominant a player of his physique could be if he simply played conventionally. But there's a lot to be said for the journey a player takes to become a true monster in this league, and it really seems like McGee is aiming not simply to be a conventionally dominant center, but to also be one of the most creative centers of his era. Does it really matter if he is? From a wins and losses standpoint, certainly not. But from an aesthetic perspective, how could we ignore it?

• • •

Don't follow Kevin Martin on Twitter, because he doesn't have one.__

I wasn't kidding in the riddle. Ever since the 2007 season, Kevin Martin has been among the greatest one-man offensive players in the NBA, at least in terms of efficiency. There are two extremely efficient things that a shooting guard can do on offense -- get to the line and shoot a three. Look at it this way -- the best offense in the league last year, the San Antonio Spurs, scored roughly 1.00 points per possession. Kevin Martin is an 85% free throw shooter. Every single time Kevin Martin goes to the line, his expected points for that possession are his FT% * Points Scored -- so, 0.85. His expected PPP of a possession where he goes to the line for two shots is 1.70. The same property of well-above-average production holds true of his three point shot, where Martin is a career 0.377 -- that leads to an expected PPP of 1.13. Those are two of Martin's biggest play types, by far, and both of them blow the combined efforts of one of the greatest offenses in the league out of the water. He knows what works.

It's no wonder, then, that Martin is so blasted efficient. Because all things considered, he does virtually nothing else. Martin is essentially a case study in the idea that an NBA player could be an offensive star simply by paring his game down to only a few specific, efficient play types. To wit, over Martin's career, he's scored 8728 points. Of those points, 2232 came from behind the three point line, and 2716 of them came from the free throw line. That means that in Martin's career, almost 60% of the points he's scored came from free throws or threes. There are many people who take a lot of free throws -- there are currently 29 active players that have made more than Martin in their careers -- but few are oh-so reliant on them. Few non-superstars, anyway. In any event, Martin has made a living paring his offense down to a few highly efficient shots and play-types. And he's done a good job of it, up until age began to bite at his efficiency last season.

So, given all these things, why is he so hard to watch? After all, I'm a statistician in my day job. I obsessively try to make every aspect of my life more efficient, and take great joy in it. But Kevin Martin's game simply rubs me the wrong way, you know? It's not a lack of effort -- you get this robotic sense watching Martin, that his anemic defense is calculated in its laziness, knowing he can exert some amount more energy on offense if he lays back on defense. He gives up his body to the game, playing all-out and risking injury constantly for the benefit of his free throw efficiency -- exactly what most people chastise stars for avoiding (although it's led to lots of injury issues, with Martin). He takes efficient shots and makes them. He's the type of player can score 30 on 15 shots, without really breaking a sweat.

But this game, this style... is simply so dull, so bare, so bereft of creativity. It's incredibly hard to watch on a regular basis. He's the essence of the stat-geek stereotype -- this player that advanced metrics say is (in theory) very good but a player whose eye-test absolutely says otherwise. If basketball is an art form, players like Tim Duncan are hardly the cold and calculating robots that publications like Free Darko make them out to be. It's Martin that really embodies it, always striving emotionlessly for that added tincture of efficiency. It's a quest, for Martin, and in its own lost and hollow way you wonder if his obsession with efficiency is just the thing that's always kept him from playing for a relevant team. For all of Martin's myriad positives, I can't escape the stinging pangs of the deepest recesses of my heart. Kevin Martin's game is simply boring. He's the little black spot on the sun today, the same old thing as yesterday -- the king of pain, tedium, and a logic so cruel and calculating it overrides the impressive efficiency with which he yokes his craft.

(... Until last season, where he simply sucked. But don't tell Houston that.)

• • •

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. Commenters Corn and Umlaut both got 2/3, missing different ones. No 3/3, but at least there was a correct answer for each of the riddles by SOMEONE.

More on Wednesday. Stay thirsty, my friends.