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. This morning's three: Josh Selby, Ray Allen, and Charles Jenkins.

• • •

Follow Josh Selby on twitter at @JoshSelby2.

I'm not sure what to do about awards voting. Year after year, we get awful votes that make no sense to anyone. In the last three years, we've seen: a rookie starter for a 32 win team get a third place MVP vote, a 35-year-old Ben Wallace get a vote for "Most Improved Player", and David Lee get a vote for All-Defensive first team. I get the fact that there's no way to really "fix" stupid votes. Even if you made voting public, you'd still have a person or two who would vote for something silly just to make the papers. Or people who'd revel in arrogance and refuse to admit they don't watch the games. There could also be an overreaction, a trend towards eliminating reasonable discourse and browbeating every voter into picking the same player -- that would be awful. So, no. I don't really know what to do about awards voting. I do, however, know that it can be hilarious and incomprehensible sometimes. And by sometimes, I mean every year.

Enter Josh Selby. Look. Selby is a summer league star, no doubt about it -- he plays incredibly well when the Vegas and Orlando summer leagues come around, and clearly, whoever voted for him had to have seen him do that. But shouldn't a player's actual NBA resume trump a scrimmage in the preseason? Shouldn't his scant minutes have disqualified him from a top 3 vote for Rookie of the Year? After all -- Selby averaged 2.3 points in just 28 games, playing just 8.5 minutes a contest. He didn't sit out for serious injuries, either. He sat out with DNP-CDs. Selby shot 35% from the field, with a scorching 14% from three to boot. He averaged a single turnover a game to go with his single assist a game. His per-36 averages aren't even that great -- 10-2-4 with 4 turnovers and 3 fouls a night. Regardless. Selby is a rookie, so those averages aren't the end of the world for his future development. They probably SHOULD disqualify him from receiving a high vote for rookie of the year, though.

And that's the problem. I don't understand at all how a voter could look at the slate of rookies we had last year -- on the whole, an excellent slate -- and place a vote for arguably the worst rookie in the league. I realize he had a good summer league, I realize he had outsized expectations as a popular college player, I realize the voter could've been in Memphis. But every time I read a story like this I wonder how it could possibly change. I've yet to come up with a very good way to do it -- perhaps expert shortlisting of a 5-6 player list for each of the big awards, then offering a write-in? Maybe making a rotating list of who actually gets to vote for the awards, with voters culled out if their votes have been laugh-worthy? Or, perhaps, it isn't really that big of a deal. After all, these are a little amusing -- sometimes they almost feel like a chortle-worthy reminder that maybe I'm taking these awards a little too seriously. Really though. Josh Selby?

• • •

Follow Ray Allen on twitter at @greenRAYn20.

Most people are aware of this, but in case you aren't -- Ray Allen suffers from a relatively mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder. This sort of a condition is rather rare in the NBA, and if you've ever known anyone who suffered with the disorder, you probably can gather why. Simply put, people with OCD aren't easy to be friends with. It's not their fault, and honestly, it's far more the job of their friends to try and understand them than it is the responsibility of the sufferer to try and stretch out of their comfort zone. But most people aren't really cool with putting the sort of effort into a friendship that people with OCD usually need to effectively interact, which isolates people with OCD and make them tend towards loneliness. But getting into the NBA requires at some level existing on a team concept, and people with OCD who require that tend to have trouble making the bonds and connections that build a successful team. In the case of Ray, his condition is relatively mild and his talent was overwhelming enough that he never really had to exist on a cohesive team level until the NBA, when he had enough money that he could really set his own tempo. Hence, he made it. One of the few.

This isn't to say that Ray Allen is necessarily an easy presence to have in the locker room, though. He's a man of routine and regularity, which leads to his daily ritual during the season. Allen wakes up at 8:00 AM and eats some regular amount of Aunt Jemima Blueberry Pancakes. He attends the morning shootaround at 10:00 AM to get his blood flowing. He eats lunch -- almost always preparing a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread. He takes a two hour nap from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM, following that by the immediate consumption of a pregame meal of chicken and white rice. He arrives at the arena at 4:00 PM, stretching, then shaving his head until exactly 4:30 PM, when he walks on the court for his shooting ritual. Allen shoots 200 shots -- simulating a shot at every area of the court, in a regularized order starting at the baselines and elbows and working to the top of the key -- and on a good day converts about 170. After retreating from the game, he spends exactly 15 minutes with his feet in a tub of ice, and goes to bed at 11:30 PM, every day he's able. Most players have rituals -- few players have rituals that involve pinpoint timing and eating precisely the right meal each and every day.

The condition itself -- and the impact it has on his relationships with his teammates -- has always struck me as interesting. Paul Pierce is on record saying that Allen is "crazy" and thus was responsible for any and all problems in the interactions of the Garnett Celtics. (Interesting tidbit from that article -- Rondo feels he might have OCD as well, and thinks Ray helped him realize it.) There are a myriad of stories of Allen clashing with teammates current and former about his needs -- while Larry Bird once did that whole "I'll score on you with this shot, in this spot" thing, Ray Allen once dropped 40 in a rage because someone parked in his parking space. Back when he was playing ball in elementary school, he had to do five righty layups and five lefty layups before he left any gymnasium. If he got forced out before he finished them, he'd sob in the locker room and his entire day would be irrevocably ruined. He doesn't drink, and asks that teammates abstain during the season -- or, at the very least, not tell him about it. That's Ray Allen for you. A tough guy to play with, even if he's an amazing talent. And don't forget that. While he's nowhere near what he used to be, he WAS a pretty amazing talent. Once Allen reached his prime, he was good for 20-25 points a night, with somewhere around 5 rebounds and 4 assists.

If that seems far better than you remember, you probably just don't realize quite how old he is. Allen is currently one day short of 37 years old (yes, if I'd put off this capsule set until tomorrow, it'd be posting on his birthday) and has played 42,373 NBA minutes -- with 4,964 playoff minutes besides. That's 20th all-time, and he hasn't retired yet. He's been a rather limited player ever since 2009, unfortunately -- age finally caught up with him. But in his prime, Allen was a superstar guard and was just about as good as any of the Wade/Kobe/Manu triad that's ruled the shooting guard position since 2006. The issue here -- and it's actually a serious issue, contrary to what most Heat fans and journalists seem to think -- is what Allen can actually give the Heat at his age. In last year's playoffs, he battled a gradually worsening chronic back injury and shot the worst percentage on threes he's ever shot in a playoff run in his life (30%). If his shot remains shaky and his back problems remain problematic, he may end up being about as useful as Mike Miller was. And yes, I realize Miller essentially won them a game of last year's Finals with a throwback performance. Ray Allen can certainly do that too. But can he help them on a sustained, season-wide basis?

I'm not convinced. I want to see him come back from the injury with his shooting form recuperated and his body able to handle the NBA schedule before I declare the Heat some drastically upgraded roster. My fear with Allen is that the Heat are giving up one of their few financial means to add a piece on a player with a big name whose game may be permanently gone. Because honestly -- the Heat are asking for two bounce-back, injury-free seasons from a 37-year-old player who's played over 47,000 stressful NBA minutes in his career. Who just had a terrible season defensively and who needs the entire team's schedule to work around his. Just saying. Was it a great signing in a vacuum? Sure. Will it translate to instant titles and an incredible upgrade for Miami? Not sure. Yet.

• • •

Follow Charles Jenkins on twitter at @CTJenkins22.

Speaking of rookies who were better than Josh Selby, meet Charles Jenkins. Jenkins was the first Hofstra player drafted since 2001's Speedy Claxton, and only the fifth Hofstra player ever drafted. Jenkins isn't exactly a high upside player. With the exception of one or two excellent starts while the Warriors were tanking hard, his rookie year was rather subpar -- and his game isn't exactly brimming with potential. He's a bit of an anemic rebounder, not a particularly creative passer, and extremely bad at keeping his man in front of him. At least so far. Perhaps most importantly, though, for a small guard? He emphatically doesn't have a three point shot. That's kind of important in the modern league, you know. Worth noting, though, the absence of Jenkins' three is a pretty strange, wrinkle to his game because last season he was one of the most prolific (and effective) shooters from the 16-23 foot range.

Really. He shot 46% from that range on 3.1 range shots per game -- as a percentage of his offense, Jenkins took more of his shots from that range than anyone else in the league, and did that on one of the better percentages in the league. The only players with a better percentage on that distance on at least three shots per game? Stephen Curry (59% from 16-23, 3.8 per game), Dirk Nowitzki (50%, 5.8), Brandon Bass (48%, 5.1), Kevin Garnett (48%, 6.0), Jason Smith (48%, 4.7), and Tim Duncan (47%, 4.2). That's the full list. It's true that the 16-23 foot jumper is one of the least efficient shots in the league, but it's also true that even the most efficient of offenses is going to need to take them eventually. A scantly guarded 40% long two is often a better decision than a sure turnover if you go for an inside pass or a heavily guarded long three point shot.

Players like Jenkins, then, serve a decent purpose in the league -- most defenses default to forcing long twos. By having players like Garnett, Duncan, Bass, Jenkins, or Curry, you make the unguarded long two a deadly shot and one the opposing team has to guard. This in turn allows the offense to game the spacing of the defense to some degree, which opens up more options inside and out. Ergo, a player like Jenkins -- while perhaps not a high upside player -- could be a very useful one. His per-36 averages are rather pedestrian -- 12-4-7 -- but with his unique shot distribution profile and his at least partially decent NBA size (6'3", 230 lbs), he looks like a rookie that can stick in the league a while. And not only that, he looks to be a player with a valuable role on a good team. So that's pretty excellent for Jenkins. Even if he's a fairy friend, whatever the hell that means.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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 time, we actually have two perfect scores! @Patrick_Hake and "w" from the comments. Very cool. Great job.

Adios, amigos.

In our first attempt at offbeat, on-location reporting, we have our valued correspondant Alex Arnon with boots-on-the-ground in Las Vegas to cover the Summer League. This is his coverage from his first day at the Las Vegas Summer League. Please see our Las Vegas introduction for more information.

Five days after games began in this year's incarnation of the Las Vegas Summer League, I’ve decided what kind of coverage I'm going to provide. I’ve been debating for days between various methods of writing about this event in my incessant internal monologue – but whenever I think about doing recaps, that old Kurt Vonnegut quote pops into my head. When Sports Illustrated tasked Vonnegut with writing about a racehorse which jumped over a fence, all he could bring himself to write was that “the horse jumped over the [expletive] fence.” All I can think about writing about the games is “the players dribbled continuously, shot frequently, played defense occasionally, and passed sporadically.” I'd never compare myself to Vonnegut in a million years, but why bother writing recaps when there’s so little for me to say and so many other great writers writing team-specific ones that can give readers much more breadth and insight than I? Instead, I’ll provide you with my unadulterated and perhaps somewhat self-indulgent experience of being in the stands as a so-called “media” member. So please, dear readers, come with me on our journey to the depths of the Cox Pavilion. Promise it's worth it?

• • •

As a resident of Las Vegas, I also happen to work here. It's a necessary evil, needed in order to fight back against the ever-increasing horde of bills that comes with growing into your very own full-fledged manchild shell of a responsible human being. Due to my unwavering obedience to The Man, I can only attend weekday Summer League games after 4PM, which is where we’ll begin our tale on the Friday of the Summer League’s first day. Enter me, nervous as all hell to be covering my first event – worried about not knowing what to do (or perhaps more importantly, where to go), worried about letting down Aaron (whose idea it was to send me on this journey and who inquired about getting me access in the first place), and worried about letting down Kevin Arnovitz (the ESPN TrueHoop editor who so very kindly brought this all together and coached me on what to do over the phone). So, here was the plan to alleviate the nervousness: after dropping my mom off from work (yes, I work in the same hotel as my mommy, deal with it), I’d drop off my dry cleaning, deposit my paycheck at the bank, and rendezvous with my girlfriend outside of my house at 4:45 in order to just spend this first Summer League day with a familiar face, figure everything out, and (most importantly) avoid embarrassment.

But, you know how it goes. The best laid plans of mice and men, right?

Upon arrival at the Thomas and Mack Center, my girlfriend bought her ticket at the main box office and I asked where people picked up their credentials. I was told that they were lying in wait at the Cox Pavilion box office. Simple enough, right? Well, er, no. Cue the two of us going the wrong and long route around the stadium and walking over 200 yards to find a box office which was originally 100 feet away. In front of us in line was an agent arguing with the staffer about a credential that was supposed to be waiting for him and wasn’t. Cue me getting nervous that this exact situation was about to happen to me. When the agent finally got tired of arguing and went to make a phone call, I was instructed to present my ID to get my credential.

The good thing about growing up with a last name beginning with the letter A is that you can always point out your name on a list when signing in to things because your sign-in sheet is on the top. I began the process instilled in me as an elementary schooler and looked through the staffer’s list before he had the chance to -- “Adande, J.A.”, “Arnovitz, Kevin”, “Berger, Ken”. Wow, that’s a who’s who of NBA writers that are going to be in attendance here, I think to myself seconds before having to reevaluate my knowledge of the alphabet. Wait, doesn’t Arnon fall somewhere between Adande and Arnovitz? The staffer and I seemed to get the same idea at the same time as we glanced up from the sheet and met each other’s eyes with that unmistakable “oh, shit” look. You don’t know how hot the skin-under-your-skin can get until you’re standing in 105 degree weather trying to pick up a credential that doesn’t exist while your girlfriend giggles at your misfortune. As a new Southwest Airlines “Wanna Get Away?” commercial with me as the star began playing in my head, the staffer remembered that there was a late additions list and Alex Arnon just happened to be at the top of it. “Suck it, universe!” I think.

[“Wait, who the hell is Alex Arnon?” the universe responds.]

Upon making our way in, the first thing I notice is that everyone is so damn tall. Having been 6’3” for a few years now, I’ve learned to mentally classify people’s height into three distinct categories: short people, people around the same height as me, and freaks. A larger amount of people in the concourse fit into that third category than I’d ever seen in my life – combined. These people were all some sort of basketball player – either playing in the Summer League, networking with the various agents scattered about, or just dedicated students of the game. The next realization was that I was in the presence of full-fledged NBA players and legends. I saw Rick Fox walking to pick up some food in between bouts of broadcasting for NBA TV. When a 17-year-old asked him for his autograph and was told “not right now” his 50-something guardian told him to never embarrass him like that again as he slapped him upside the head with the type of hit just powerful enough to leave lesson without leaving a mark.

Being in a city without an NBA team, I’ve never had the chance to see these guys are in person. I was incredibly excited to see these guys in the flesh. It’s often very difficult to live so far away from your team and never be able to be considered a true fan, having never been to a game -- but the admiration and pain is still the same (being a Knicks fan, I’m still physically ill over the news of losing Jeremy Lin). Sure, living in Vegas gives everyone a cool “meeting a celebrity” cocktail party story (my claim to fame being that Floyd Mayweather complete with his Louis Vuitton backpack almost certainly stuffed with cash once used me as a battering ram to help him get through a large crowd at The Mirage unnoticed when we happened to be leaving it at the same time) but I’d never been in the same general area as more than a few NBA players at one time. To be surrounded by them just hanging out is something I recommend to everyone; it’s worth the price of admission to just be able to experience that feeling.

But enough about my schoolboy admiration, it’s time to continue this here tale. We took our seats at halftime of the penultimate game of the night – Warriors/Lakers. The Warriors impressed as they blew out the depleted Lakers LVSL squad, which bored my girlfriend as her most hated player in the world, one Mr. Kobe Bryant, wasn’t in attendance and led her to pepper me with whatever question she’d think of during the game. I admittedly was paying more attention to the game than to her until she asked if black people were victims of the Holocaust. The third string Warriors team had lost my attention by this point so I pondered her question – logically, it makes sense if they were attempting to get rid of everyone who wasn’t “master race” material, right? But the most we’d ever learned of black people during World War 2 was of the Tuskegee Airmen and their valiant heroics, nothing of the victims. Unfortunately, this question remained unanswered as she broke away from the discussion when she complimented the neon yellow purse of the gorgeous blonde who had just sat next to us midway through the fourth quarter.

As the fourth quarter of the blowout wound down, my attention turned to watching the crowd. Kyrie Irving was sitting courtside taking in the game with a smile on his face, not knowing that he’d break his hand no less than 15 hours later. David Lee and Jarrett Jack were also sitting courtside enjoying the game, prompting my girlfriend to twist the knife that David Lee left in my heart upon leaving the Knicks even further by declaring him the most attractive man in the gym. Jimmer Fredette and DeMarcus Cousins were another duo chatting it up and having the time of their lives. Wait, Jimmer and DeMarcus hanging out together? Laughing it up? Could you imagine a weirder combination of best friends? If there’s one thing I’d like to see before I die it’s a Jimmer/DeMarcus reality show. At this moment there was nothing else going through my head but desperate pleas to the universe begging it to let this happen - “It could be like a buddy cop comedy! Or a dating show where they have to compete and court a girl! Maybe even something like Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory where they hang out and do whatever they want! Please, universe, just make this happen!” I thought.

[“No, seriously, who the hell are you?” the universe replied.]

Before I knew it, the Warriors game was over and the Kings and Bobcats took the court to Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Ni**gas in Paris”. If you’re familiar with the song then you know how it’s one of those “Rocky” songs – much in the way that watching Rocky makes you think you can conquer anyone in the world in the boxing ring, listening to this song makes you feel the same way but about anything whatsoever, not just fighting. The energy in the building perked up considerably thanks to a combination of this song and the realization that the #2 and #5 picks, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Thomas Robinson, were about to go head-to-head (with 2011 top-10 picks Kemba Walker, Jimmer Fredette, and Bismack Biyombo playing as well). The energy in the building was already creating a poor man’s play-off atmosphere. And then it happened. 2 Chainz’s song “No Lie” came on right after “Ni**as in Paris.”

I honestly don’t even know what happened after that. If you were to close your eyes in that moment you would’ve sworn it was game 7 of the NBA finals. Even the considerable amount of Mormon families with their beautiful blonde children who came just for Jimmer started going hammer and bobbing their heads and sayin’ “true” cause they ain’t never told no lie. If “Ni**as in Paris” is a Rocky song then playing “No Lie” loudly over a sound system in a small packed gym is a 48 hour long Jason Statham marathon song. It’s the musical equivalent of following Mike Tyson vs. Muhammad Ali with the ’96 Bulls vs. ’87 Lakers. Maybe I’m just saying this as a huge fan of trap music but if that musical combination was played in laboratories worldwide then cancer, AIDS, and Bieber Fever would all be things of the past.

Unfortunately, that moment had to end as moments are wont to do. There was a basketball game to be played and I had to keep my now completely zoned out girlfriend interested in what was going on lest she use her boredom to once again steal my attention from the game. And so I hatched a plan - keeping the David Lee “hotness” incident in mind I pointed out Jimmer Fredette to her and talked about how he’s a good little Mormon boy who’d never hurt a fly. Mission accomplished. It was almost too easy, really. Everything was going well – she was watching Jimmer as I was watching Thomas Robinson and MKG use those non-stop motors of theirs to impress all the hoopheads in the gym. The girl whose purse my girlfriend complimented earlier was rooting for Jimmer just as hard as my girlfriend was. Like I said, everything was going well. Until my plan backfired.

You see, I have this tremendous fear of annoying people in public or being a bother to them. I like to either be as nice as possible to them or be completely unforgettable so as to not ruin their experience. It’s second only to my fear of accidentally being racist. They’re probably two fears created only out of my nauseatingly cliché liberal white guilt but they are still legitimate fears to me and my girlfriend both knows this and loves to exploit it at any given opportunity. And so it came, her loudly professing her undying love for Mr. Fredette – “Jimmer is SO hot, oh my God.” ... “I wanna become Mormon because their God is obviously the real one if he makes guys who look like that.” ... “I totally wanna take his cute little Mormon innocence.” ... “Do you think Jimmer is down with the whole sister wives thing? Usually I’d never share a guy but for him I don’t even care, I’d be one of his sister wives any day.” On and on it continued for the better part of the first two quarters as I tried my best to drown her out. She delighted in watching me squirm thanks to her talking about his chiseled jaw to no one in particular but the general 10 foot radius around us.

I thought back to my original plan. I’d gotten my credential, located press row, found the locker rooms, and generally gotten my bearings. I’d even managed to avoid getting embarrassed thus far. Sure, her Jimmermania was slightly embarrassing but it’s nothing I couldn’t handle after getting acclimated to her many attempts to embarrass me during our almost year-long relationship. It was halftime and I was proud of myself for getting through the day successfully. I was having a great time surrounded by hoopheads who knew the game of basketball inside-and-out and relished in knowing every fact about it, so much so that the guys sitting behind us were having an argument about who won the Naismith college player of the year for 2011, Kemba Walker or Jimmer Fredette. Their argument was quickly broken up by the blonde next to us who had been cheering for Jimmer, “It was definitely Jimmer, trust me.” The guys were obviously impressed with her knowledge as they teased her by asking how she knew so much about him. “Well, it’s easy for me, considering how I’m his wife,” she said as she flashed her enormous ring and gave the look of death to my girlfriend. You know, the same girlfriend who had minutes earlier wanted to take her husband’s Mormon innocence and become one of his sister wives.

Whoops.

What do you even do in that situation? Well, if our actions are the true representation of things, apparently it’s "pretend to go to the concession stand for a quick halftime snack and instead vacate the building to get home as quickly as possible out of pure, unbridled embarrassment." My girlfriend had won bigger than she had ever won before in the public embarrassment game (Mrs. Fredette, if you happen to be reading this, we both offer you our sincerest apologies). Even she was speechless for most of the car ride home, only breaking the silence to laugh at ourselves. I was so close to having a flawless Summer League debut only to have it all come crashing down with a single sentence. And you know what? I wouldn’t change it for the world. Where else could you possibly experience all of this NBA tomfoolery in one place?

So, like I said, the best laid plans of mice and men, right? But I learned something that night. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. But sometimes, just sometimes, the best laid plans can also go alright. They really, really can.

The second of several dispatches comes later this week.

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. This morning's three: Shawne Williams, Danny Green, DeAndre Jordan.

• • •

Follow Shawne Williams on twitter at @ShawneWill3.

Shawne Williams is a relatively limited player. Many would say that today's post is entirely composed of limited players -- I'd say they're right, but of today's triad, Williams is certainly the most limited. Which actually would be met with bemused chuckles and disbelief if you'd asked someone this having only their pre-NBA career to assess them on. Forgotten by many, Shawne Williams was actually one of the premier talents in the 2006 draft -- he was easily the most highly-touted prospect around, and had he declared in 2005, he'd probably have gone sooner. His senior year of high school was spent in a North Carolina prep school -- they went 40-0 behind nightly dramatics from Williams, and entering his first and only year of college, he was rated the 6th best SF prospect in the nation. The future looked bright for the young man out of Memphis.

But you know what they say. You can never quite escape your roots -- you can only hope to whet the demons and come to peace with them before they consume you. In Williams' case, it appears he's narrowly gotten to that point with them -- but who knows what the future holds. I refer to his birthplace, a rough neighborhood in Memphis replete with (as the New York Times put it) drug dealers, prostitutes, and trouble on every corner. Williams has tried to get past it, to limited success up til 2010 -- his early career with the Indiana Pacers was derailed completely after several arrests. It's worth noting that few of them were distinctly the fault of Williams -- he was arrested for having a person in his car with marijuana and weapons, arrested for harboring a murder suspect, ticketed for illegally tinted windows and seatbelt violations. All in the span of a year after his drafting, putting a once-promising NBA career on hold. Things haven't quite been the same since. He started to erase the legal trouble that dogged him in some solid play for the 2011 Knicks, but he wasn't returned to the Knicks and has been a bit of a vagabond ever since. He's a free agent, now.

His services aren't particularly noteworthy -- his once formidable skillset has waned as he's reached his mid-20s, partially because he (by his own admission) goofed off a bit when he came into the league. In 2011, he was an excellent three point shooter and an overall solid bench player. But last season the Nets tried to push him into a bigger role and he put up an anemic season at best, shooting under 30% from three, and setting career lows for all of his rebound/assist/usage percentages. He's never been a fantastic defender, so he's a good case of "what you see is what you get" -- from what he showed last season, it certainly doesn't look like teams will be getting much from him any time in the near future.

While Williams has been arrested and dealt with much more legal trouble than most players I've covered so far, I think I agree with many of my Knicks fan friends when I wonder why exactly he -- of all people -- is the one with the bad reputation. Not Jason Kidd, a confirmed and convicted wife-beater with a huge alcohol problem. Not Jordan Hill, battling abuse accusations of his own. Not Neal, Kobe, Andersen -- so many NBA players have a litany of run-ins with the law that are actually related to things they themselves did. You can't help but feel some element of sympathy for Williams, whose problems seem related less to a fundamental flaw in Williams' own moral code and more to where he came from. If you come from a place filled to the brim with unsavory types and a bad environment, it's very hard to cut off the hangers-on when you make it big. Williams has figured this out, seemingly, and has reportedly tried to cut ties with many of the people who led him astray. But no matter how many ties he cuts and replaces with better people, that never really erases his roots, it simply patches them over. It's just an empty substitute for a healthy, full upbringing. And for that I hope that Williams latches on to a team and doesn't let go -- he deserves another shot to get past his demons, and make good on the potential we all saw in him almost 7 years ago.

• • •

Follow Danny Green on twitter at @DGreen_14.

It's a testament to how insistent Matt Moore can be that the first thing I think of when I think about Danny Green is no longer how much I like him but how much Moore likes using their love for Green to troll Spurs fans. Let's start with the truth: Danny Green didn't have a great conference finals. That kind of goes without saying. Even before the OKC series, Moore was notably making fun of Spurs fans who were saying Green was a really good player. "Just watch," he said, "OKC's athleticism will destroy him and he is a one-dimensional player who will collapse in a bad situation." Spurs fans got annoyed, tried to ignore him, kept thinking the Spurs were a good team. The conference finals happened, Green had the worst of all possible series, and Moore spent the next month basically bringing up Danny Green any time a Spurs fan said anything to him. So, when I think of Danny Green, the first thing that tends to come to mind is that blasted Grizzlies press conference icon, a mention of any random Spurs fan, and a message of "DANNY GREEN DANNY GREEN DANNY GREEN." This is my curse.

It really is a curse, too. Because Green is a very useful, engaging player. One dimensional isn't exactly how I'd care to describe him -- although he certainly has a game predicated on a single skill, that being his command of the three point shot, he has other ways to impact a game. At least after last year. When his three point shot wasn't working effectively before his quantum leap forward in development this season, Green was a limited and unremarkable player. After building up the skill to use his three point shot on the NBA level, though? After working around the clock to break into the NBA after an extremely poor start to his career, the Spurs system and his work ethic helped him blossom into a viable NBA starter. It's not often that a player goes through two years and several teams playing relatively shiftless ball and suddenly be offered the chance to start for one of the best teams in the league, and a title contender. But Green was offered just that, and he acquitted himself extremely well.

And before you scoff and call him a starter-in-name-only, that's not really true -- while he certainly wasn't the Spurs' best shooting guard (Manu, of course), Green was extremely important to Pop's rotation, and was given quite a lot of leeway from Pop to make mistakes and feel out his own game. I wouldn't say he's an excellent defender -- the numbers don't stack up well for him, and he has trouble staying with his man on PnR switches and getting lost when his man spots up. But offensively, the three point shooting really isn't the sum total of Green's game. He's an excellent ballhandler, not necessarily at finding open guys but at acting as the middle-step pivot in a complex play. Very few turnovers for Green. He's also solid as a team rebounder, which helps him shift over and play the three in small-ball lineups the Spurs turn to at times to spell Duncan for a bit. Green is quite cerebral, and if he hadn't had the ability to learn the Spurs' complex playbook on the fly, there's no way Popovich would've given him the chance to begin with.

His biggest accomplishment does center around his three point shooting, though. Working with Chip Engelland, the Spurs' shooting coach, Green was able to take a shot that he canned consistently in college and return to the precepts that made him (formerly) so successful with it. While he'd been a relatively unremarkable NBA-level shooter before, Green never quite lost confidence in the shot and kept on working with it -- combined with a team focused on keeping him confident and helping him develop into an NBA-starting caliber player, it brought back the three point assassin who was so vital to UNC's four contending teams during Green's years. Which I remember well -- I was at Duke for two of them, you know. He was good. Also, no, I don't let my alma mater let me really devolve into hate for Green. One secret regarding my life? I didn't like Duke University all that much at all, and I've dated a girl from UNC for two years. Dating someone from your rival school -- combined with a general antipathy for your school in the first place -- does have a tendency to iron out any outstanding visceral hatred the school has.

As soon as Green left the Tar Heels, I was hoping he'd succeed -- my friends at Carolina always said he was a great guy and an awesome person. To see him do so well on the Spurs is one of my favorite success stories in the league. All things considered? I really like Danny Green. And while it's my hope he develops a bit more and gets a bit better at fighting through defenses like that the Thunder used during the Western Conference Finals, even if he doesn't, he's an excellent player and a starter for a contending team. Look at what he's accomplished and the meteoric rise he's had from the NBA's scrap heap to the starting lineup of one of the most entertaining teams in history. Tell it to me straight. What's there to hate?

• • •

Follow DeAndre Jordan on twitter at @deandrejordan.

There's this pernicious ongoing myth in the NBA that simply because we aren't existing in levels of big men saturation we had in the 1990s, the center position is somehow completely lacking depth and completely devoid of talent. This myth in turn leads teams to overpay for every center in the known universe, under the guiding notion that we're somehow lacking in top-shelf talent from that position. The problem with this? It's completely bollocks. There are a ton of great centers in the NBA right now, enough so that I could name 15 quality starting centers without opening a single list. In fact, I'll do it right now. We have our four young superstar-quality centers -- Dwight Howard, Andrew Bynum, Roy Hibbert, Marc Gasol. We have the formerly-forward centers, who late in their career have switched back to center to much success -- Tim Duncan, Pau Gasol, and Kevin Garnett. Then we have the specialists. Centers who are elite on one end of the court and at the very least serviceable on the other. This typing includes Marcin Gortat, Joakim Noah, Anderson Varejao, Nikola Pekovic, Omer Asik, Al Jefferson, and Andrew Bogut. That's fifteen right there, and I named each of them completely off the top of my head! This isn't even counting players who could someday crack that list but haven't quite made it yet -- your Brook Lopez-types, Jonas Valanciunas talents, DeMarcus Cousins workhorses, Anthony Davis stars (if he puts on weight!). And, you know. Your DeAndre Jordans.

The idea that the NBA is somehow completely devoid of centers -- thus necessitating that teams wildly overpay every single one of them -- has never made all that much sense to me. But it makes even less sense right now, as the NBA is going through something of a renaissance from the center position. Really. Don't laugh, it's true -- just because there aren't two or three hyper-dominant generation-defining centers doesn't mean the position isn't in a really solid place. I just named off a full twenty solid centers -- that's enough for every single playoff team to have a very good starting center, and then for four teams to make the lottery around a solid center. There aren't a ton of times in NBA history when you can actually say there's this many wholly impressive prospects at the center position. When the Clippers announced Jordan's contract, the general consensus was to sigh, nod, and say it made sense. Why? Seriously -- why? The Rockets just snagged Omer Asik, a defensive cornerstone who's about as useful on offense as Jordan, for almost three million less a year. You have one or two solid game-changing centers coming into the trading market every year or so. Why does it make sense to give DeAndre Jordan a bad contract that can be hand-waved away by a totally untrue cliche regarding the NBA's depth at center?

As for Jordan himself, it's not all bad. I'm not a huge fan of his game, but he has some limited defensive potential if he stops trying to block every shot in the history of the human race and focuses more on the fundamentals of team defense -- guarding the pick and roll, staying mobile without losing position, and keeping himself out of foul trouble by restraining himself from the more egregious goaltending/fouling opportunities. Offensively, he's slightly useful as a target for lobs, but against a big man who's smart enough to keep Jordan isolated outside of the paint (as with Tim Duncan in last year's 2nd round SAS-LAC series), Jordan's value on the offensive end is nil to none. His defense is actually more valuable than many think -- in particular, he's a very good defender in isolation on big men, and he's generally good at shutting down the post-up. The problem is that as a starting center it tends to be your role to anchor the entire defense, not just individually shut down a play or a single man. Hence why players like Joakim Noah and Anderson Varejao are extremely superior defenders to Jordan, even though Jordan is arguably better at defending his man in a one-on-one game. Still. Prepare to see millions of articles from Los Angeles bemoaning the death of the traditional center and the lack of big men in the league next time DeAndre Jordan disappoints. Just try to keep in mind that it's sort of a lie, all things considered.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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. Once again, a bunch of people with 1/3. See yesterday's comments. Again, I'll try to make today's easier.

I'm going to experiment with doing three players a day this week, with six players on Friday or Thursday. Exciting! See you tomorrow.

In our first attempt at offbeat, on-location reporting, we have our valued correspondant Alex Arnon with boots-on-the-ground in Las Vegas to cover the Summer League. This is his introduction to the coverage. The second comes tomorrow.

I never thought this would happen to me. You never do, really. I’m having a mid-midlife crisis (or, well... a quarter-life crisis, I guess). Mentally I don’t feel a day over 16 – sometimes I don't even really act like it. But physically, measured in the number of times the Earth has circled the sun with my awkwardly proportioned body along for the ride, I've been onboard just shy of 22 years. I've reached the point in my life where, officially, the majority of the players coming into the league I love so dearly (even if it’s a sometimes unrequited love… THANKS A LOT, LOCKOUT) have been on this Earth for a shorter period of time than I have. They are, by all financial intents and purposes, more successful in life than I've been – they’re out there on the court doing what they were born to do while I'm sitting at home writing about their various on-court escapades. Hopefully sometime in the near future, I'll be able to write about their Ice Capades as well. But that's beside the point. The biggest difference isn’t how successful we are relative to each other but how obscenely different our worlds are.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what the world of an NBA player is currently like as I’m not of the vaunted 450 players who experience the ins and outs of being in an NBA roster and living the proverbial dream. A dream chased by so many, most of whom come tremendously short (present!) – but some of whom come just inches shy of living their dreams. The Las Vegas Summer League is exactly the place those players can see their first and perhaps only glimpse of NBA life. The players at the LVSL bridge the gap between the everyman and the ubermensch which is precisely what makes the LVSL is so interesting – this is their single greatest shot to go from whichever obscure league they play in to the big leagues, their livelihoods balancing on the tenuous seesaw we call fate. Half of the guys playing here are just trying to get onto a training camp roster at the beginning of the season to collect those juicy NBA paychecks. A quarter of them just want to get their name out there to get scouted by European teams. And the rest of them are those guys that were drafted high or already have a guaranteed NBA spot.

And so, being a resident of fabulous Las Vegas and an occasional writer here at The Gothic Ginobili, I’ll be covering the Las Vegas Summer League throughout its duration. The thing is, and don’t tell Aaron or other Alex this, I’m totally unqualified to be doing this. I’ve never covered an event like this, or any other event for that matter. But that’s what's going to make it fun right? I don’t know what you guys and gals are going to get from this whether it be coverage of the games, player interviews, what it’s like to attend an event like this from the “press” side of it, or what have you. The only thing I do know is that the single thing I'd planned turned out to be totally impossible – I was hoping that Brandon Knight, point guard for the much maligned Detroit Pistons, would go supernova for one beautiful night so I could title a piece “The Dark Knight Rises.” Would've been great, but alas, the Pistons had the audacity to decline attending the event.

Here I go, quarter-life crisis and all, covering would-be and will-be NBA players. They'll be around the same age as me or (please God don’t remind me of this) younger. Hopefully you’ll get to see what it’s like covering these events, learn about players through some offbeat-but-insightful interviews, and be able to get a sense of a player’s incoming fortunes in the National Basketball Association through my coverage. Realistically, you’ll just get tired of Linsanity-esque puns (Terrell Stoglinsanity!) of every undrafted player’s name that does somewhat well. JaMychal Green does what Machadon’t! I’m Kevin Jonesin’ for more! This is Henry Sims City!

... Anyone? No? Alrighty then, I'll see you on the other side.

The first of several dispatches from the summer league comes tomorrow evening.

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. This morning's trio: Byron Mullens, Beno Udrih, Gerald Henderson.

• • •

Follow Byron Mullens on twitter by following @GoofyLookingDude and waiting for him to begin existing.

Want to know how bad of a season it was for fans of the Charlotte Bobcats? Byron Mullens -- the oft-maligned draft 'mistake' from Sam Presti in 2009 -- breaking out for several months of double digit scoring on inefficient percentages made up one of the biggest positive surprises of the 2012 season for the squad. Really. He was one of Rich Cho's first acquisitions, and honestly, he was a pretty decent success story for the Bobcats in a season without any. The Bobcats traded a 2013 2nd round pick for Mullens, which sounds bad until you realize that the Bobcats do need to at least make some attempt at reaching the salary floor and the 32nd pick isn't a place where you tend to get players all THAT much better than Mullens in the first place.

It was a somewhat savvy move on Rich Cho's part, getting an underrated asset without really giving up much of value. So that's good. Of course, when I say "underrated" asset, I'm being a bit kind. Mullens isn't THAT great -- he's a soft-shooting center who should probably stop shooting. Last season, he ended up with an overall field goal percentage of 42% despite shooting a somewhat decent percentage at the rim -- 64%, to be exact. He's got a reputation as a solid midrange shooter for a big man, but that's mostly based on form rather than results. He takes a ton of shots from that range, far more than he should -- he's first overall among centers who played 20+ MPG this season in percentage of shots taken from the 16-23 foot range. And it's not by a low mark, either. Examine the following table.

To summarize this table -- Byron Mullens took 46% of his shots from 16-23 feet, which is beyond insane -- shots from that range make up 11% more of Byron's shots, distributionally, than the #2 center who played > 20 MPG, Marcus Camby. This is despite the fact that his field goal percentage from that range, 35%, was 26th overall among the 39 centers who played greater than 20 minutes per game. That's a story of horrible, terrible, no-good very-bad shot selection. Beyond that, his story on offense is essentially a broad picture of varied inefficiency. Want a center who ranks in the bottom five in shooting percentage from any range from 3-15 feet, and 26th overall from 15-23 feet besides? Byron's your guy. This isn't to say he doesn't have a few skills, though -- he's a passable finisher at the rim, he's an improving rebounder, and he's got some serious NBA size. With a coach who's better at getting Mullens to cease the awful shot selection and a mentor to teach him how to defend NBA bigs and stay engaged on the defensive end, he could someday be a relatively decent backup center.

That's about all most teams can muster out of those early second round picks, which makes me think that Cho made a pretty good pickup for a team that's relatively far from contending in the first place. Basically covers every aspect of his game I wanted to look at, but one last thing. Is there a guy in the league as goofy looking as Mullens? A single one? Look at this man. Someone needs to inform him of three things. First, Dragonball Z eyebrows are not actually things normal people strive for. Second, that isn't an afro and you aren't fooling anybody. Third, invest in a razor. Invest in thirty razors. Buy the Gilette corporation. I don't care. Whatever it takes to get that... whatever it is off your face, man. I just... I can't.... what.

• • •

Follow Beno Udrih on twitter at @JustinBieber.

Beno Udrih is one of those players who I was referring to in the Donald Sloan capsule. In it, I mentioned that I liked that Sloan was showing a willingness from NBA teams to start using the D-League to look for players to back up your team's superstar, rather than taking "crusty veteran #64,231" from the pile of expiring or over-long contracts. No particular offense meant for Udrih, but he's exactly the kind of player I'm talking about. He's a nice guy and a serviceable backup, certainly. His per-36 numbers -- 11-8-3 -- are exactly the sort of production you want from a backup point. Some points, some rebounds, but a decent assist rate and a good chemistry guy for the bench. Doesn't make it any less true that any number of D-League players could do exactly what Udrih does for a team, and do it for less than the insane $5-7 million a year he's done it for over the duration of his last 5-year contract. He'll be making $7 million dollars this year for his decidedly backup-level point guard talents, this season. Pretty absurd, no matter how nice of a guy he is.

The main reason I wanted to talk about Udrih? Sure, there's some of the usual trivia about him. The number 19 apparently was chosen because his dad was born on the 19th of some month. He's one of the many athletes who use a portion of their salary to buy tickets for underprivileged kids. He's left handed. He's from Slovenia. But none of this gets to the heart of Beno's story. The heart of it is... he has no heart. Nor a reflection. This is because he is a vampire. This may surprise most people, especially his family. But it's true. Beno Udrih is a vampire, and in the estimation of one Gregg Popovich, he is a failure at being even that! Pop is a bit over-critical, as he has managed to make over $30,000,000 in his NBA career and still has next season's $7,000,000 contract looming. But evidently, he is a failure at being a vampire. Which is sad. I hope that Brandon Jennings gets him some Underarmor-brand extension fangs the next time he needs to try and feed -- dude's gotta eat, and it's admittedly a little embarrassing that he can't snag a little dog. I mean, man. Seriously?

• • •

_Follow Gerald Henderson on twitter __@GhJr09.___

Have you ever watched games from the era before the three point line came into effect, or games from the 3-4 years afterwards before Mark Price and Steve Kerr types showed that the three could be a very effective wrinkle in a good offense? If not, I highly suggest you do. I'd start with this 1969 classic -- it's the fourth quarter of Russell's final game, and it's really fun. Decent quality, too. Anyway, the point isn't just to go on a meaningless tangent -- this is pretty relevant to Gerald Henderson. I don't think there's a single player today that "plays old" in quite the way Gerald does. I don't mean that as a detraction or a compliment -- I mean it as a statement. Gerald Henderson's game is old school, and if you watch some footage from previous eras, you'll see exactly what I mean. Before the three point line, the game was significantly more compressed. Players nowadays camp out behind the three point line, creating a separation between spot up shooters and their defenders.

Back in that era, though, players who were trying to shoot spot-up shots would get in as close as they possibly could, which made the game play in a distinctly smaller area than the modern game. This in turn led to offensive sets having an almost football-ish quality to them, or a cellular component -- the ball was the nucleus and the players gravitated around it, covering close-up players and defense being more focused on trying to cut off passing lanes and block at-rim shots. It wasn't necessarily a worse game, though I for one greatly appreciate the focus on offensive strategies that has permeated the modern league. But it was different. And, to bring this back to our player, Gerald Henderson basically still plays like he's in that era. Maybe not the pre three-point era -- he does take about one per game -- but in the 5-7 years before the three point ball became a strategic mainstay in the offenses of the league's best coaches? There were hundreds of players like Gerald, who would take a three every game or so and take more when they were hot, but tended away from the shot for comfort.

While Gerald is more athletic than most of those players, he also plays defense in a similar way -- he focuses less on help defense and more on distinctly staying close to his man and sticking to him. Especially fighting through screens, which is one of the more effective ways Gerald uses his athleticism in the big leagues. I'm of the opinion that he's a better defender than most of the numbers show -- while his overall defensive PPP (per Synergy) is rather high (0.87 PPP -- 257th in the league) I feel like the Bobcats' poor defenders at every other position had an effect on Henderson's synergy numbers. There is some evidence of that effect in isolated incidents -- in the case of the Celtics, every big man who shares more than 50% of their minutes with Kevin Garnett ends up having sparkling Synergy numbers, even if their Synergy numbers were awful in the seasons before and after. Whereas that's an example of a rising tide lifting all boats, Henderson's depressed numbers may be a sign of a lowered tide causing multiple shipwrecks and millions of dollars of property damage. (Seriously, have you SEEN the Bobcats' defense last year?!)

Beyond the three point shot, there are other aspects of Henderson's game that hearken back to another era. For one, he doesn't draw fouls with any regularity. He's averaged about four free throw attempts per 36 minutes over his career, and has been decently below average for shooting guards for the majority of his career -- there are marginally more free throws in today's game, and as a guy who isn't a huge fan of free throws on an aesthetic perspective, it's kind of nice to watch a guy who plays physical but doesn't tend to fall to the floor out of nowhere in search of a call that shouldn't come. Overall, I like Henderson. When I was at Duke I wasn't his biggest fan, at least not until my roommate played him in a pickup game and told me about how nice he apparently was. I never did get a chance to meet him, but the more people I talked to the more people said that he was actually one of the nicest people on the team. So, yeah. Out of the Duke guys in the NBA, Henderson's definitely one of my favorites. There was Hondo, there was Rondo, there was Lando, there was Hendo. Maybe not in that order. Still. Keep on it, fella.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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 several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. This was a return to normal riddle form, as our top scorers were in yesterday's comments with a rousing 1/3 players (Gerald Henderson).

See you on Wednesday, 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. This morning's three: Chris Paul, Jordan Hill, and Jeff Teague.

• • •

Follow Chris Paul on twitter at @CP3.

We're going to do something a bit different today, for Chris Paul's capsule. This capsule went extremely long -- by design, of course. There are few blogs I respect and love more than Matt Moore's Hardwood Paroxysm, a site with seventeen thousand great writers that love the game and love to write. Knowing full well that many of these capsules were going to go extremely long, I worked out a deal with Matt that would allow me to throw an extremely long capsule his way every few weeks. Moore, being the awesome guy he is, was very excited about it and told me to go for it. This is the first result of this particular partnership -- Player Capsules Plus, in a shout-out to Basketball Reference's excellent Play Index Plus features. An elongated, extended capsule on a player whose game deserves it -- either philosophically, statistically, or because of a long-standing personal relationship I have with the player. Today, I'm going long from a philosophical perspective and taking on an outwardly strange comparison -- that of Chris Paul with objectivism, Ayn Rand, and Howard Roark.

And that's the thing. With Chris Paul, I get the sense that Paul's basketball genius exists on two planes. One is the brightest of American ideals -- a self-made genius with glorious talents whose abilities have been realized to their greatest extent and whose powers are limited only by those around him. The other is the lowest of American stereotypes -- the man whose work ends up taking credit for all success they've ever accomplished all the while finding a way to avoid all culpability for failure. Which is to say... Paul lends himself well to excuses. "His supporting cast has been terrible, therefore, he is not at fault for his poor playoff record. His teammates can't handle a pass, therefore, he is not at fault for being on an average to sub-par team. His genius must be constrained to the confines of a 24-second shot clock, therefore, he is not at fault for overdribbling or trying too hard to make the beautiful play." In the same way, Rand sets Roark up to be a man without failure. Every failure that Roark suffers isn't his own, it's a societal flaw or an inability of the people around Roark to appreciate him utterly. If Roark lets us down, it's because of those blasted conventions. Or the people around him. Or the inability of others to recognize his genius. If Paul lets us down, it's the same story -- outmoded convention, awful teammates, or inadequate appreciation.

FOR MORE ON CHRIS PAUL, SEE TODAY'S PLAYER CAPSULE + ON HARDWOOD PAROXYSM.

• • •

Follow Jordan Hill on twitter at @jordanchill43.

Athletic. Energetic. Frenetic. These are words that describe Hill's game. One of the things I really like about Hill is his activity defending the pick and roll. He gets in the face of players, and though he's not always excellent at cutting off the play, he does an excellent job getting in position and putting up a good contest. Late in the season, this was especially obvious when he'd moved on from the Houston Rockets and traded to the Los Angeles Lakers -- on defense of the pick and roll, Bynum and Gasol have as of late virtually no activity whatsoever, and Hill's enthusiasm and energy was a welcome respite from the lackadaisical way his counterparts approached the defensive assignment. On offense, he's similarly active, but similarly unpolished -- he finishes well at the rim but definitely isn't a low post scorer. If you dump the ball to him and ask him to initiate the offense, you're probably wasting a possession -- but if you set up an open midrange shot, or give him an open lane to dunk? Then he's solid. His athleticism shines in those situations. I'm not sure he's really going to ever have a great post-up game or be a 30-36 MPG type player, but his energy and pick and roll defense should keep him in the league for a long time. Especially if he gets minutes with Steve Nash.

Assuming the trial goes well, at least. On a personal level, recent events would indicate Hill isn't quite so praiseworthy, at least not by some accounts. He's currently battling felony assault charges, reportedly on suspicion of punching his ex, throwing her into a wall, and putting her in a chokehold. The allegations are just that, at the moment -- allegations -- but they lend a more troubled view to Hill's demeanor than the nobility of fighting back from tragedy that pieces like this excellent one grant. I tend to have the view that I don't tend to outright believe an allegation until it gets hashed out in court, but I do tend to lend more credence to allegations leveled specifically by the person who's been reportedly abused. It's hard to do something like that -- if they're willing to put themselves out there like that, it's unlikely they're completely making stuff up. If you know what I mean. It's possible, but unlikely. In any case, allegations like this one are more believable and sad to me than allegations like that leveled against Matt Barnes, whose wife openly denies the existence of and did not charge Barnes with anything.

But it really does need to be hashed out in court before any of this is more than hearsay, and for that reason, I'm really wondering what happens to him. Jail time would obviously put a serious damper on his NBA career, and it's doubtful he's going to be offered a multi-year contract until he either gets exonerated or gets off without jail time. Which is perfectly reasonable from a decisionmaker's perspective, but obviously not a good career situation for Hill. Assuming he's innocent, I hope he gets exonerated quickly -- he's currently an unrestricted free agent and contract negotiations with the Lakers have been (reportedly) not going very well. Assuming he's guilty, I honestly hope he goes to jail, because no man should treat their partner the way Hill reportedly did. In any event, his twitter handle IS "jordanchill", which is pretty decent. It isn't exactly a top 10 twitter name but it's a solid entry in the Basketball Jones pun gun segment. Good on ya', Jordan.

• • •

Follow Jeff Teague on twitter at @Teague0.

When I see Jeff Teague, I kind of see an evolutionary version of Ramon Sessions. At least in how he gets his offense. He's significantly more athletic than Sessions, which explains why Teague was a first round pick as opposed to a 56th pick like Sessions. Teague operates with a similar reliance to Sessions on his a developed driving game, getting open for shots primarily by driving aimlessly every other possession beforehand in hopes that eventually they can fake out defenders to take an open jump shot. He's a better three point shooter than Ramon, but also worse at getting to the rim -- he takes fewer shots than Ramon there, and he doesn't have quite as much command of the midrange jump shot as Sessions does. Not that Sessions is great at it either, but he's slightly better than Teague, and can be counted on to more reliably get a few more shots per game if you use him optimally. Defensively, Teague is better than Sessions, and provides solid (if not absolutely remarkable) defense from the point guard position. He did a fantastic job on Rose in last year's ATL-CHI series, and I can't say enough about how far he's developed in using his raw athleticism on defense ever since he came into the league.

Teague is less of a pure point, though, and is significantly worse at passing and setting up his teammates -- there's a sense of precision in some of Ramon's passes that's absent in virtually all of Teague's, and a sense that Teague doesn't totally have a plan when he puts the ball on the floor. Sessions has been a pretty solid setup man since he stepped foot in the league. Teague hasn't, and has never shown any particular proficiency at it. And in fact, on a per-minute basis, he's actually gotten worse over his three years -- from 6.1 per 36 minutes his rookie year to 5.4 per 36 minutes last year. Significantly more minutes, so the raw totals look nicer, but it's hard to make a case he's really improved as a passer. We're beginning to reach "what you see is what you get" levels with Teague, as we have with Sessions. We know now that Ramon Sessions is a guy that gives you about 15 points per game, a massive gob of assists, and next-to-nothing on defense. That's what we've seen, and it's what his teams get. Teague too has reached some consensus about his game -- some decent scoring production, very little passing acumen in a traditional point guard sense, and some solid defense.

It's not that he can't be more, necessarily, it's that after three years of roughly the same per-minute totals, you can start to make assumptions about the player's development and broader game. Sometimes a player will wildly overachieve their per-minute averages after a few years of steady state production, but it's extraordinarily unlikely. And so, you reach that place with Teague -- he's not going to be one of the 10 best points in the league with passing as anemic as his. Nor is he going to be properly assessed due to his youth and the sense with Teague -- as with Ramon Sessions -- that he's a breakout or two away from being a top flight point guard. It'll be just as untrue as with Sessions, but the theory will persist. Teague's a great defender, a decent scorer, a poor passer. He's reached an age and a level of minutes played where it's unfair to really expect a quantum leap forward at this point. He's solid, reasonable, passable. But will he ever really be a star, or a starting point guard on a contending team? Good question. His 2011 performance against the Bulls indicates he could be, if every player around him is clicking and making up for his lack of passing acumen. A tall order, but if he stays on the same team as Josh Smith and Al Horford, he'll be just fine.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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 several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. We finally had a few 3/3 guesses, for this batch. Nudirtybastard from the comments got all three right, as did our very own Alex Arnon! And before you accuse him of tampering -- nobody on-staff but Alex and I have any access to the list. He was just as clueless as the rest of the world!

See you later, when I'm off my plane. (Yes, the capsules will be late today -- the next batch will come around 7-8, eastern time. This is because I'm going to be on a plane all day, without Wifi. It's a rough life, for capsule readers!)

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. This afternoon's trio: Brandon Knight, Donald Sloan, and J.J. Hickson.

• • •

Follow Brandon Knight on twitter at @BrandonKnight12.

All things considered, Knight hasn't been exactly what you'd expect out of a lottery pick. There were some promising aspects to his game, no doubt -- his 38% from three point range was solid, and his rebounding was relatively good for a lead guard. And he shot above 40% in his rookie season, something that took Brandon Jennings three years to do! He is a Calipari product, though, and as of late, we tend to expect big things from them. After all -- Rose, Wall, Evans -- all of them came from Coach Cal's tender tentacles. Expectations were high for Knight. It's worth noting that just because Calipari recruits excellent NBA talent doesn't necessarily mean he's developed them -- none of the players aforementioned really improved much from high school to the pros (with the possible exception of Rose's passing game, which did improve a bit at Memphis). Which isn't a knock on Calipari, actually. In some respects, the worst thing NCAA coaches can do to an NBA player is teach him bad habits and create system-reliant players. Just look at Jim Boeheim.

Oh, sure. Boeheim's a great college coach. I won't refute that. He's led the team to decently deep runs and high seeds on an almost yearly basis and he's put together a system where most players look reasonably competent. The problem is they barely ever pan out in the NBA -- while Boeheim is famous for teaching players the Syracuse zone, he's also famous for essentially making sure that it's all his players learn. Syracuse players tend to get to the NBA completely unprepared for next-level ball, and it shows. In 30 years of NCAA title contention (in which Boeheim has won 890 NCAA games, gone to four Final Fours, and has made 28 NCAA Tournaments in his coaching tenure) Syracuse has produced a grand total of three quality NBA players, out of 36 drafted prospects. No major program in college basketball history (including noted poorly-translating schools like Duke) has a ratio as bad as that. I won't belabor the point -- go read this excellent diatribe on the subject.

Jim Boeheim -- excellent college coach that he is -- is terrible at preparing his players for the NBA and it's hard to argue it. The point isn't about him, though, it's about Calipari. Many people say that Coach Cal doesn't prepare his players for the NBA. I suppose I'd partly agree -- you don't get the sense Calipari is an excellent basketball mind who's teaching his players how to break barriers when they get to the next level. On the other hand? He also doesn't screw them up. He doesn't teach them to rely on a player friendly 2-3 zone, or teach them to act inside a rigid system in the way Duke's Krzyzewski does. He gives them freedom to make their own mistakes and generally doesn't impact their development in a negative way. In some cases, inaction is significantly better than overreacting and ruining a young man's game. All that said, this hasn't helped Knight one bit. He's exactly the same as he was in college in the NBA -- inefficient, poor at passing, and poor on defense. But alas.

In the case of Knight, I think his issues are two-fold. First, while he's an athletic marvel, he's relatively lacking in size -- he's shorter and only slightly heavier than I am. Second, unlike Wall or Rose, he doesn't really have the ability to flip a switch and function as a pure passer. He doesn't have the passing creativity to really run plays and develop the offense. It seemed this year that most of Knight's passes were a result of him getting lost on offense, glancing aimlessly around, and randomly throwing the ball to a perimeter shooter with the expectation they'd put up a rushed two. It went in a few times a game -- about three -- but lord, it just never seemed like an actual play, you know? And then there's the Monroe issue -- despite Monroe being by far Detroit's best player, Monroe only accounted for 43 of Knight's 251 assists. This wasn't really a problem endemic to Monroe -- as I described in Monroe's capsule, basically everyone on the Pistons became experts at freezing their star out this season.

To improve, Knight absolutely needs to improve his shooting. Perhaps more importantly, if he wants to get minutes, Knight is going to have to be able to milk a two-man game with Greg Monroe. If he can't do either, it's quite likely Knight gets shipped out at some point, and not happily. I don't really want to see Knight left a castaway floating adrift in a league with no place for a player like him. But all that said, he's a poor shooting shoot-first guard who never developed a particularly effective two-man game with his team's best player. Yes, Virginia, that's a problem. Here's hoping next year he comes back strong -- reports seem to indicate he's putting the work in, so we'll have to wait and see if Knight can make good on our now significantly more reasonable expectations. He's not going to be a Rose, a Wall, or an Evans -- we know that now, and perhaps with our lessened expectations Knight can finally thrive.

• • •

Follow Donald Sloan on twitter at @dsloan15.

Most people probably aren't hyper-aware of Mr. Sloan. I am, because I'm a Cavs fan. All things considered? I don't mind Sloan. I don't like him as much as many friends, for a few reasons. First, I'm not sure he's really a passing point guard in the NBA, nor am I sure he's really a shooting point guard in the NBA. "But wait!" you say. "That eliminates all possibilities!" Well... okay, sort of, it does. He's not the world's best defender, yet, either, which brings you down to wondering if he's a next-level Ramon Sessions. I don't mind Ramon, which is why I like Sloan. I think he can be a plus rebounder from the guard, and he has a bit more NBA size than Knight -- he's similarly too short to play the NBA wing, but he's stocky and VERY strong. His passing is something of a work-in-progress, but when on the court he seemed roughly dependable for 2 or 3 dimes, a few nice drives, perhaps a few layup opportunities. His strength also helps him in a lot of little ways -- he sets great screens, doesn't shy from contact, and has the potential to be a plus physical defender if he works his game enough.

The other real reason I don't mind Sloan is that I love what he represents. As a person, Sloan seems to be absolutely awesome -- he retweets random fans and enemies, both in support and rallying against him. He's a former boxer of some regard, and like David West, he's really good at it. So, he's tough. He's a D-League crossover -- he was a 24-year-old rookie last season coming off a 58 game D-League career with the Reno Bighorns and the Erie Bayhawks. Sloan's move to the NBA doesn't just represent a personal triumph for the former boxer, it represents a triumph of a teams finally taking chances on D-League standouts instead of simply signing "crusty free agent veteran guard #226342" to an overly large backup deal. Sloan didn't produce a massive amount of value this season, but there are a lot of ways Sloan looks set up to improve upon his rookie year -- his improving defense, learning when not to shoot, getting a bit better about the turnovers, et cetera. Also, he'd be backing up a bonafide superstar in Kyrie Irving, which certainly takes some pressure off. Teams can (and in my opinion, SHOULD) take chances on promising D-League guys. Sloan represents an example of that.

No, he's probably not going to be a starter in the NBA anytime soon. But can he be a solid backup for a player like Kyrie Irving? Certainly. And he'll certainly bring your team more potential value than signing a cryptkeeper-aged former star looking for one last shot at glory, like an Iverson or a Baron Davis. I like the Sloan signing a lot -- it represents NBA GMs finally starting to utilize the D-League as an actual wealth of talent rather than simply a place for angry coaches to send lottery picks as punishment or a place to let lottery picks develop. The D-League CAN be both of those things, and it should be -- but it should also be considered a useful, effective place for teams to find cheap and promising young talent to use as backups on a good team. It really comes down to whether you think the NBA is better off filled with seasoned vets or giving younger bucks a chance. I err on the side of the youth, I suppose. So good on you, Sloan. I hope you make the Cavs next year.

• • •

Follow J.J. Hickson on twitter at... wait, his account has 2 followers, welp.

So, in any sports league, there are going to be some players you will irrationally dislike. Most of them will play for other teams -- for me, three of the best examples are Jason Terry, Eduardo Najera, and Reggie Evans. There's a very different type of distaste, though, and it comes from hating players who actually play for your own team. This is a more familial hatred. Instead of hating someone for beating your team, or for playing dirty against your guys, you are hating on someone because you feel they simply aren't as good as expected or are harming the other players on the team through their play. You hate them not because they're putting it all on the table against your team, but rather because they're taking things off the table. I don't think there's a single better example of this type of a fan-player relationship than how I feel with J.J. Hickson.

It's not like the expectations were fair, necessarily. He was awful defensively from day one, and he never really had much time to develop his game. For all Mike Brown's positive accomplishments with the Cavaliers, developing players was NEVER much of his strong suit, and beyond the defensive evolution of LeBron James' there really weren't all that many huge player developments over Brown's tenure. When a player came in to Brown's system, they weren't going to get better as players -- mostly just worse with age or with their flaws better covered by Brown's usually excellent defensive rotations. But the degree to which J.J. Hickson underwhelmed in his Cleveland tenure -- with special emphasis in last year's horror show -- is beyond pathetic. At least with Antawn Jamison you had the excuse of his age, and his relative efficiency, and his interesting finishing. At least with Anthony Parker you got a made three every now and again. At least with Ryan Hollins he's gone and I never have to think about his existence again. J.J. Hickson... ugh.

He just... he never lived up to even the most cursory of expectations. Hickson's shot selection and his defense were my biggest aggravations during his Cleveland tenure. The man NEVER figured out that he doesn't have a passable long-range jumper. EVER. Hickson has been an electric player playing under the rim for his entire tenure in the NBA -- not once in Cleveland did he take the advice of the coaching staff and try taking it inside. He'd simply camp out in the midrange, receive the ball, dribble into a defender and take a terrible jumper. That was his "thing." Another "thing" for Hickson was his anemic help defense, the main reason Mike Brown never gave him more playing time -- Hickson is absolutely one of the worst help defenders in the league, and he never really managed to turn his electric athleticism into anything other than some nice dunks and slightly-below-average offensive output from every area of the floor. And that defense. And the attitude issues, the primadonna tendencies, the support of LeBron James while LeBron's Heat were wiping the floor with his team in the much dramatized December game in 2010.

I know he's a skilled player -- few are as athletic as Hickson, and he's more innately good at rebounding than most would expect. His athleticism lends itself to images of him as a game-changing defensive PF, or at the very least, an effective stopgap off the bench. You got the sense watching him that he could've been (and still can be) so much more. And that's what aggravates me the most about Hickson. He's simply an underwhelming statement of what could have been. And when it's a player who the franchise essentially staked its hopes on and effectively made their premier selling point, post-LeBron? No, Virginia, that's not good. So, yes. He was decent in Portland. He was horrible in Sacramento. You don't really know what you're gonna get from J.J. Hickson. And as a Cavs fan, I'm only certain of one thing -- I'm glad he's not around to make me root for him on the Cavs. There are some men who like to watch the world burn. I think J.J. Hickson, in some ways, is like those men. So yeah. I wish him the best, but dear LORD am I glad I don't have to put up with him anymore.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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 several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. This morning's riddles were best answered by @sstewart1617, who got 2/3. We have yet to have anyone get 3/3, though I've made these three easier and you have an entire weekend to answer them. Come on, guys. You can do it! Here are riddles for Monday's first three.

See you next week.

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's going to be 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. This morning's three gentlemen: Luke Babbitt, Jason Richardson, and David West. More later.

• • •

Follow Luke Babbitt on twitter at some point in the distant future when he has one.

This particular player's lore of legends defies quick description. Some call his shot is heavenly in its brilliance, others mean and rueful of the western dream. (They're a jealous bunch, those others.) His defense is a whirling dervish of pain and misery, leaving other teams genuinely sobbing in the possession's wake as they bemoan the unfairness of such a man. Were Luke Babbitt a member of the Trojan militia, the War would've lasted but three hours -- Achilles and Agamemnon would cower before him, and Homer would've retired a poor man with not a penny to his name. His feats of athletic brilliance are impossible, improbable, imperceptibly quintessential. His jersey is the most-bought jersey in seventeen other solar systems. Every single Burl Ives song is actually about Babbitt's game -- but Babbitt didn't want to boast, so he didn't let Burl state it outright. Woe betides all who doubt the glory of Luke Babbitt.

... Ahem. Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't let my personal biases color these capsules, but on a capsule for a him, I couldn't help it. Not only do I like Babbitt, I'm also clincially addicted to Taco Bell. Don't hate -- as a vegetarian, it's the only fast food place I can actually order things from. I like Babbitt because the man clearly has a developed appreciation of the venue. And thus did I write an entire paragraph singing nonexistant praises -- the truth is out. Babbitt is not a fantastic player, nor a supremely useful one. You'd wish for more from the 16th pick in the draft. But at least he's making good on his one presumably NBA-level talent (his lockdown shooting), and at least he still has a lot of room to grow. He could develop into a Bonner type, or he could develop into a Meeks or Hayward type, with a far more versatile game. I can't say "the sky's the limit", because it certainly isn't, but the Blazers at least have someone interesting from that draft.

Which isn't to say they're much different from the picks around Babbitt -- in my estimation, picks 13-19 from the 2010 draft (including Babbitt: Ed Davis, Patrick Patterson, Larry Sanders, Kevin Seraphin, Eric Bledsoe, and Avery Bradley) have the potential to be starting caliber players in the NBA . Maybe not on fantastic teams, but starters. The 2010 draft had a relatively weak upper echelon, but the lower tier picks were actually very useful. Lot of depth. It was a pretty good draft to be a good team in the 13-19 range, all things considered. Babbitt is probably the worst of that group, but if he keeps shooting like he did to end last season and develops a few more wrinkles to his game, he's right there. Oh, also. He has the greatest highlight film of all time. So I guess there's that.

• • •

Follow Jason Richardson on twitter at @jrich23.

It's hard to get excited about Jason Richardson now, although it didn't use to be that way. Anyone remember the 2010 Suns? I hated watching Richardson during the 2nd round sweep of the Spurs, for obvious reasons, but he was an absolute revelation during the Suns playoff run. Just... really, really solid. He averaged 16-4-2-2 on 48-40-72 during the conference finals, though it felt like a lot more. He also had the last game of his career where he posted a game score (a linear extrapolation of Hollinger's PER metric) above 35 -- in the first round, when the Suns won against Portland in Portland behind Richardson's 42 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, and ZERO turnovers. Things have been pretty downhill since. In his first year with the Magic, Richardson was mostly pretty awful with a few good weeks interspersed to keep his fans hopeful. In his second year, he was abjectly awful -- the wheels sort of fell off, and he's been reduced to a place where he's nothing but salary fodder for any team to take on in a trade for Dwight Howard.

This isn't totally fair, mind you. He's still got the quickest shot release this side of Kyle Korver. While Van Gundy's slowdown offense is heavenly for some players (like Ryan Anderson) it can be absolutely hellish for a guy in the wrong situation. So, Jason Richardson. I originally thought that with his shot release and Dwight down low he'd be in a great situation. I turned out to be pretty wrong, because I underestimated how much of the poor guy's game is predicated on being able to run in transition and take shots before the defense sets -- in a halfcourt offense, without Steve Nash passing to him? Significantly less useful. His defense has always been a bit porous, too, so he doesn't even really have that to fall back on. And on the Magic, he's doubly useless because J.J. Redick should be getting the vast majority of his minutes. It's just a bad fit all-around, and made worse by the fact that the Magic signed him starter's money last offseason in a situation where it appeared not a single other team was prepared to make him a serious offer. Which makes sense, given that he was coming off an abysmal playoff appearance against the Hawks where he averaged 10-4 on 33% shooting in 30 worthless minutes per game. THIRTY-THREE PERCENT SHOOTING.

This isn't to say that Richardson couldn't potentially do a bit better in a more suitable system. In particular, I think he'd thrive in the running offense Kaleb Canales is trying to use in Portland, and he'd be a decent player in the Spurs' up-and-down system given the speed of his shot and his versatility as an offensive player. Unfortunately, with his contract situation, it's massively unlikely he'll join a club that can really effectively leverage his talents until the contract's almost up. By that point, Richardson is probably going to be pretty washed up. Which is a shame. It seems like just yesterday I was chilling in my summer apartment with my research internship, watching the 2010 Western Conference Finals and literally falling out of my chair when J-Rich made this impossibly clutch three to tie the game in Los Angeles. (Also, keep a close eye on his shot. Notice how quickly he gets it off? Isn't it kind of cool? No matter how much I practice my shot, I don't think I'm ever going to approach half that speed. The velocity of his shot is one of those little things that -- while somewhat functionally useless right now given his shooting woes -- I'll always appreciate as a basketball fan.)

• • •

Follow David West on twitter at @D_West30.

For my money, David West is the toughest guy in the NBA. He's no-nonsense, no-glamour, no-pizzazz. One of the most fitting hobbies in the NBA actually belongs to West, though not everyone's aware of it -- West is an avid boxing enthusiast. He's always incorporated boxing into his offseason training regimen, and from all accounts, loves the sport almost as much as he loves basketball. One of my favorite examples of this came shortly after Monty Williams became the coach of the New Orleans Hornets, when he was watching a David West interview to get to know him. They asked him for his best off-court attribute -- Williams was expecting something relatively tame, like a knack for hiking or something artistic. Stony-faced, West responded: "My left hook." (Monty said he made a mental note right then and there: Don't mess with David.)

One of the reasons the boxing hobby has always entertained me is that West's game has always struck me as sort of the boxing sort. A lot of Sonny Liston. Very tough -- Liston once fought several rounds with a severely broken jaw, and West has always struck me as the kind of guy who would do that without batting an eye. He has, too -- in 2008, West scored 38 points with a severely injured back in game 5 against the then-defending champion Spurs. Liston would batter players with his strength; he relied on his ability to take a punch, knowing that he'd always be able to throw a stronger one. West is similar in that he's absolutely fine taking a beating in the post, as he's 100% aware that as soon as he gets the player on the other end, he's going to make their life absolute hell. Liston was surly and mean to the press, which tended to lead to the press to portray him in racist and hateful undertones -- West's treatment is nowhere near as bad as Liston's, but he is incredibly underheralded for his skills and extremely under-appreciated for the things he does better than anyone else.

It's probably mostly because he hates the media. Seriously hates them. Look at answer two in this excellent six-things-to-know feature. In his early years in the league, West stayed away from the media and assumed everyone in the media was out to get him. He's continued being terse, disdainful, and all-around-difficult since -- the difference now is that ballers like Tim Duncan have in a way cleared the path for people like West to be a bit less open to the media than they were perhaps expected to be a long time ago. Duncan is, by the way, West's favorite player -- growing up, West was a Spurs guy, which has always kind of amused me. All things considered, I like West a lot. His game isn't flashy in any way, shape, or form -- but there are a lot of things he does far better than anyone else, he's a tenacious defender, and he's a really solid shooter. He's owner of some of the best true big man free throw percentage seasons in history and he's going to be in the gym working his game more than most anyone on the team.

I really like West, and while he may be a bit terse and hard to figure out for the media folks who surround him, I hope you take a chance to watch his game and appreciate a guy who does virtually everything right. He's one of those players in the league who doesn't really leave anything on the table -- he's the opposite of a Josh Smith or an Anthony Randolph. He can shoot with range, but he doesn't shoot threes or foot-on-the-line twos. He can dunk somewhat impressively, but he chooses to do simple lay-in dunks to save his legs. He rebounds effectively, he's the most consistent free throw shooter among big men in the modern league, and his vicious strength is absolutely incredible on the defensive end. All in all, David West is a highly impressive player, and although this season was a "down year" for him in Indiana you have to expect he'll come back stronger next year. And beyond all this basketball stuff? He speaks endless truths. Shakin' my head too, David. Shakin' my head.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch of players. Whoever gets the most riddles 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 several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. No overtime in this riddle-guessing competition, guys. For the last post, the winner of our respect goes to my friend Mike, who got 2/3 of these players correct. No, Mike. I don't at all think Perkins or Artest are tougher than West. Come on. You know me better.

• A Kentucky Yankee in King Dumars' court. Oh, Player #22.
• Ducktales, analytics conferences, Trump. Lots of angles. Instead I'll just say Player #23 went undrafted.
• The frustration Cleveland fans have with Player #24 is comparable to none. Glad he's gone, even if he's doing better out there.

Later.

The internal monologue of Lakers head coach Mike Brown was always full of cuss words. Much like our own spatial universe, the space that Brown's cusses inhabited was both infinite and always expanding. Also extremely confusing. Tonight - after midnight in his busy den - the cuss stream burst audibly from his blowfish-esque brown cheeks. I can't honestly say that I'd fare any better in his dilemma, though. Consider that just weeks earlier, the Lakers had signed Steve Nash, perhaps the greatest floor general that basketball had ever seen. This in addition to the Lakers' franchise player Kobe Bryant, perhaps the most skilled isolation player that basketball had ever seen. In addition, several of the Lakers' cornerstones intimately knew the Triangle Offense, the most successful team offensive concept that basketball had ever seen. The team's four cornerstones (Nash, Bryant, Bynum, Gasol) came from four different countries, four different cultures, and four different skillsets, each a genius of athletic achievement in their own respective ways. Most coaches would be ecstatic at this development.

"That is, until they ran the numbers and figured out what all of that actually means," Brown said joylessly. The task before Mike Brown was monumental, and whatever he decided would require innovation on his part and adaptations for his players. A lot of dismal days of patient frustration lay ahead for the Lakers. Still, with his trademark persistence, all the problems of an NBA offense started to make sense to him over the course of the night, and all the mental jetsam discarded in his den's gigantic novelty royal-blue recycling bin started to look better and better until they became literally reusable in Brown's new sets and schemes. From the white boards, a well-used protractor, and forgotten tomes of Phil Jackson strewn about the study, Mike Brown cussed out an entire offense that night. He wasn't confident at all in what he'd invented, but it would have to do, he supposed. At dawn, drinking some coffee and doing a compulsive ritual before the front door, the inventor of the Circle Offense hurried to a 9am presentation of his offense. Soon, he supposed, the Los Angeles Lakers would have to learn to form the Circle at a moment's notice.

• • •

"And that's every option, every cut, every set: Everything you need to know about the Circle." As Mike Brown finished his presentation and turned the lights back on, the Lakers noticed to their amusement that Mike Brown had a measure of chalk on his hands and his face, though he had been working on projectors and whiteboards. A close observer would note the nearby bowl replete with donut holes. Brown himself pointed out the donuts before anyone else could.

"These donut holes are spherical. If we were playing four-dimensional basketball, the Circle Offense, in point of fact," Brown noted proudly, "could easily be made into a Spherical Offense. Eh heh heh heh." Brown's chuckle - now so familiar to the Lakers' ears - was obscure and self-aware but undeniably contained a large measure of mirth. The Lakers could rarely tell in advance when Brown was telling a joke or - after the fact - what the joke had actually been. They often wondered if he was even laughing at what he had said or something completely different. Brown continued chuckling for a few minutes, perhaps to ensure everyone forgot the joke entirely, staring past his players into a blank corner on the far side of the conference room. Finally, he turned his head to the assembled players for one last detail.

"By the way, notice that the Circle technically starts right when the ballhandler is three feet from his defender. That's the 'moment of truth' I had mentioned, Steve and Kobe. You see that?"

"Yeah. Seems familiar to some offenses I've learned before," Kobe said with a diplomatic grin, "I think I can probably figure that part out."

"Oh, really? That's nice. Anyway, that's the presentation. So, any questions about the Circle? I want to start drilling tomorrow, so now's the time!" Brown said with open relish.

"Nice offense...," Steve Nash started hesitantly,

"Why, thank you, Steve! I worked on it the last few months! I'm glad you apprecia--" Brown lied defensively.

Steve wasn't having it, though, and continued: "...But for the sake of Kobe, Pau, and Andrew, I feel I should ask: Coach, did you basically just steal the entire Triangle Offense and move two of the players in the Triangle slightly to look more like a giant circle?" The five-hour-long presentation had finally sanded down Steve's great reserve of patience and he forcefully stated the obvious. Kobe was surprised that Steve of all people was so outraged. He thought, "Hadn't Steve played with Shawn Marion and Boris Diaw and Joe Johnson and Amar'e... like, when his teams were good?" Kobe would always bring up Kwame Brown in interviews as a mental shortcut for total incompetence and deferral, but Kobe visibly shuddered just to think of all the D-Leaguers that Steve had carried without complaint. And Mike Brown had finally worn that patience away.

Every Laker save for Steve was blinking wildly now, both in astonished anticipation of conflict and in enacting the opposite of the actor's trick of holding the viewer's attention by rarely blinking. Kobe's facial expression was frozen as his head slowly swiveled from east to west, about an inch every ten seconds. "No." has never taken so long to express. Mike Brown was visibly nonplussed at Nash's point, and showed just how nonplussed he was by holding his arms out as wide as they would go and putting his head down on the conference table. A living minus sign. Raising himself up and wiping some (but not all) of the newly-added sugar from his undersized suit, Mike Brown addressed his critic defensively.

"Steve. Let me ask you a question."

"Yeah, Coach?" Steve's childish chipmunk features - combined with his worried eyes - evoked an "A" student attending an incompetent teacher's lecture. Steve fully expected a scolding for correctly identifying the capital of New York.

"Steve. Did you take geometry in primary school?"

Steve saw where this was going and tried to pre-empt Brown's ridiculously on-the-nose gambit of literalness. "Yes, of course, Coach. I even took geometry at Santa Cla-"

But Steve's effort was in vain, and Mike Brown began to assert his husky presence. "Good for you. So you know what a triangle is, then, right?" Brown relished his borrowed role as a superficial Socratic questioner much as he also relished one of the remaining donut holes with delicious jam.

• Twenty Minutes Later •

"A circle doesn't-"

"A circle doesn't have sides, Steve. That's right. Now if you think I stole this offense from the Triangle, feel free to think that, Steve. But just remember that the sides make that impossible."

"But-"

"I think we've discussed the origin of this offense enough. I think we all understand each other. Now, let me ask you something. Steve."

Steve Nash visibly gave up at this point and just prepared to answer his coach's question. "Yeah, Coach?"

"Can you make these curvy passes you see on this diagram?" Mike Brown noted a semicircular arc on the diagram from point to corner that would take a slightly wider path than the three-point line.

Had Brown taken geometry class in primary school himself? Steve wondered now. "Physically speaking, I can't... I suppose I could use the physics of the situation to-"

"Suppose is all we need. I'm not an offensive coach, Steve. It's your job to figure it out. Any real questions, without asking how I thought of this offense?"

"Yes, actually. The Tria- I mean the Circle Offense seems like it favors a team without a dominant ball-handler. How can we maximize my skillset in such an offense?"

"Great question, Steve. Alright, so you see all these options for the Tria- er... Circle Offense on the slides I prepared?"

Steve Nash grinned heartily at his coach's slip-up. "Uh... yes."

"Well, look a little bit closer. Notice all the dribbling options. Notice all the pick and rolls that develop organically. Notice all the spacing that a good shooter brings to the offense. There are plenty of ways for you to contribute, and, I suspect, some default plays like the pick and roll that you'll excel in and eventually select by season's end. You can start to favor and improvise on the sets and options to suit your skillset. I'll leave this part up to you. You're the offensive coach on the floor, not me." Nash found this concession amusing after the five-hour presentation, but held his tongue.

"Okay, coach. So.. are there any resources I can use to improve my understanding of the Circle Offense?"

"No. Because it is completely original and nothing out there properly conveys the developments of the Circle Offense. Heh heh heh. You'll be starting from scratch," Mike Brown said, and it was unclear why he was chuckling.

"Oh," Steve said, mentally preparing to study the Triangle online.

Now, gazing away from one another, Steve Nash and Mike Brown looked at different horizons in far distant corners of the conference rooms, their horizons (one suspects) being utterly mutually exclusive but their goals being identical. Steve Nash fidgeted with some advanced kinematic diagrams featuring esoteric aerodynamic calculations. Mike Brown rejellied the mass of remaining donut holes, the jam making the donuts cohere into a sphere. Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" sounded from someone's cell phone occluded from view. There's so many different worlds... so many different suns... And we have just one world... But we live in different ones... And then the room filled with silence as no one offered to claim the cell phone ringing.

Kobe shook his head a few more times in the silence of the conference room. Andrew Bynum, shaking his head at a normal speed, shook his head hundreds of times in the same thirty-minute window. "I guess I make five," Brown said as he finished eating his delicious sphere. "Five different countries, five different skillsets. Let's make it work." Everyone gave a little audible start: No one had said a word individually but the room collectively had audibly opined the one word, "Yes." Now the Lakers filed out at different times. Debussy's Clair de Lune played from Mike Brown's cell phone as he turned to wipe off all the powdered sugar on his face and hands, a reserve of sugar so replete that to the remaining Lakers it resembled a fountain rising from Brown's back-turned head.

• • •

A week later, at Steve Nash's home, Steve received a 500-page tome written by Mike Brown. Nash knew that Brown had written the massive book describing all the options of the Circle Offense because his name was on the front. It was evidently an unpublished second edition, Nash supposed, because long sections had been crossed out and long anecdotes about Brown's experience at Kansas State had been replaced with accounts of Brown's Cavs assistant and former coach Hank Egan. Accounts featuring Brown as an assistant to Phil Jackson with Pippen and Jordan were replaced with witty anecdotes featuring Brown's former head coach, Gregg Popovich and the Twin Towers. Moral lessons straight out of the 1960s were replaced with modern lessons.

The section about plagiarism had been excised entirely, with calligraphic precision.

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. This afternoon's trio: Stephen Curry, Anthony Morrow, Lavoy Allen.

• • •

Follow Stephen Curry on twitter at @StephenCurry30.

I don't really understand the relationship between Stephen Curry and Warriors fans. I'm friends with many, and one consistent thread related to Curry is disappointment -- disappointment in his injuries, disappointment in his sometimes lazy conditioning, disappointment that he simply hasn't been better. I'd challenge that, a bit. First off, while the injuries are a huge problem, expressing disdain for the athletes for suffering them is somewhat absurd. It's an absolute shame that Curry has now suffered the ninth ankle sprain of his career and dealt with five injuries in a single, compressed season. I don't want to detract from how aggravating that is to fans. But I also don't want to detract from the fact that it really isn't his fault. Lazy conditioning may be a factor of some sort, but conditioning is never some kind of all-encompassing factor_._ It's one of many factors that combine with bad luck to make an otherwise solid player turn into an injury-riddled mess. As for the last part, disappointment that he's been rather up-and-down, and hasn't been a better player? Curry isn't exactly chopped liver.

Over his three-year career, Curry is sporting a shooting percentage of 44% from three -- that's the second best career three point percentage in NBA history. Anemic though his defense may be, he's improved his assist percentage every season and he's made some gains on a rebounding front. He's done all of this with relatively high usage for a point guard, which makes his sparkling percentages even more impressive. He's three percent away in raw FG% from having career shooting percentages of 50-40-90 -- which would make him the only player in history to accomplish that feat. Stephen Curry has his problems -- he's a bit turnover prone, his conditioning could use some work, and his defense needs help. But in terms of quality, he's about as good as you can get, and one of the best players from his draft. When a team's fans chastise a player like Curry, I like to look back and imagine who else they could've gotten that would be doing better. So let's examine the 2009 draft. Obviously, Curry isn't quite up to the rarefied air that surrounds Griffin and Harden. Then again, the Warriors didn't pass on either of them -- they picked seventh. Of the players chosen after Curry, there's only one player I think you could argue has been a distinctly better player in the NBA -- Ty Lawson, chosen at #18. At the time of the draft, even that was considered a bit of a reach -- had the Warriors taken him at #7, they'd have gotten a small boost in productivity while getting an offseason or two worth of scorn and mockery. Would that have really been worth it?

In the end, Curry is somewhere around the 4th best player taken in his draft. Only one player taken after Curry is distinctly better than him, and he was a shock that nobody really thought would be a fantastic NBA player. I don't really see where the disappointment in Curry's game itself comes from -- his per-minute averages have been remarkably consistent throughout his career thus far, and his only serious flaws come from things his injury history can account for. I really hope Curry gets better -- I think he's extremely fun to watch and an incredible talent. It's true that Curry needs to work with a personal trainer and stick to a better fitness regimen, but if he balances himself better and works on his step, I don't see any reason he can't get past these injury problems and contribute on a big-league level to a contending Warriors team. Shooters like Curry who can put up shooting percentages like he does on the high usage the Warriors give him are a rare commodity, mostly because they didn't actually exist until Steph Curry stepped into the league. I think Warriors fans should give him another go at it and cut him some slack. And I really hope he surprises everyone with a fully healthy, expansive year next year. Let's make it happen, Curry.

• • •

Follow Anthony Morrow on twitter at @MrAnthonyMorrow.

Hey, speaking of shooters, it's Anthony Morrow! Morrow is another of the active players who reside in the top 10 of the NBA's all-time career shooting leaderboard -- Curry is second, Morrow is ninth. In fact, five of the top 10 are still active in the league -- the other three are Steve Nash, Steve Novak, and (hilariously) Jason Kapono. You may gather from Kapono's inclusion that being an NBA all-time great at shooting the three pointer isn't necessarily a mark of superstardom. You'd be right. Of the top fifty in career three point percentage, I only count four hall-of-fame players: Nash, Drazen Petrovic, Ray Allen, and Reggie Miller. That's it. Which is actually a relatively interesting phenomenon. There are very few career leaderboards where you have to go that deep to find four hall-of-fame caliber players. Raw field goal percent? The fourth is #21, Charles Barkley. Turnover percentage? The fourth is #31, Dan Issel. Personal fouls? The fourth is #4, Robert Parish.

The history of the three point line may have something to do with it, but I don't think it fully explains it. There have been many hall of fame players since the imposition of the three point line, and even if you ignored players that played the majority of their minutes before the rise of the three, it's still easier to find hall of famers higher on every leaderboard -- even the negative ones -- than that of the three point percentage. Which is really very interesting. I think the phenomenon is primarily due to the way NBA teams have used the three since it came about -- it has become a set shot, a pivot in an offense meant to open up the floor for players to dominate the paint and to get defenses off-balance. In this usage, you need to have players who are designated three point threats, with the ability to get off a shot with virtually no set-up time. They aren't meant to come into the arc on offense, and generally don't -- they float outside the arc, always ready, always poised.

The key is that they aren't allowed time to set up their shot, or impose creativity -- the underpinnings of what makes a great three point shooter like Anthony Morrow good at what he does also makes him relatively awful at most other aspects of the game. Defense is about creativity and the ability to make reads and challenge offense. Becoming a prolific set-shot three point shooter who needs no airspace or time to get off his shot is about muscle memory and developed learning -- not just in the arms and shoulders, but also in their feet. Learning to stop on a dime with your feet set to take a three is not an easy skill to learn, nor is it very conducive to defense, where creative footwork and staggered stops can confuse the offensive player and give you a distinct advantage. Nor is it very conducive to developing as an excellent passer or an excellent rebounder, as you need to be on constant alert to ensure your form stays perfect.

Morrow is a pretty great representative, here. His game isn't simply predicated around the three, it is the three. An anemic rebounder, a poor passer, and not all that much like the scoring-type Jamal Crawford player who dominates the ball. Morrow is a shooter who picks his spots, sets his feet, and makes threes at an astonishingly prolific rate. He works his form constantly, and in his rigid set stances on defense and blithely telegraphed passes you can begin to see where developing the fluid quickness of his beautiful shot may inadvertantly have made it more difficult for him to develop his talents in other areas of the game. The same applies to players like Jason Kapono, and Steve Novak, and Kyle Korver -- they built their games around being incredible three point shooters. That's perfectly fine. But unlike most NBA talents, being an incredible three point shooter often involves developing skills that act counter to the creativity that makes many of the NBA's greats endure past their time.

• • •

Follow Lavoy Allen on twitter at @BroadStBully24.

Lavoy Allen was one of the surprises out of this rookie class, though many still haven't heard of him. The Philadelphia-born Allen was selected with the 50th pick in last year's draft out of Philadelphia's Temple University to play for the Philadelphia 76ers. (He might have a passing familiarity with the city of Philadelphia.) Immediately, the selection was widely panned as a marginal-or-worse one by analysts before and after the draft. In particular, last year's NBARank had Allen rated the 500th out of 500 players. I think my favorite part of the comments there is the general sense of bemusement among Philadelphia fans -- particularly the last comment, where "flyrman57" points out that due to the ranking, there was literally no possible way Lavoy Allen would be a bust. Now THAT'S putting a nice spin on some bad news.

Regardless. Allen was actually a pretty good player for the Sixers. He barely played, but when he did, his averages were very good -- his per-36 numbers averaged out to a double double, 10 points and 10 boards a game. He had his share of highlight moments as well, including this ridiculously clutch tiebreaking shot in the final minutes of Game 2 in the Sixers' second round series versus the Boston Celtics. It's rare for a rookie to be a contributing factor on a team that gets a few bounces shy of an conference finals berth, but alas, there he was. He's got the skillset to be around for a long time, too. He's extremely strong for his size, and has enough height and length to guard NBA big men. He's got a decent set shot at the long two, and he's a solid finisher. If he works on his high foul rate and adds a bit more heft to his post game, Lavoy Allen has a good chance to be a really solid player in the NB--...

... wait, his twitter location is seriously "between Nicki Minaj's cheeks"?

... what.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch. 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 several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. Apparently I'm making these way too hard -- a bunch of folks tied with 2/3, including @ChattJacket20 and @loverofsports. So I'll try to make the riddles for Friday's first post easier.

See you on Friday, folks.