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: Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, and Steve Blake.

• • •

Follow Jamal Crawford on twitter at @JCrossover.

There's a particular school of thought in the NBA that Jamal Crawford willingly embodies. Best described in the classic Darcy Frey novel "The Last Shot" (for my money the best basketball book ever written), the thought is simple. In the NBA, they pay you to score. Not to shut players down, not to rebound the ball, not to pass. They'll see fit to spread a bit of currency your way if you do things like that, but they won't pay you for it. There's a fundamental difference in the minds of the young and downtrodden between making a bit of money and "getting paid." When you simply make money, you're struggling. Every day is a grind. You know that you're always on the precipice of one injury, one bad week at the job, one passing sign of weakness. Something that saps you, and makes the money stop. You're working hard, to make money. You struggle.

But again, there's the rub. If you can score -- and score at an elite level -- you'll make bread in the NBA. That's why Stephon Marbury's father seemed to scold him when he focused too hard on defense, and passing, and making the team better -- Stephon Marbury was not raised to be an all-time player, nor was he raised to be the player of a generation. Marbury was raised to be a player that got paid. He was raised to be a player that was flashy beyond reason, and dominant in the minds of those who watched him even if he wasn't quite there on the courts. Jamal Crawford? He doesn't do it quite as well as Marbury, certainly. But he's a man who gets buckets -- or, at least, has a reputation for it. He's a guy you can "count on" for 15-20 points per game, even if he gives you nothing else of value on the floor.

And by extension, Jamal Crawford gets paid.

Really though, Crawford's current situation -- in which he's now slated to make $25 million dollars over the next four years, in a contract that takes him til the age of 36 (an age at which only 18 players in the history of the NBA have put up 15 PPG), is a perfect example of just how well that school of thought can lead a man. Scoring -- whether inefficient or not -- is the most obvious statistic a player can accrue. "The team with the most points wins the game." So, the player who scores the most is the most helpful, right? Well, not necessarily -- in Crawford's case, what he brings to the table as a scorer (while formerly considerable) is almost entirely balanced out by what he takes away. He's not quite as bad of a passer as most people think -- over his career, he's averaged around 4 assists per-36-minutes over his entire career, and his rebounding (while anemic) is no more anemic than the average NBA shooting guard.

No, Crawford's issues lie off the stat sheet -- his problems are mainly rooted in his defense, which is godawful. Simply atrocious. He doesn't rotate, doesn't stick to his man, doesn't really seem to care. His other issue is that he's been extremely inefficient the last two years, and especially last year, where he shot under 40% despite using a career-high 24% of the Blazers' possessions when he was on the court. And he was able to parlay that into a four year, $25 million dollar contract. As I said. Jamal Crawford typifies the type of thinking that Marbury's father endorsed heartily -- don't get into the NBA to make money, get into the NBA to get paid. Crawford gets paid. And, well... will continue getting paid for the next four years, at least.

A few interesting facts about Crawford. While this certainly isn't a record, it's still kind of crazy: in his 12 years in the league, Crawford has played for six teams and fourteen coaches. This doesn't count the Clippers and Vinny Del Negro -- it's quite likely that the number of coaches passes 16 or 17 by the time he hangs up his cleats. Pretty wild. He's got one of the best crossover dribbles in the NBA, and if you simply were rating players by the style of their highlight reels, Crawford would probably rank pretty high up there. He's the NBA all-time leader in four point plays, having passed Reggie Miller back in 2010. And finally, sort of breaking the trend of appending stories asking you to examine how nice a player is, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to one of the rare examples of a player who may very well not be. After all. Takes kind of a jerk to sue a landlord over $20,000 when -- according to the landlord -- he completely destroyed the house. Not totally sure of its veracity, and he does seem like a decent dude in interviews. But if that story is actually true? Lord almighty, Jamal. Muzzle the dogs of war a bit better next time, alright? Cool.

• • •

Follow Matt Barnes on twitter at @matt_barnes22.

I'll say this for Matt Barnes -- he did all the right things last season. After a wholly forgettable 2011 campaign with the Lakers, Barnes took his lumps and came off the bench with aplomb to start the season, for a short while appearing behind both Ron Artest and Devin Ebanks in the Lakers' rotation. This didn't cut off his enthusiasm, though, and after suffering through several knee problems in 2011 that completely sapped his game, Barnes got into shape and came back about as strong as ever. He was a highly effective rebounder from the wing this season, posting the 2nd-highest rebounding percentage of his career. He shot 33% from three, which sounds pretty awful in a vacuum, but was actually a bit above the Lakers' overall team average, around 31% -- Barnes was at least a slightly better option than the awful options the Lakers mostly had to deal with. His defense was a bit different than it used to be, but it was still high energy and still quite effective.

That is, until the playoffs. On the 64th day of a 66 day regular season, Barnes sprained his ankle. For most players, that would be a harmful injury -- it counts double for a player like Barnes that's not a fantastic set shooter and relies greatly on constant movement and hustle to back his game up. Thus, the season ended poorly -- Barnes turned in one of the worst playoff performances I've ever seen anyone play, and accomplishing a statistical oddity I didn't even know was possible in an 11 game run. Somehow, Barnes managed to post a higher turnover percentage than three point percentage in this year's playoffs. He turned the ball over on almost 20% of the possessions he touched in the playoffs -- conversely, he shot 12% from three on 31 shots in 11 games. Really. It was bad. It was awful. More than either, though, it was sad. It's always sad when a player comes back from injury and has an excellent season that gets ultimately forgotten and buried when it too is cruelly derailed by injury.

Off the court, Barnes is quite a bit more soft spoken and reasonable than most casual fans would expect. I've heard numerous friends refer to him as something of a thug. I don't think that's true. Barnes seems to me a relatively interesting, average person -- there's nothing altogether more "thuggish" about Barnes than a lot of my friends other than a few more tattoos and a few more million dollars. Well, okay, a LOT more million dollars. Still. If you've ever wanted to get a sense of what Matt Barnes is like, I'd entreat you to watch this fascinating interview where Barnes dishes on poor experiences he had with former coach Mo Cheeks, the influence his children have had on his basketball journey, and the Jeremy Lin phenomenon. Barnes has had his issues -- legal troubles in particular -- but he seems like a really decent guy. You don't need to like him, but it isn't hard to respect a guy as honest and open as Barnes. The Lakers probably won't bring him back, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not hopeful someone does.

• • •

Follow Steve Blake on twitter at @steveblake5.

The other day, at HoopSpeak, a writer I very much respect in Ethan Sherwood Strauss posted one of the more interesting pieces I've read in a while. In it, he posits a somewhat dark reversal of the common narrative around NBA fans. Strauss retells the story of Ricky Rubio's draft night, where he served as Rubio's conduit into the draft and American NBA fandom. He considers Rubio's reactions to the throngs of fans and adoring hordes and comes to the conclusion that contrary to feeling any sort of love for his fans, the experience was more telling for Strauss in how thoroughly it seemed Rubio despised his fans. And for good reason. They weren't simply adoring fans -- they were scary people, all of whom were grabbing for him and screaming at him and giving him undesired and wholly conditional love without knowing a thing about him.

Rubio may have grasped the fundamental contradiction at the root of sports fandom. We grant our players unconditional love -- that they neither need nor ask for -- with the understanding it could turn to abject hatred at any time. By that same token, Strauss argues, Ray Allen may not really give a damn about the Boston fans who now pillory him in the public square and burn his jersey, as though his time with the Celtics meant nothing. The love is, as Strauss states, wholly conditional. It wanes and wavers with every missed shot just as much as it grows with every clutch play. A player can make a game-winning three one day and find himself with free beers from everyone in the city only to be public enemy #1 less than 5 days later after a missed free throw to lose a game. It's a fickle love, and one that just as easily can turn to abject hatred. If the players start to care about it, they'll be hurt that much more when the love inevitably vanishes into the abyss.

Why is any of this relevant to Player #15, the Lakers' Steve Blake? Because perhaps even more than Ray Allen, Steve Blake's recent months may serve as a more telling example of the dark recesses of fandom Strauss tapped to inspire his musings. Yes, Boston fans were insane -- they burnt Ray's jersey, called him a traitor, and essentially dragged his name in the mud over a simple decision. Steve Blake, however, did no such decision. He made no real mistake -- it is not Blake's fault that Mike Brown plays him in horrible lineups at shooting guard where he stands not a chance at success. He was never really the savior Laker fans wanted, and while he's underperformed his contract to some degree, was anyone really thinking Blake was going to be a revolutionary piece that fixed all of the Lakers' ills? Regardless of whether they did or not, nothing really explains or excuses the actions of a small cohort of Laker fans, who not only threatened Steve Blake with death threats on twitter after he missed a late-game three against the Thunder, but fans who tracked down Blake's wife and sent the death threats her way too.

Steve Blake missed a shot in a beautiful game. He did not hurt a soul, nor did he do anything wrong -- he took a very high percentage open shot that, up until that one, he'd been making extremely consistently throughout the entire year. This prompted several Laker diehards to threaten to end a man's life, and while they're at it, track down his wife and kill her too. I don't really think Blake's overall game matters that much -- what matters is that people realize just how insane that concept is, and how fickle the love fans grant their sports teams can be. Had he made that shot, those same people would've been tweeting him with love and support that lasted a day or two, at the least. He'd get interviews. Might've made an extra million or so. Instead, Laker fans everywhere took out their loathing on a man who neither wanted nor cared for their vitriol, and instead of going home a hero Blake and his wife had to go home scared at the hyperbolic depths a fan's disturbed expectations could lead them.

Is that not a fickle, tainted love? If it isn't, I don't really know what is.

• • •

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 post's shout-out goes to commenter Federico, who got 2/3 of these players correct. Great job, and thanks for the props! We appreciate them.

More will be posted early this evening.

My parents separated when I was 10 years old. To this day, I remember vividly the moment my dad shut the door behind him, a stuffed and angrily packed suitcase in tow. Nothing was really the same for young Adam since. Had this not happened, I might've never been the person I am today. Actually, scratch the might -- I'm pretty damn sure about that.

A few years later, my dad would get a lucrative offer from an American company. The problem? He'd have to live in the US, and would only be able to come to Poland once a month. Even though I cried and begged him to stay, (thinking he was the cool parent, the one I'd rather spend my time with) he still took the offer. After all, it would only be six months or so. Still -- these six months ended up being pretty bad. My mom was pretty depressed after the divorce, and my childlike self savoured the time spent with my dad. He'd play video games with me, take me to lunch to my favourite Tex-Mex place, everything. Every weekend was great, which only made me appreciate him more when he came back for good.

Of course, that was then. Ever since, my dad managed to completely ruin all those memories, and make them into a melancholic journey. You see, in Poland, child support -- due to the reluctance of people to hire college folk -- is held up until age 26. This is for divorced couples, and married ones alike. The only difference is that divorced couples know exactly how much they have to pay. My dad did. And he wanted to change that. So right around my 18th birthday, my dad sued me. I ended up having to deal with all the blowback from the divorce, contacting lawyers, appearing in court, calling executors. It wasn't fun. It wasn't enjoyable. It wasn't right. At least I won, though. We only met once after the trial, for almost exclusively business reasons. Oh, and so my dad could say some mean things about my mom, of course. Then, once again, my dad vanished. It turned out later that he'd left for Canada along with his wife, and my step-brother. I'd only found out because my friend chatted with my step-brother. I didn't even get a proper goodbye, and when I'd mustered up the courage to send him an angry e-mail, I received an answer that somehow blamed me for being angry.

• • •

All of that stuff -- the email, et cetera -- happened a year ago. It was one of the reasons why I started watching basketball. To escape, to live vicariously through the players I liked. Perhaps that's why I was so emotionally invested in it. And never was it displayed better than on the morning of the 5th of July. I came back home exhausted, after a LAN party with my friends. We had fun, we screamed, we ate pizza, and then went back home. As I exited the subway, I decided to check my phone for updates on twitter. The internet was running slow, but I managed to read a bunch of tweets mentioning me, wondering how I would react.

Oh well, Steve Nash must've signed with the Knicks. I was expecting this all day. Meh. I thought to myself, as I got into a bus. When I got home, it turned out I'd been wrong. Very wrong. Steve Nash signed in the one place he shouldn't have signed. And all the emotional involvement boiled over into an angry stream of all caps tweets. I said a lot of dumb things, after all, all excuses seemed stupid. I actually cried. And it wasn't a "Raymond Borque lifting the Stanley Cup" cry. It was a "WHYY?" cry. It was like Darth Vader.

Fortunately, I was exhausted, so I went to sleep rather quickly, and when I woke up, I'd gained some distance. It was just basketball, after all. Then I read all the interviews with Nash, and felt stupid. Stupid for blaming him for making an absolutely understandable decision. Stupid for insulting him, even if it was just an angry rant on twitter. And with every day passing, with more and more interviews coming, I just felt worse. I've defended LeBron and Dwight based only on my suspicions of internal problems stemming from young age, while not giving a single second of thought to my favourite player of all-time.

Anger creates stupid things, I guess.

Either way, almost exactly a week removed from the event, I find myself standing in awe of Steve Nash once again. But it isn't a behind the back pass, or a amazing shot that awes me this time. It's Nash's priorities as a person and basketball player. I am awed by the fact, that he'd make so many enemies, sacrifice some money (and mind you, this isn't a player that has been paid max money for all his life), the ability to come to his home country or favourite city, just to be able to see his kids once a week. There has been a lot of discussion about how genuine this is coming from Nash. Is he really doing it for the kids? Or is this an excuse? I think to accuse a man like Nash of using his kids as a cover for a business decision is rather ridiculous. Dumb, even. Perhaps not as dumb as sending him death threats and burning jerseys, but still... really, really dumb.

As a person who's had a lot of ups and downs from his own father, I can only appreciate Nash for sacrificing popularity, money and a chance to go to his homeland for his kids. And while I may end up loathing every dime Nash drops to Kobe Bryant, every pull up three off of a Pau Gasol pick and roll he nails, every beautiful alley-oop to the lurking Andrew Bynum, I will also try and remember the fact we all seem to forget. Basketball players are people with families and problems. Steve Nash may be the next in a line of basketball villains for many, but his villainy is a sacrifice he'd made to be a hero to his kids. It's a crime of must, if you will. A crime that shouldn't in one bit take away from the fact that Steve Nash -- all his basketball aside -- is just a wonderful human being that everyone should try to emulate.

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. Today's three players, in our fourth installment: Chuck Hayes, Trevor Ariza, and Toney Douglas. More on wednesday.

• • •

Follow Chuck Hayes on twitter at @c_hayes44.

Despite injury woes, it's not incorrect to say that Chuck Hayes is one of the biggest enigmas in the league. At the very least, it's 100% true BEFORE his heartbreaking health troubles sapped his game. Hayes is notable primarily for his size -- or rather, the lack thereof. At 6'6", he's the shortest starting center the NBA has ever seen, narrowly edging out multiple-time all-star 6'7" Wes Unseld. Unlike centers like Dwight Howard or Ben Wallace, whose lacking height isn't explicitly obvious unless you explicitly make a point to watch how they compare to true 7 footers, Hayes is notably and obviously short. When the Rockets were putting out Hayes as their backup center to Yao, it led to a lot of really funny moments where opposing centers were legitimately confused at the height difference -- Hayes would inevitably have an easy scoring opportunity or an easy defensive steal in his first few possessions after Yao left the court, all because the height difference was such a crazy switch for opponents to adjust to.

Then this season happened. Hayes was diagnosed by Sacramento's medical staff with pericarditis, a treatable but nevertheless scary medical condition involving an inflammation of the outer sac of the patient's heart. They voided the contract they signed with Hayes on the first day of free agency. Hayes' agent responded by saying the issue didn't actually exist, there was a bit of a back and forth, and doctors at the Cleveland Clinic finally gave Hayes the go-ahead on playing again. The Kings responded by then giving Hayes a slightly larger contract than the one they'd voided (perhaps out of an apology for the botched diagnosis and the stress), which was fine for the first 10 games of the season, but then immediately marred by a freak shoulder injury that took Hayes out of action for most of January and much of February. As a result, Hayes played far fewer minutes per game this season than he had played in years, and he was markedly less effective at what he did. His passing wasn't quite on-point, his finishing was anemic, and his defense was harmed greatly with the decreased mobility caused by his shoulder injury and the fact that he came into camp somewhat out of shape.

Which ignores the other big issue -- the Sacramento coaching. Westphal is an awful coach, as most people know, but the confusion and lack of organization in the Kings organization showed even after he left. All season long, the Kings employed one of the laziest defensive schemes I've seen in a long time. Really seemed to me like they were essentially running no defensive sets whatsoever. No organized schemes, no overarching philosophy, nothing -- instead choosing to simply put men on an island and, if they had a good defender or two on the floor, try vainly to push all offensive players to that player. Which... tended to be Chuck, when he was on the floor. Even with his shoulder. A bit too much pressure, a bit overutilized on that end. All things considered, I'd tab Hayes for a bounce-back next year. Shoulder injuries are tricky, and it's absolutely possible that Hayes never quite comes back the same. But given his work ethic and his fundamentally excellent grasp of defensive principle, you have to think he can come back with a strong 2nd year with the Kings. If he does, the Kings should have a pretty strong frontcourt -- Cousins and Robinson are two extremely strong starters, and Jason Thompson/Chuck Hayes make for an excellent one-two punch off the bench. The guard rotation needs some work, as I'm not totally sold on Thornton or Tyreke-at-the-three. I am sold on Isaiah though. Really can't wait to write about his game, guys.

• • •

Follow Trevor Ariza on twitter at @trevorariza.

In a league filled with many, Trevor Ariza's contract is one of the best teaching examples of how a wayward GM can create a terrible contract. I think the blowback against Daryl Morey has been needlessly harsh and incoherent, fraught with too little criticism of Morey's own decisions in favor of overly broad hit jobs on statistical thinking in general. To take the failure of Morey's broader strategy as some sort of sign that statistical thinking is fundamentally flawed is like disregarding mathematics because nobody's quite wrangled the Hodge Conjecture yet. It's absurd to think that an entire approach to generating knowledge and insight is flawed simply because a singular advocate of the method has failed at a certain goal -- especially when many, many others using his principles have succeeded. The point is, regardless of the general sense that the Rockets won every trade Morey ever made, it's vastly overstating it to say that Morey never made any atrocious individual moves. This is the prime example. Trevor Ariza's contract looked somewhat shaky at the time, and in retrospect is absolutely laughable.

Just consider: the worst contracts in the league aren't usually superstar deals, or gigantic overpaid masses for quasi-stars like Joe Johnson. Contracts like that CAN be bad, and they CAN turn poor -- but for the most part the enormous contracts only get derailed by injury or age. You tend to get one or two seasons of star-level production out of them -- given the top-heavy manner in which production trickles down in the NBA, that's usually worth the hassle of the late contract. But contracts like the Ariza deal, where you pay 6+ million a year for a marginal player with the expectation he'll play better than he's ever played before? Those are far, far worse. On deals like that, GMs tend to give out all-too-long deals in an attempt to outbid an imaginary opponent -- "hey, Trevor, make sure you take THIS one! We're giving you 5 years!" They eat up an outsized portion of your cap (in the case of Ariza, he'll make up over 12% of the NBA's salary cap next season while being virtually guaranteed to statistically contribute <12% of the Wizards' positive statistical accomplishments) for an unreasonable period of time, and in that time, you'll probably need to give away an asset if you want to move their salary. Criticize Morey's approach all you want -- contracts like the Ariza contract make up the vast majority of the NBA's worst deals, and Morey was the one who inked it. You should never sign a fifth man to a deal like Ariza's. This isn't a failure of ideology or anything of the sort -- it's simply an poor decision that Morey made that few people remember or care to note.

This isn't to say Ariza is necessarily a bad player -- I would agree with At The Hive's Rohan (who once called him "the worst offensive player in basketball") but explicitly note that defenders of his caliber aren't exactly an overvalued commodity in the league. His numbers tend to indicate that isn't an excellent defensive player in isolation, but I'd argue that it's primarily because he spends the majority of his possessions guarding the best isolation players in the league. What he is, however, is perfectly physically built to contest without fouling and cover a ton of ground virtually instantly. This makes him one of the premier spot-up recovery guys in the league, and his next-to-flawless control over his athletic frame allows him to be one of the best in the league at fighting over screens and disrupting possessions. His defensive impact on a purely systematic perspective is extremely strong. Unfortunately, what he takes away on offense is almost as bad -- he's a wholly marginal shooter, with underwhelming career percentages of 43-31-67. This unfortunately doesn't stop him from jacking up 11-14 shots a game, some fully guarded. His defensive strengths are excellent, and were on full display in Monty's brilliant schemes the past two years. But his offensive problems will keep him from being more than a 5th or 6th guy on a contending team. Which isn't really a good value on a 5-year full MLE deal. And it wasn't from day one, unfortunately.

• • •

Follow might-be Toney Douglas on twitter at @therealtoneyd.

For the first time, I'm not at all sure if that twitter is actually the player-in-question! The John Salmons account was unverified, but it had several pictures of him and his family doing mundane things at stores, so it seemed legit. This twitter account is, obviously, a pretty quiet one. It IS followed by a confirmed Adidas corporate account, though, so something tells me it's got as good a shot as any of the unverified Toney Douglas poser accounts of being real. Still. I was a bit surprised that it took until player #12 for me to find a player that doesn't use Twitter relatively prolifically. Once I finish this series (you know, in mid December) I'll do a look-back and see what percentage of the players covered actively use Twitter. I have a feeling it's going to be a ridiculously high percentage.

As for Douglas, he's... an interesting one, no doubt. I remember watching a lot of him in college. I went to an ACC school, and while his Seminoles were never in strong contention for anything while he was there, it was impossible to talk about the ACC in his senior season without mentioning him. He was simply amazing -- tenacious defender, could score with the best of them, and absolutely RAN that Florida State team. He was one of the greatest players you could watch in the NCAA during his senior season -- I couldn't possibly give enough praise to his game. Though... not with his passing. That always was the big weakness in Toney's college game. His passing ability was never exquisite, never strong, and never anything that looked remotely NBA caliber. Given his shaky NBA size (a little under 6'3") and his relatively low weight (180, on draft night), there were legitimate questions whether he'd be able to translate any of his game to the NBA level. Those questions look to have been relatively well founded. In his limited NBA career, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Douglas has been a bit player.

His defense hasn't translated amazingly well to the NBA, because he's undersized and can't seem to wrangle point guards very well. He actually does a decent job on shooting guards, and he has defensive strengths, but as an overall defender he's only slightly above average. His offense has been streaky, albeit with a few bright spots during his sophomore year when he started getting comfortable -- believe it or not, Douglas owns a share of the New York Knicks' franchise record of most threes in a single game, with nine. He's been really, really bad as of late, though. Which may not entirely be his fault. Douglas suffered a bad shoulder injury in the run-up to the 2012 season, and it as well as several unspecified but reported "personal problems" affected his play through the entire year. By the end of it, he'd essentially completely dropped out of New York's rotation at the end of the year, in favor of the sandy corpse of Baron Davis and the ghastly phantasm that calls itself Mike Bibby. He's something of an unknown going in to next year. Most people have utterly written him off, but given that he was battling injury all season, I'm not 100% sure that's fair. If he can get his shot back, he's a passable defender and a solid second or third guard-off-the-bench. Perhaps not what the New York media circus was expecting, but essentially par for the course for the 29th pick in the NBA draft. At least I'll always have his dominant college years to look back on.

• • •

For the uninitiated, I'll continually restate this -- 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 commenter J, who got 2/3 of these players correct. Great work, J!

Three players to guess for Wednesday.

• Once, there was a little ducky named Player #13. Nick Young's replacement, whoo!
• If you blink once, you might miss Player #14's scare tactics. Kobe didn't.
• Portland really liked Player #15. Then he proceeded to obligingly keep a proud Laker tradition going strong.

Stay frosty, friends.

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. Today's first three players, in our 3rd installment:Dante Cunningham, Paul George, Charlie Villanueva. More this afternoon.

• • •

Follow Dante Cunningham on twitter at @DlamarC33.

Before I get into Cunningham, I want to note the riddle -- nobody got it. Which, I suppose, makes sense -- the only real relation Dante's Inferno has to Dante Cunningham is the fact that they're both named Dante. In fact, the entire scope of the riddle was essentially nonsense. The only real inferno Dante Cunningham's ever descended into was that of his legal woes in the 2011 offseason, wherein he was caught speeding with marijuana and a BB gun on a late May night in Pennsylvania. When that news broke, I wasn't sure what surprised me more -- the fact that anyone in the world still owned a BB Gun or the fact that being pulled over with a BB Gun is actually something that gets added to the charge. Either way. The point is, given that he's the most notable Dante currently breaking bread in the NBA, his fans should get on the whole "Dante's Inferno" kick and make the riddle retrospectively meaningful. Let's get it done, Memphis fans.

Regardless. I wasn't too up on Cunningham before this season -- thought he was dramatically undersized, somewhat poor defensively, a bit too reliant on his long range jumper for a big man. He allayed most of my concerns this last season, and now I'm rather bullish on him as an NBA prospect that at least manages to stick in the league a while. One of the main reasons is that he changed his game -- after two seasons where he took more long shots than shots at-the-rim, he redefined his role and started using his prowess underneath the basket more effectively. It resulted in Cunningham posting the best field goal percentage in the league in the immediate at-rim area, a huge value-add to his otherwise lukewarm offensive game. Defensively, he bulked up a touch and proved that he can be (at the least) an average defensive presence in the league despite his tweener size. Some good things.

All that said, his upside isn't tremendous, and his anemic rebounding remains an issue as a starting big man. But as a low-usage second or third big off the bench, you can't do all that much better on the sort of value contract he's got -- $2,000,000 a year for Dante's next two is a great deal for the production he gives, and given that, Memphis fans should be glad they were able to snag Cunningham at a bargain value from the Bobcats. (Really, all things considered, the Bobcats probably should've matched. I realize he's not a fantastic player, but $2 million isn't a huge contract at all. Cunningham would've been the 2nd or 3rd best big on the Bobcats roster. He's also young. This may be all too retrospective, as I certainly didn't care one way or the other back when it happened, but this does seem like a legitimate mistake on Cho's part. A small one, but a mistake all the same.)

• • •

Follow Paul George on twitter at @King24George.

So. Let's talk about Mr. George. Due to the name George only catching on to the lay public around the Crusades, the appellation itself only began to trickle up into the British nobility (and, by extension, spread prolifically into the royal family) in the 17th century with the ascent of the House of Hanover -- on account of this, there are only six British monarchs by the name of George. On the other hand, while Georgia was a regency, they (perhaps somewhat predictably) had twelve monarchs who adopted the name George -- I suppose it'd be too much to ask the monarchs of Georgia to resist the "George, King of Georgia" title. There were also two reigning Georges in Greece, as well as two in Bulgaria. Finally, there was George V, the last King of Hanover alone, and a strange idiosyncracy in the reign of the Hanover House in Britain. That effectively wraps up all the important King Georges the world has ever witnessed.

You may be wondering why I'm starting this capsule with a bunch of seemingly irrelevant babbling about monarchs that took the name George. If so, I ask that you note this rather amazing fact: if you count up every previously reigning monarch that called himself King George (which I have conveniently laid out in the previous paragraph), there have been twenty-three monarchs by that name. Again -- Paul George chose the jersey number 24, then took as his twitter handle (again, "@King24George") a direct reference to thinly veiled monarchical roots. I don't really know if Paul George was aware that he had cleverly declared himself the 24th King George the world has ever seen when he chose that jersey number. I'm not sure if that's a reasonable expectation. It probably isn't. But whether it is or not, the mere idea that Paul George could be aware of it makes me smile, quite a lot.

You know what else makes me smile? Watching Paul George play basketball, most of the time. True, there's a high variance to his game. I can't think of many players in the league who have quite the distance between their top games and their bottom games -- when George has a bad game, he doesn't cut corners. He has AWFUL games -- games where he seems to shoot blanks every time he gets the ball, stand around on offense with no attempt to make himself open, and gets extremely lazy on defense -- where he essentially shuts down as a valuable contributor. And yes, that kind of sucks -- for Indiana fans and for anybody who tunes in to Pacers games to see interesting, engaging basketball. But when George is on? Lord have mercy, Paul George is something else. His blitzkrieg assaults on the rim with his driving ability are among the best in the league, and his on-ball defense is something to behold. The recently developed mechanics behind his previously busted three point shot are among the smoothest of anyone over 6'7" in the league, and his stat-stuffing makes him a boon to fantasy players everywhere.

There are some issues. For one, he tends to get lost on help defense. This is a relatively common problem among young defenders who are excellent at shutting down their man -- he's a great ball-watcher and a great man defender, but he almost emphasizes those tendencies too much for his own good. Sometimes he overcommits, and sometimes he gets caught wildly going for the ball -- teammates don't always know what they're getting when George's man gets by him, or if George is in a position to help. So that leads to a bit of hesitance, and occasional defensive breakdowns. As previously mentioned, he's also streaky -- he has good games where he goes absolutely nuts, and bad games where you wonder what the hell he's doing. But in a lot of ways, that's how it is for any young player. He's without question one of the best members of the class of 2010, and if it wasn't for one Greg Monroe and the fact that Blake Griffin is inexplicably considered a member of that class, he'd probably be the consensus best out of that group. He isn't exactly a guaranteed future all-star -- he has some kinks to work out in his game, and he absolutely needs to work on his consistency. But he's really good, and incredibly fun to watch. Give King George XXIV a try, gents.

• • •

Follow Charlie Villanueva on twitter at @CV31.

I don't say this lightly -- Charlie Villanueva needs to work on his anger management. It didn't get all that much play due to how bad both team's were at the time, but Villanueva is responsible for what I believe to be by far the most aggressively violent confrontation the league has seen since the 2005 brawl. Above the Artest/Harden elbow, the 2011 Bynum hit on Barea, the Arenas gun trouble -- this was simply insane. I'll recap, for those who weren't aware of it. It was late in the 2011 season, with the Cavaliers up by 11 over the Pistons and only about 6 minutes left in the (ahem, completely meaningless) game. Villanueva sets a screen, Hollins runs into it, they get tangled up. All normal, all average... right? Sure. Except that Villanueva takes a completely unnecessary swing at Hollins' crotch on the screen, presumably in response to Hollins being a bit too active with his elbows on the other end of the floor on the previous possession.

Hollins gets annoyed, says something nobody's ever been able to make out from the footage, and Villanueva responds by grabbing Hollins' face and trying to rake his eyes (prompting the always-classy Hollins to do the same), then elbows the Pistons players around him trying to pull him off of Hollins. That would've been any old "suspend the player, forget about it" confrontation if it had ended there. But it didn't. After they'd been torn apart by teammates and ejected from the game, Villanueva charges the length of the court with Pistons assistant coaches and Rodney Stuckey trying in vain to restrain him, screaming "I'm going to kill that dude, I don't give a [expletive]!" as the guards escort him off the court. To make matters worse, it didn't end there -- after the game, Villanueva stalked past the Cavs locker room and waited outside for Hollins, only leaving after the Detroit police came to escort him to his car and out of the building. Seriously.

This isn't the first time Villanueva's behavior has been indicative of a temper problem -- he's faced multiple civil lawsuits related to alleged assault (both domestic and otherwise), and has had several large and public fights in his NBA career (including the famous confrontation with Kevin Garnett over Garnett's "cancer" comments). This isn't to say that he's a bad person, necessarily. He's one of the NBA's leading advocates against bullies and child abuse, and donates more money to charity than many players who make even more than he does. As someone who was bullied as a child for his non-fatal case of alopecia universalis (hence his lack of hair -- he can't grow it), he understands more than anyone the psychological impact that teasing and constant bullying can have on a child. Instead, Villanueva's actions seem more to me like a constant reminder that otherwise good people can struggle mightily with their temper and it's not always right to indict a man on his faults before you consider his merits.

Despite this? Nobody can really deny that Villanueva really, really needs some help for his temper -- it's getting a little ridiculous. As for his on-court play, disappointment is about all you can describe him with. This isn't to say that Villanueva lacks talent. On the contrary -- were he to fix up his shot selection, he probably would be a reasonably valuable piece on a contending team. He didn't score 48 his rookie year in a fluke, you know. He has a decent three point shot, and an underrated post game. Of course, he doesn't really use either effectively -- his shot selection is ridiculously spotty, he regularly refuses to pass the ball when he receives it, and he rebounds poorly enough that it's untenable to play him as a starting power forward in the NBA. His defense is incredibly poor -- the Pistons, an abysmal defensive team over the last two seasons, have been consistently 7-8 points per 100 possessions worse with Villanueva on the floor than without. He's essentially been completely and utterly useless to the Pistons, and that's not very good for a player on a small market team eating through a 5-year, $35 million dollar contract. Really not one of the NBA's brightest stories.

• • •

For the uninitiated, I'll continually restate this -- 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 (again!) _@krishnanwarrior_, who got 3/5 of these players correct. The next post will go up late this afternoon or early this evening -- here are three riddles, including new ones for players #10 and #11.

• Bullish post defender, Player #10 is one of the most interestingly sized players in the entire league.
• You know, maybe I was being too harsh. He's still a good defender, that Player #11.
• Speaking of which, Player #12 was very recently a great defender in college. Emphatically didn't translate, tho.

Later today, folks. See you on the other side of the workday.

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 afternoon's three players, in our second installment: Greg Monroe, Tristan Thompson, and John Salmons. Below the fold.

• • •

Follow Greg Monroe on twitter at @MooseGM10.

Greg Monroe is one of those rare cases of a primarily offensively focused player who's yet to be ridiculously overrated by everyone around him. This is not to say that this is all Monroe will be -- I'm of the strong opinion that a man his size and steadily-strengthening frame will develop into a very positive defender, if only we give him the time (and the organization) to help him do it. Someday. It won't necessarily be soon, and it may not even happen in Detroit. But I have a lot of faith in Monroe. Perhaps it's because, early in his career, I thought Roy Hibbert somewhat shiftless on defense as well. But he grew into his frame, and I'm not eager to make the same mistake of overlooking an enormously talented Georgetown alumni twice. Just won't do it. But, for what it's worth, what Greg Monroe does well he already does extremely well. And efficiently, too. Given their similarly terrible defensive "skillsets", it's actually starting to become an open question -- which player from his class (barring Griffin, who will always be considered a 2009 rookie to me) is really better than Monroe?

It's an open question, and if I had to answer it, I don't think I'd be able to really pick anyone out of the crowd. Monroe's sophomore season was incredibly impressive, and I felt he was about a dime and a rebound short of a deserving all-star berth. It's not just the numbers he got, it's the sense that he could've done a lot better if the Pistons schemes didn't consistently freeze the poor man out. There were games this season -- take this soon-to-be-forgotten close loss at the Boston Garden early in the season -- where Monroe essentially destroyed all-comers. He obliterated Garnett every time he touched the ball (he shot 9-12 against Kevin Garnett as his primary defender -- I watched the game in its entirety, and for the majority of the game, Garnett was covering Monroe), using a wide and dizzying array of post moves and grit. He did this despite playing only 33 minutes in the game, and -- more ridiculously -- shooting zero shots in the entire fourth quarter. He shot 75% from the floor against Kevin Garnett and the Pistons didn't think to go "hey, wait, maybe we should... try to leverage that matchup, per-haps?" Never really crossed their mind?

Well, it eventually did. Monroe-led efforts beat the Celtics in every subsequent matchup that season. So... there's that.

This brings us back to the opening notation -- Monroe is an amazing offensive player. He's an incredibly solid rebounding presence, as well -- he only played 31 MPG last year, but his per-36 averages were a somewhat absurd 18-11-3-2-1 on an even more ridiculous 14 field goal attempts per game. He fills the stat sheet like virtually none other, and if you can pick him up in your fantasy league, by all means, do so. I'd imagine, though, that this offensive talent would've led him to become overrated at some point. Just another overheralded offense-first big man -- the next overhyped Brook Lopez in a long line of the sort. But, well... he hasn't. If you mention Greg Monroe -- even among many really awesome NBA scribes -- the only thing most people know about him is that he's a bad defender who plays for Detroit. I'm serious. So, there's my confusion. Every time I watch Monroe play I see a player that's statistically dominant from the center position but woefully, woefully underutilized by his team.

I also see -- as everyone else does -- a player whose defense last season was even worse than his somewhat iffy rookie defense. He needs to work on his lower body strength so he doesn't get pushed around so much on the block, and he absolutely needs to develop better footwork. He's got nimble hands and a good first step, which helped him be not-quite-terrible at defending the pick and roll (at least to my eyes) but his overall defensive game does need some improvement. Still, I wouldn't ever classify Monroe as some shiftless, incompetent defender. I'd classify him as a young and slightly embryonic defender whose offensive game is extraordinarily advanced for his age and whose overall command of the floor is mightly impressive when you consider the weak pieces around him. He's their only consistent threat, and as a result, he gets doubled constantly -- it doesn't matter. He still gets it done. Monroe may not be in a great situation, but don't let that obfuscate the weight of his contributions. The kid's got a grown-man game, and he's a month separated from his 22nd birthday. He has time. He's already impressive, and he's a singular bright spot for a franchise that's been something of a dark practical joke since the misbegotten Billups trade and the awful dual Villanueva/Gordon signings. And if you're going to have a singular bright spot, you might as well try to make it as bright as a guy like Monroe -- the 10th Moose GM of the year*.

* ... also, to clear this up. I'm serious. His Twitter handle is "Moose GM #10." I will never cease to find this amusing. Later in his career, when Greg Monroe starts a professional Moose-jousting league and serves as General Manager of its star franchise, millions will lament that they didn't see it coming. You, having been now forced to pay attention to his Twitter handle, will know. You know the score. You're welcome.

• • •

Follow Tristan Thompson on twitter at @RealTristan13.

Okay. I don't generally watch the draft. I know, kind of ridiculous. I was raised, to some extent, a Cavs fan -- I certainly had my choice of who to root for (which led to my love for Tim Duncan, David Robinson, and my eventual developed love-from-afar for the Spurs), but my grandfather loved Cleveland teams and I loved my grandfather. So, therefore, I'm a Cleveland fan. And last year, Cleveland had the first and fourth picks in the draft. For once -- only the second time in 5 or 6 years -- I considered watching the draft. Really mulled it over. The answer was decided in an executive decision by my girlfriend, however -- it was not a night for the draft, it was date night. Alas.

I was clever, though. I got my mom, a die-hard Cavs fan -- love you, Mom! -- to agree to text me our #1 and #4 picks after the #4 was chosen. I figured I'd get the picks at dinner, internalize an opinion on them, and talk about them with Alex later. Well, draft night comes. We go out to her favorite burger joint. We're eating fried green tomatoes, when my phone goes off. I glance at it. #1 Kyrie Irving, yay! #4 Tristan Thompson... wait, do you know who that is? My face -- content as I read Kyrie -- turned to stone as I finished the text. I stare at my girlfriend, aghast. "WE CHOSE TRISTAN THOMPSON?!"

"Huh?" The waitress stares at us. Everyone could hear me. I do not notice.

"TRISTAN THOMPSON! Dude had a free throw percentage UNDER 50%. IN COLLEGE."

"I... wait, what?"

"We passed over Jonas Valanciunas! He's amazing! I watched so much tape!"

"... are you talking about basketball? We agreed, no basketball. Aaron, this is date night."

Welp.

The damage was done. The date was ruined. Not even the waitress incorrectly asking whether I was talking about a new Jonas brother could make things right. Alack. Unfortunately for my stress level watching the Cavs, I was proceeded to be proven somewhat right and somewhat wrong, in his rookie season -- Thompson has a tenuous grasp on the concept of "how to shoot a basketball", and his talent for creatively goaltending shots would make Serge Ibaka and JaVale McGee blush with vicious envy. However, it wasn't all bad. He was the best non-Kyrie player from the rather disappointing lottery, even if Kawhi Leonard, Isaiah Thomas, and Kenneth Faried were 10-20x better than he was. His talent for offensive rebounds translated relatively effectively to the major leagues (even if his defensive rebounding was godawful) and his defense -- while shaky -- shows some promise. Still kind of wish the Cavs had picked Big V, especially watching more recent footage, but I'd welcome the chance to be proven wrong by a vengeful Thompson. Which, yes, is an invitation. Openly. I will say this aloud, for all to hear. Tristan Thompson: I ruined a date because of shock and awe at your selection.

Please make me look like a fool for doing so.

Thanks in advance, buddy.

• • •

Follow John Salmons on twitter at @bucsalmons.

Alright. This is the first player on this list whose on-court play I unequivocally cannot stand. It's not that the theory of John Salmons is all that bad. As a player, he's relatively average -- he's your everyday three point gunner with a penchant for taking foot-on-the-line long twos that make fans of his team anguished and fans of their opponent happy. I don't tend to like those players -- not really my cup of tea -- but if you're cool with that style than you'd probably be OK with John Salmons. And it's worth noting that Salmons is legitimately a solid person. He's a family man, and a seriously devout Christian. Betting you didn't know that. Regardless, my issues stem not with Salmons (who I'm sure is a great guy in real life). The issue with Salmons is all on-court. And for me, it's mostly that he's ridiculously overpaid to be "that guy" -- he makes, believe it or not, $8.5 million dollars a year to throw up long twos, dole out a few tertiary assists, and snag a few rebounds. Why, you might ask, does John Salmons make that kind of money? Because he's smarter than us. Because John Salmons is better than you or I at peaking at the right time.

Look. I'll stop being snide and cut to the chase. John Salmons -- nice guy though he may be -- is a contract year player, through and through. He redefines the concept. He is the world's leading practitioner at it. He puts in some effort during off years, sure -- enough to have a game or two every year where he does a lot of good things and makes General Managers feel better about themselves for signing him to the ridiculous deals he's lived off for his entire career. Like this one, last year. But for the most part, Salmons has spent his entire career playing ridiculously good basketball when he's on the verge of signing a new contract and ridiculously poor basketball otherwise. The greatest trick Salmons ever played on the world was when he shot a contract-year powered 38% from behind the arc for 2010's surprising Milwaukee Bucks. The greatest trick he ever played on the world was... well, it wasn't really a trick, it was more a General Manager's awful decision to give him his current mess of a contract. STILL.

That thinking is what's led to our current situation -- one where John Salmons, the basketball player, has made $40,000,000 in his NBA career. This means that John Salmons has made more in his NBA career than the Gross Domestic Product of the island nation of Tuvalu. Just putting that out there. At least he has a cool beard. Also, he's the first NBA player I've seen who actually has fewer followers than I do. Granted, it's not a confirmed account, but if that actually is Salmons that's hilarious and ridiculous.

• • •

For the uninitiated, I'll continually restate this -- 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 @krishnanwarrior, who got 2/3 of these players correct. (And no, I'm not sure how he did it.) Five players to guess for next Monday, which should be entertaining. Gentlemen, start your thinking.

• Player #7's perilous descent into his own inferno would have been a really popular storyline, if he was a less marginal player.
• The potential and promise in Player #8's game could start a war... though probably only if Noam had a warship.
• If I was to assess the probabilities that a current NBA player would pull a Kermit Washington, Player #9 would head the leaderboard.
• Short, stocky, dealt with a heart problem. Still a pretty solid center, though, that Player #10.
• I don't think we're ever going to forget Player #11's 2009 playoff run. Which is good, because beyond that, he's been awful ugly.

See you on Monday, folks. Have a good weekend.

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 players, in our first installment: Jarrett Jack, Ishmael Smith, and Pau Gasol. Due to length, we'll hold off on an all-five grouping and post three more players later in the day.

• • •

Follow Jarrett Jack on twitter at @JarrettJacko3.

Here we start. Not LeBron, not an All-Star, not a DPoY -- Jarrett Jack, the starting point guard of the New Orleans Hornets.

I want to get one thing clear, before we discuss our first player. The order here is completely random. Totally random. I set up a random draw for each of the 370 players from a 0 to 1 uniform distribution, then ordered the list based on that. No changing the order mid-stream, no rearranging deck chairs to get the players I like the most done first. I've done very little in the realm of actually examining the order -- to some extent, I'm going to be as surprised as anyone at the order the players come up. Helps make sure I stay honest with these, you know?

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that despite the list's random order, I'm not sure I could've personally chosen a better first player than Jack. Jarrett Jack is a prime example of that large swath of players that find themselves slightly under the standards for mass relevancy -- not quite an all-star, not quite egregiously overpaid, and not quite a college star everyone recognizes. If you saw Jack on the street, you might not recognize him -- he's a bit tall, and built like a mack truck, but he's not necessarily going to stand out in a crowd as an NBA player. In basketball terms, though, he's a bit too underheralded for my taste. Jack can play, if you give him the chance. And last season in New Orleans provides a good example -- Jack played more minutes per game than he ever had in his career, and the man produced. He put up the 12th of this season's 24 triple-doubles, held the offense down, and provided some defense on the perimeter within Monty's brilliant switching system on a Hornets team that was nowhere near as bad as its record, and nowhere near as bad as I'd predicted they'd be. He isn't a $10-15 million a year guy, but at the price he'll probably command after this season ($6-7 million), he'll probably be worth it as a 4th or 5th starter.

And then there's the personal story, which is wonderful. I don't want to belabor the point when you should just go and read Holly McKenzie's magnificent opus on the pair, but Monty Williams and Jarrett Jack's family have a long history together -- Jack's dad was one of Monty's strongest influences when Monty was a young player, and in return, as an assistant in Portland Monty helped raise Jack to play the right way when Jack was coming up in the league. It's a pretty neat story, especially when you hear either Monty or Jack talk about the other. There's clearly a level of mutual respect and kinship between the two that's rare, both in professional sports and in general life. It was a rare collection of factors and luck that conspired to bring Jack to Monty's tutelage in the first place, and a nice capper reunited them in New Orleans. Thanks to all that, we get an engaging pair that's fun to cheer for and makes each other better. All things considered? You probably could've guessed this, but I hope the Hornets keep him. Monty and Jack together again is one of those wonderful twists of fate that make the meta-stories of the league interesting.

It's one thing to read story after story about a player meshing with a coach and becoming friends -- they're heartwarming stories, no doubt, and interesting to boot. But the personal touch on Jack's parallel journey to Monty's first coached team combined with the Hornets' general need of a point guard makes this a pairing I really hope sticks. Jack's not my favorite player, per se, but he's by all accounts one of the good guys. To me, he's one of the myriad of people that make the NBA better than just any old sports league. Absolutely a good representative of the guys that make the NBA a league of people I really like, and the reason projects like this are so fun to me. So good on you, Jack, for being the guy you are. Keep rockin' it.

• • •

Follow Ishmael Smith on twitter at @ishsmith.

Ishmael Smith is a tiny guy. Maybe not relative to most of our readers, but relative to most NBA players -- he's 6'0", and from footage I've seen, I'd say that might be an inch generous. He's played for four NBA franchises (along with a single D-League crew) thus far in a relatively spotty career, never taking a particularly large role and never being called on to do much more than playing 10-12 minutes every two or three games. Unlike most marginal NBA players, Ish Smith has a glorious NBA skill that's led to a somewhat outsized NBA following: an absolutely electric transition game. Seriously. He may be a bit tiny, but Smith is fast -- if he gets the ball and has enough daylight to get to the rim, he's got the ability to dazzle. Never was this more obvious than in his brief jaunt at his 2010 Summer League play, where NBA aficionados got the chance to see undersized wonders in him and Pooh Jeter explode into semi-prominence and display their NBA-ready skills. In Pooh's case, it was an overall multifaceted game and a decent looking shot for a small guy. In the case of Smith, it was an electric ability to get to the rim and run NBA-level transition plays even without NBA talent around him.

Make no mistake -- if Smith was a few inches taller, a little bit stronger, and had a slightly less busted shot? He'd probably be a Ramon Sessions-type of player, very valuable to the right system. His transition game is absolutely sublime. For this reason, I'm holding out hope that the Magic resign him -- he's one of the more entertaining garbage time players to watch, and while he doesn't have a particularly high ceiling, there's something to be said for resigning a nice guy with a great motor and at least one entertaining NBA skill. I'm not gonna fool myself into thinking Ish will be a starter in the league someday, because he probably won't. But he can be a solid backup's backup if he works his shot a bit, and there's no doubt in my mind that as long as he stays in the NBA his transition brilliance will make him a compelling garbage time all-star. Fun fact: before he played his first NBA minute, people had a nickname for him. Ish "the Dish" Smith! ... whoa there, buddy, I didn't say it was a good nickname.

• • •

Follow Pau Gasol on twitter at @paugasol.

Pau Gasol is -- beyond his quality as a player, which we'll get to -- an interesting person. He's one of the most book-smart players in the NBA, having dropped out of one of the top medical schools in Barcelona at the age of 18 to follow his growth spurt and pursue a far more lucrative career in basketball. He didn't drop out because of grades, or some inability to hack it -- he dropped out because, well... if you were a 7'0" man with a talent in sport who could make hundreds of millions of dollars playing a game you love, wouldn't you? He actually thought, early in his career, that if he retired early enough he'd take a stab at getting his M.D. post-NBA and practicing medicine. Age and being all-too productive in the NBA put an end to that pipe dream, but (luckily, I'd say) hasn't put an end to the inherent curiosity of Pau Gasol. Despite the dropout, he certainly hasn't dulled down his interests or his tastes -- still goes to the opera, still volunteers at hospitals, still studies new languages to keep his mind fresh. He reads glorious thousand-page histories and plays French concertos on the keyboard. He does it all. A renaissance man in every possible respect.

As for his game? Fun. Historically, Gasol's statistical game is virtually peerless, and we'll get to that in a bit. Let's discuss his style in a more improvisational manner. Gasol is a bit emotional, at least in his on-court stylings -- he's got the mood and sensibilities of the Opera stars he loves to watch. Not in his ability to flop, no -- in his ability to simply emote that which he's feeling through his play. If he's frustrated, his play becomes out-of-sync and tenuous. If he's happy, his game has a certain element of joy -- every hook shot let off with a smile, every rebound pulled down with abandon, every bench cheer a cause for incredible celebration. It's not an broad mirror that overwhelms the way he plays, like Ricky Rubio's infectious enthusiasm or Manu Ginobili's pathological intensity. No, it's more a seasoning. A slight shade of emotion sprinkled over his already entertaining game.

And it makes Gasol, more than most players, something of an open book. Is he frustrated about trade rumors? Well, you'll probably be able to tell by watching him play. Is Kevin Garnett's illegal defense getting him down? There'll probably be a lack of pep to his step. Is he playing too many minutes? You'll know far before you realize what's going on. And so on, and so forth. It's one of the reasons the Lakers have been at their core a frustrating team for their fans -- Pau Gasol's game just seems to be so much better when he looks happy and confident. He's happiest when the Lakers are dominating. He's at his least confident when things are a bit rough. And so, somewhat predictably, many Laker fans notice the dismal depths into which Gasol sinks and scream and shout. Sometimes, they overlook the effortless dominance exerted by a happy and contented Gasol. They overlook the wonders Pau can produce when he's happy and at peace with himself and the league.

But that was then. This is now. Pau is older than you think. He's been in the league 11 years, which usually wouldn't be all that much, but he brought with him a ton of miles from his playing days in Barcelona and he runs a full-on all-out schedule for the Spanish National Team, almost every year. The description of his statistical game that you may be waiting for SHOULD come here, but I don't really have the heart to give it beyond the basics. Pau's last two seasons were two of the worst of his career if you consider them in totality -- which is pretty astonishing, given that he was a strong MVP candidate through the first two months of the 2011 season. He's played tired, exhausted, and far too much. His post moves aren't quite as effective as they used to be, his shot isn't quite as wet, his rebounding isn't quite as prolific, and he's simply starting to show signs of age. I was of the opinion that in 2009 and 2010, Pau Gasol was the 1b to Howard's 1a -- easily the second best big man in the league, and one could make a rather compelling case that he was the best.

Not anymore, though. He's now in a stage of his career where -- on this Laker team -- he'll be reduced to the fourth option on the offensive end and essentially turned into a spot-up shooter and rebounding whiz-kid. I'm not sure if I like it. Far be it from me to root for a Laker -- as a Spurs fan, you must understand, I'm not great shakes for the franchise -- but Pau is easily my favorite Laker of the last 10-20 years. He's just about the most interesting person in the league, his game provided so much joy to watch before the Lakers' recent downward spell, and the way Pau's game emanates emotion has always been an aspect I greatly respect. Now, as his age increases and his usage level drops to subterranean levels, I'm left silently wondering who in the world is really going to remember Pau Gasol. When we discuss Kobe's storied legacy in the future, and list off the greatest big men in the Lakers' history, who's going to be the one to bring up their Big Spaniard?

Well, okay. I'm a Spurs fan. So I probably won't be person to those discussions. But if for some reason I happen to be, I'll tip a hat in his direction. You should too. Think about him. Realize what he's meant -- to you, the league, his nation. Really. He's pretty excellent. So here's to you, Pau. Interesting to a fault, emotive to the core, and may never get quite the appreciation he deserves from the throngs of Laker fans descendent upon comment pages and sports bars everywhere. You did good. Wish everyone could've seen it before your game began the slow, plodding decline that old age brings all the greats.

• • •

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.

• Warriors fans are going to regret passing on Player #4 for a very, very long time.
• In a strange and inverted way, Player #5 follows in Chris Bosh's three-toed dinosaur-shaped footsteps.
• Now HERE'S a player I don't want anywhere near any team I like. The lovefest ends with you, Player #6.

These three will be posted later today. Enjoy.

Here at the Gothic, we have a big and possibly-too-often restated goal. We want to start discussions. We like talking -- not merely to hear our own voices, but to really engage our readers and the mass online following of basketball as a whole. Now, there isn't a ton to talk about in a long offseason. I think we all know that. There's the occasional trade, of course, and this year we have the Olympics to tide us over. (And yes, we'll be offering a bunch of Olympic coverage as well -- don't worry about that.) But on the whole, there's not all that much to talk about, other than frittering away at the narratives of a season gone by and handicapping a season we as-of-yet know nothing about. Not much to ruminate. We'd like to allay that, at least partially -- we'd like to give everyone something to talk about.

So here we are. ESPN has their crowdsourced #NBARank, Basketball Prospectus has its excellent preseason guide, and the esteemed John Hollinger has his thorough examinations of each player in the league for insider. And us, here at the Gothic? We offer for your consumption -- as both an offseason and an early season feature -- our Gothic Ginobili Player Capsules. Last season, before this blog even began, I did a whole lot of these. Seriously, a ton. In the GG archives we have a select few -- 30, to be precise -- but rest assured there were quite a few more. I completed 271 player capsules in the run-up to the 2012 season. They were posted on a private discussion forum, and most likely, will never see the light of day. They weren't at all edited, included more vulgarities than a classic J. Dana Teague rant, and some went far too long/short. It was a mess, basically.

This year, I'm going a bit loony. I've taken a list of every player in the NBA that played over 100 minutes last season -- that's 440 guys. I sifted through that list and took out 70 more players, because I couldn't find anything interesting to say about them and I needed to cut this project down to at least a moderately manageable amount. The plan, as it stands? Talk about the 370 players left. All of them. I've done some outlining, got some basic points set up, and worked the format down to where I get enough leeway to talk but enough structure to feel like everything comes together. I've compiled statistics for each player, articles, reports, et cetera.

And for the rest of 2012, I'm going to talk about them. Here's the plan, in a convenient and easily updated FAQ format.

• • •

WHAT'S THE SCHEDULE?

When I started this project, updates came Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with six players each day. This quickly fell by the wayside as an outright ridiculous goal, leading to the current structure -- one post per day, Monday through Friday, three players a post. Around 10-15 thousand words a week, give or take. Lots of writing. As of August's conclusion, I'm proud to say I've only missed two days -- given that I'm a third of the way through the project, I admit, I'm pretty surprised about that. Still.

IS THIS GOING TO BE ALL YOU GUYS DO FOR THE ENTIRE OFFSEASON?

This is going to make up the majority of the Gothic's coverage this summer. This is a fact. I know that personally, this will make up the vast majority of my posts this summer. That doesn't mean that we aren't going to have other neat content, though -- Tuesdays and Thursdays will remain content-rich days for us, with our stable of wonderful writers (Adam Koscielak, Alex Arnon, Jacob Harmon, and most likely one or two new additions you'll be meeting soon) scribing their thoughts and mores as Alex Dewey leads them forward into a H.A.M. set of content primarily composed of Olympic content, thoughts on the free agency market, and a new audio courtroom-esque feature we'll be introducing in a few weeks. We aren't resting on our laurels, here. Trust us.

HOW DID YOU CHOOSE CAPSULE ORDERING? WHY HASN'T [MY FAVORITE PLAYER] GONE YET?

I will state this over and over again, ad infinitum. People will forever continue to disbelieve me. (Or troll me by pretending to disbelieve me.) I will state this as clearly as I can. THE ORDER IS RANDOM. I didn't alter, modify, or change any of the player ordering that my randomizer produced. The only element that could be conceivably considered non-random is the fact that no computer randomizer is truly random in the long run -- they rely on set seeds in a pre-randomized list that for most programs goes on longer than most human beings can comprehend. But for all intents and purposes this is a random list. So, if you're wondering why a team has been oversampled in the first 20-30 players, or why your team's star hasn't come up yet? Blame random numbers, not me. (Or, alternatively... if you blame me, you also are obligated to admit that it is your belief that I have control over all random numbers. Because that would be a pretty awesome power for a statistician to have.)

• • •

Looking for an organized directory of all capsules? You've come to the right place. Check out our capsule directory, where you can filter and sort our completed capsules by player age, team, and position. Go to the team pages for team salary data and interesting stuff like that. If you have any feature suggestions for the directory, please feel free to comment on this post or email us at "staff [at] gothicginobili [dot] com". It's fun stuff.

As a tertiary feature, we will be featuring extended versions of certain capsules at other websites to spread the word. So far, capsules that fall under this designation of Player Capsules (Plus) include the following:

• The Egoism of Chris Paul -- Hardwood Paroxysm.
• Wade's World -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Russell Westbrook, the Lawless Sovereign -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Tim Duncan, Salt of the Earth -- 48 Minutes of Hell
• The Forgotten Dominance of Dirk Nowitzki -- SBNation Dallas
• Paul Pierce, the Role Model -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Heel Turns with Dwight Howard, Laker Legend -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Ricky Rubio, Can You Hear Me? -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Defining a Hero with Andre Miller -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• The Flickering Candle of Stephen John Nash -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Kawhi Leonard and Throwing the Haymaker -- 48 Minutes of Hell
• LeBron James -- the King and I -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kevin Durant and the Leaps of Youth -- Gothic Ginobili
• Bloomsday with Derrick Rose -- Gothic Ginobili
• James Harden and the Journey of a Lifetime -- Gothic Ginobili
• Chaos, Death, and Manu Ginobili -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kobe Bryant and the Memories of Man -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kyrie Irving -- Showman, Structure, Star -- Gothic Ginobili
• LaMarcus Aldridge and the Burden of Proof -- Gothic Ginobili
• Anderson Varejao and the Smile that Wins -- Gothic Ginobili

If you have more questions, ask in the comments below, or ask me on Twitter (my handle is @docrostov). Stay frosty.

Let's go unfiltered at the Gothic Ginobili. I'd like to talk about a dream I had.

I had some expectations going in, as I vaguely became aware of my location in the dream. Like, I knew it would be a nightmare from the start because the room I was in was really well-lit, and yet from the window I could tell it was night. Great foreshadowing, dream. Also, in real life, I had been in a minor bike accident a few hours before going to sleep (I'm fine, just some scrapes), so I'd expected some flashes of violent imagery. So not just a nightmare, but a screamer as well. There was a compounding and foreboding sense of fear -- as if chemically induced -- that I felt all around me in the emptiness of the room.

• • •

Let's set the scene: As with many dreams, the room itself pretty strongly resembled my one-room apartment, but had expanded out to a somewhat gigantic one-room condo. All the hallways were bigger, there was a small hot-tub sized pool in the center (brewing like a cauldron), and all the windows and doors were much larger and more open. I felt empty and vulnerable, for some reason.

And then the horror started. The room darkened somewhat. Some of the lights in the room flickered a few times and then went to black for no apparent reason. Sometimes I would catch lights going off and right before they did, in that pregnant darkness not yet attained, I would see a figure shrouded in black. I would see this figure just briefly enough to have doubt to its existence, just starkly enough to have no doubt that - whether it existed or not - something was happening and I didn't want to be around when this process reached its culmination. I decided - as I saw street lights from outside flickering out with just the same horror - to control what I could. I closed all my windows and doors and then their blinds if possible. Right before I was able to close the last screen door, Steve Nash appeared outside the sliding door, apparently to help me.

That's right, Steve Nash.

So, yeah. I was having a horrible nightmare with apparitions haunting and then darkening my apartment, bringing my apartment slowly into total, hopeless, horrifying darkness. In the middle of this horrifying dreamscape that had consumed my apartment, diminutive point guard Steve Nash had appeared outside my door waiting to get inside. Now, Steve's chipmunk-esque face definitely had an eerie blue glow, but it was definitely Nash. I let him in without thought or care. Immediately the single light outside flickered and went out, leaving the incorporeal, nebulous, shrouded-in-black figure just 20 feet from my apartment. I slammed the door and closed the blinds. As I recall, Steve Nash didn't say anything. The few remaining lights were flickering out.

So I pushed a button on the hot tub (remember, the cauldron) which turned the unlit water into a well-lit, glowing pillar of pale blue light. This light, pale and insufficient, was the culmination of my desperate attempt to impose order on this nightmare. But in fact, this light was the start of the final unraveling of the dream. For -- as the few lights other than the cauldron's flickered into darkness, leaving its shrouded spiritual moths -- the center of the cauldron began to brew and spin, and from the center emerged this same figure rising first as random interruptions of the blue with black and then as a full, coherent figure with a totally pale face and a monstrous body that appeared to be shrouded in black clothes. I totally panicked and tried to get away from the figure, but the doors wouldn't open. Steve Nash - having an aura of blue identical to the hot-tub's - went for some reason into the cauldron and the figure consumed him into the tub. I, presumably, was next to be consumed. Paralyzed by fear, I tried in vain to get to the console and turn the cauldron's blue light off. But I couldn't.

I lay in darkness for what seemed like hours, mortified. Then the lights turned back on, Grant Hill came in through the big glass door, and he was laughing. It had all been an elaborate prank! It is important to note that he was wearing a Phoenix Suns jersey at this point. As, of course, was Steve Nash, as he left the hot tub, soaked, enjoying the spoils of the prank. Grant Hill spoke. "Haha, I can't believe you thought ghosts were real, Alex! Such a cad!" I laughed and laughed, and then I woke up, the nightmare conquered.

But then I awoke to the reality that Steve Nash (and possibly Grant Hill, as well) were going to the Lakers.

• • •

A nightmare at its essence usually takes elements of the familiar and distorts it with the unfamiliar to create the sensation of the former changing into the latter. Good horror does the same. Death honestly doesn't scare me. But the change from life to death sure does. Injuries don't scare me, as you'd learn to deal with the result. But the process of going from healthy to unhealthy in an instant of total awareness without control does scare me. Darkness doesn't scare me. But the change of light, the change from safe to unsafe, the change from familiar to unfamiliar... that scares me. Quite a lot. The nightmare I had was the distortion of empty light into inhabited darkness, of Steve Nash into vacancy and worldly vapors and death.

But the nightmare of Steve Nash - as I awoke - is now the change from Sun to Laker. A team we could root for to a team that most of us -- or at least myself -- ancestrally despise and viscerally root against. The change from Channing Frye and Marcin Gortat to Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. It turns out that -- as with LeBron -- Steve Nash without a ring is actually fundamentally different than Steve Nash with a ring. Something horrifying and grotesque and potent and assertive has to change in him (or at least the way we see him) in order for Steve Nash the Ringless to evolve into Steve Nash the Conquerer. Nothing we can do will stop it. We're not going to feel the horror of Steve Nash when he's in the West semifinals. Then it will merely be an exciting, engaging Laker team that we've lived through and become comfortable with (to whatever extent we can). No, we're feeling the pain in the transition right now, as we try to make that change from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

This is the change. This is the horror.

These are the days before dying, the blood before the clotting, the rapture before the end of time, the spinning of the handle bars before the fall, the fall before the first-aid, the three-quarter-mile of pedaling with open blood on knees and gear-shift oil in hands before the blessed oblivion of sleep. We're walking wounded in the night with zombies and friends in the distance, and from here we can't tell one from the other. Do we approach and hope for the best? Do we run and expect the worst? Or, having seen this one before, perhaps we acknowledge the nightmare, the change before us. Perhaps -- knowing there's no end to it -- we walk boldly into the night, seeking not consummation but mere merciful continuation in the pale blue street lights beside empty bars and parking lots, looking always for temporary escape and shelter.

Hello, folks. Happy fourth. About a month back, we did a relatively successful statistical Q&A. I've been a bit absent lately, on account of residual hoops miasma, but I have today off work and it feels like a good day to bring the series back. Format is relatively simple -- for the rest of the day (or until questions dry up), I'll be answering reader questions. These can be on any number of topics -- from the offseason to the playoffs to what, pray tell, a vegetarian is going to make for dinner on the fourth of July. All's game. To start, we have an opening question from the man who had the most questions last time.

• • •

QUESTION #1: Is this your first question for the Q&A tomorrow? And yes, this is my question. from @sstewart1617

Why yes, Sam. It is. Here is a graph displaying all questions asked as of this writing for today's Q&A.

Congratulations. You were emphatically first.

• • •

QUESTION #2: Is Omer Asik a substantially more effective defender than Tyson Chandler or Dwight Howard? from @sstewart1617

The obvious answer -- simply thinking through their impact -- would be no. But when you look at the numbers, things get a bit confusing. Asik is an extremely effective defender. Looking at the overall numbers of team defensive performance when he's on the floor, the Bulls had a defensive rating of 100 with Asik off the floor and a rating of 91 with him on it -- that's the difference between a top-5 defense and a generationally revolutionary one. Tyson Chandler's on/off court splits were actually pretty bad this season -- with him on the court, the Knicks had a defensive rating of 102. Off the court? 100. Yes, the Knicks actually managed to defend better with Tyson off the court than on the court. In the case of Howard, though, you can argue that his numbers are slightly more impressive -- the Magic's Dwight-off-floor defensive rating is 109, which over a full season would likely rate out as one of the worst defenses in the league. With him on the court, they have a defensive rating of 101 -- top-5.

If you break the stats down into individual defensive stats per Synergy, Asik looks like a superior defender as well -- he sports the 24th ranked overall PPP rating of any player in the league, at 0.71 points per possession allowed. Tyson has the 104th ranked at 0.80, and Dwight has the 49th ranked rating at 0.74. His rating primarily comes off the strength of his recoveries on spot-up shooters -- NBA players score only 0.59 PPP against Asik on spot-up plays. Chandler is a bit better at isolation defense, and a bit better at defending post-ups -- Asik schools him on defending the roll man in the Pick and Roll, as well as spot-ups. Between Dwight and Asik, the same general format applies -- Dwight is better in isolation and against post-ups, but worse than Asik at guarding spot-ups and roll men. Overall, would I say Asik is more effective? I don't think so. He plays most of his minutes against bench men, and his minutes aren't meaninglessly low -- his foul rate is extremely high, and if he can't stay on the court, that does limit his effective value. But you could make a somewhat compelling argument that Asik is better than Dwight or Chandler at defending the pick and roll, or alternatively, at recovering on spot-up shooters. Which is a valuable skill. I'm not sure I really dislike Asik's contract -- if he can work on the foul trouble, he can be a top-10 center in this league. Getting one of those for a sub-eight digit contract is phenomenal.

• • •

QUESTION #3: Have you seen Troll 2? If not, why do you hate good things? from @AngeloCLE

I saw it when I was young. Don't really remember much of it. Perhaps I should see it again, someday. Especially since I make fun of Conrad about it on almost a daily basis.

• • •

QUESTION #4: Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur? from @AngeloCLE

When I was a kid, I picked Squirtle. If I had to re-choose I'd probably pick Charmander -- there just weren't enough good fire Pokemon in that game, man. Always ended up with an Arcanine or a Magmar or something, and that just aint right. It's kind of silly how many more water dudes there are than any other type. (The reason this is presently on my mind: I've been playing Soul Silver lately because I got it extremely cheap. Fun game, in a lot of ways. Kinda a slog, though, like most Pokemon games.)

• • •

QUESTION #5: Is there a big in the league that draws less fouls per 48 minutes than Matt Bonner? What about fouling someone per 48? from @sstewart1617

I'm honestly drawing a blank on where to easily look up foul drawing numbers, so I'll have to get back to you on that. I know it exists, somewhere, but I know I don't have it in my personal statsheets so that'd be a bit harder to get. The second one is easier. Here's a table with the five bigs in the league that foul the fewest times per 48 minutes.

Obviously, LeBron is first -- he's barely a big, and I'm not sure why my positional rankings counted him as one. Other than one name on this list, all of them are pretty expected -- Bargnani is notorious for never fouling, Durant has never fouled in his life, and Bonner is... well... Matt Bonner. The one name on this list that confuses me and will forever confuse me? ANDREW BYNUM. He had one of the 10 the lowest foul rates for a true center_ in the history of the NBA_ this season. I understand he's been a little lazier on defense, and I understand he's laid off his man a bit. But Bynum's ability to avoid drawing fouls despite playing a relatively physical game for a center is one of those things I will never, ever understand. Especially not last year where, again, he had one of the lowest foul-per-minute performances ever. EVER. It's ridiculous.

• • •

QUESTION #6: Is it just me, or does France have a really good chance to win gold this year, especially with USA and ESP hurting? from @sstewart1617

It's not just you. I think USA is still the favorite, but due to Spain's injuries, they might be second to France in terms of our greatest threat. There's a big x-factor for them, though -- if Tony Parker's eyesight is at all compromised or his game is off due to needing to wear goggles, etc... they're screwed. They more than most foreign teams absolutely depend on Tony to run their offense. I think he'll probably be fine, hence, I think they're our biggest threat. But yeah. USA is in a bit of trouble. I don't understand why Coach K and the Team USA brass aren't busting down the doors for Greg Monroe and Demarcus Cousins -- I thought Davis was a poor choice over the two of them to begin with, and given the absolute dearth of bigs on this team, I feel like they really need to shore up their rotation. There's still so many questions about this team's rotation, it's kind of shocking that they're still considered the favorites to win Gold. I mean, they are -- nobody's going to match CP3/LeBron/Durant in terms of pure talent. But otherwise, the team is older and in a bit of a tough spot. We're either going to need to play Durant or LeBron at center or play Tyson an insane (and impossible) minutes load. If I was a Knicks fan, I'd be pissed at the brass for putting Chandler in this kind of a position -- he's the Knicks' best player, and it looks like he's about to play way more minutes than any one man should have to in an offseason. Just some weird decisions from the brass.

• • •

QUESTION #7: If you had to manage the locker room of an NBA team, which would it be? (factor in: player personalities, coach, location, etc) from @TheWagOfMutombo

I wouldn't mind living in San Antonio. So... the Spurs. Pretty easily. Beyond the Spurs, I think I'd enjoy the Suns -- Alvin seems like a nice guy and that has always seemed like a locker room with a lot of cohesion. In terms of a locker room I absolutely positively would NOT want to manage... any team that has Dwight Howard. Or the Knicks. Would not want to manage either of those. Interesting question, though.

• • •

QUESTION #8: Among the final 6 candidates, who would you select for the final 3 on the US Olympic Team? from @soconnor76

For those readers who aren't familiar, here's the list of the final 6 candidates:

• James Harden
• Eric Gordon
• Anthony Davis
• Rudy Gay
• Andre Iguodala
• Blake Griffin

Honestly? I kind of hate this list. As I said before, unless we want to try playing Love at Center, Tyson Chandler is on pace to play an insane number of minutes in this year's Olympics. Blake will be fine, but he is not an all-world defensive big by any stretch of the imagination and he's never consistently played Center. Neither Cousins or Monroe adds a ton defensively to the team, but at least they're used to playing that role on the court. Hibbert would be an interesting choice too, but I seem to recall him saying he didn't want to play for Team USA a long time back. Anyway. Out of this list, I'd pick Gordon, Griffin, and Iguodala. In that order (IE, Gordon before Griffin before Iggy) -- while Gordon and Iguodala don't seem like obvious choices, they and Tyson Chandler made up the core of the 2010 team's stifling defense (ESPECIALLY Gordon, whose defense absolutely flourishes in the international game) and we're going to want a team that can keep leads without scoring when our big three hits the bench.

EDIT: Excellent point from @rscotham. Roy Hibbert already played for the Jamaican National Team. This makes him ineligible for the U.S. Olympic team, which is why he has no interest. He actually can't. Sorry, Roy.

• • •

QUESTION #9: Based on his rookie season, what's the best comparison you can draw for Kyrie Irving? from @AngeloCLE

This is always a fun one to answer. In terms of PER, Kyrie recorded the 6th best PER by a rookie guard in the history of the league -- the players above him include three Hall of Fame guys, Chris Paul, and the always-underrated Walter Davis. The only point guards above him were CP3 and Magic. In terms of players who shot as well as Kyrie did, there's a single candidate -- Stephen Curry, who's the only other rookie guard to ever shoot over 35% from three and 85% from the line while averaging > 4 assists and > 17 points. Kyrie only played 30 MPG, though -- his per 36 stats (22-4-6 on 47%-40%-87% shooting) have been matched or bettered... well... never. Even on a per-36 basis. If you cut down the points, you get a few point guards of note -- namely Billups, Nash, and Price. With a little bit of Manu thrown in for good measure.

All this leads me to this. What's the best comparison for one of the most efficient scoring point guard seasons of all time? If I absolutely had to pick a player comparison, it would be Mark Price at his prime. A little less talent around Kyrie, so the assists aren't quite as high. But as a rookie, Kyrie Irving was a more prolific scoring Mark Price with a bit less of the passing and a bit more of the rebounding. This should make Cleveland fans pretty happy, given that Mark Price is dreadfully underrated and -- in terms of peak production -- one of the 7 best point guards the league has ever seen. This should also make Cleveland fans pretty happy because, you know, KYRIE IRVING WAS A ROOKIE LAST SEASON.

... Man, I love Kyrie.

• • •

QUESTION #10: Assuming Nash deal goes as proposed, how do Nets/Knicks stack up against Miami? Expectation wise? Salary wise? Your thoughts? Also: These Nets/Knicks deals have to make Miami look like geniuses from a Salary/Skill ratio, right? from @netgregory

Whoooo boy. This is gonna be a big one. So, the deal he's referring to is the just-broken prospective Nash sign-and-trade between the Knicks and the Suns. The Suns would receive Toney Douglas and Iman Shumpert, while the Knicks would recieve Steve Nash on a 3-year $30 million dollar deal. Steve Nash is 38 years old -- the deal will take him to his 41st birthday. Which is crazy. But from a broader perspective, there are three main things to think about when you consider how New York's two teams match up with the reigning champions. They are as follows.

• Who's going to defend LeBron? In the case of the Knicks, the answer is complicated. Before Shumpert went out, there were some possessions where Shump cross-matched LeBron. If I remember right, he did OK. That option is gone if the Knicks succeed in landing Nash, but it's worth noting that it'd probably be gone anyway. Shump is coming off a deadly knee injury that's going to (most likely) linger for at least a season -- if we're thinking simply about 2013, Shump's absence probably won't hurt the club all that much. He was going to be absent for a while anyway. But the Knicks DO have Chandler, who can defend LeBron when he drives -- the Nets can put Gerald Wallace on LeBron individually to help make LeBron's spot-up shots a bit harder, but LeBron's forays to the rim will be absolutely impossible for the Nets to stop with a Teletovic/Lopez front line. I'd say that Chandler's presence at making his drives harder (thus forcing him into more long range shooting) would make the Knicks a better defensive team on LeBron than the Nets. But they're both going to be pretty helpless to stop him.

• Assuming LeBron and Wade stifle the team's two best scoring options, who's going to score? Again, both teams don't rate out particularly well, here. The Knicks will -- assuming Melo and Nash are having trouble scoring -- be reliant on Chandler and Stoudemire to create offense. If Deron and Johnson are being stifled, the Nets will rely on Brook Lopez and Wallace to create for themselves. One thing that Sebastian Pruiti pointed out the other day -- and it's a fantastic point -- is that Teletovic has a somewhat slow release on his shot. Because of that, defenders in the NBA are most likely going to be able to double off of him and pressure Lopez. The addition of Johnson and Wallace will help against most teams, and it will make their offense significantly better -- but against the Heat, where they have two lockdown defenders that can switch onto JJ and Deron to a lot of success, that may leave Teletovic's man free to help onto Lopez off Teletovic knowing that his release is slow enough for them to get back into position and still cover his shot. So against Miami, I'd think Lopez will see about as many doubles as he has the last few years. Which means massive inefficiency from a scoring standpoint. At least for next year, I think the Nash-Chandler connection would help the Knicks come out on top in this matchup relative to the Nets. Barely, though. And if Crash has a bounce-back year, the Nets are going to be better at this. (Both will be pretty bad though.)

• Who wins the board battle? Miami was not a great rebounding team last year, and one of the few places they found themselves below-average was as an offensive rebounding team. Teams with top rebounding centers tended to give the Heat more trouble than they perhaps expected, including the Magic, the Celtics, and the Lakers. In the case of the Nets, they have superior rebounders at every non-guard position -- Deron, Johnson, and Wallace are all fantastic rebounders for their size. Lopez and Teletovic, though? Lopez is one of the worst rebounding centers in the league, and Teletovic was only able to average about 6 boards per 36 minutes in the Euroleague -- that's not a good sign. Chandler is a great rebounding center, but Amare is relatively poor and without Fields the Knicks are probably going to be sporting below-average rebounding players in three of their five positions. Because of the fact that I could see Chandler outrebounding Lopez and Teletovic BY HIMSELF, I'll give it to the Knicks -- but don't be surprised if the superior guard/forward rebounding from the Nets makes them a better rebounding team.

So, in sum, I'd say the Knicks match up slightly better against Miami. But only slightly -- these are all close between the Nets and the Knicks, and they're also all pretty atrocious matchups for both clubs. The Heat don't just outclass both these teams from a talent standpoint, they also match up pretty damn well with both of them. Which leads me to the next question from this set -- salaries and expectations. The Heat are in a really bad salary position two years from now -- it's very likely that both LeBron and Bosh will exercise their early termination options on their contracts and get the last max 4-5 year deal they'll get in their careers. Which means that if the Heat want to get better, they really need to hope they can attract players this offseason and next offseason -- two offseasons from now, even if they resign both LeBron and Bosh, resigning them will make them ineligible for most of the useful exceptions.

The Knicks and the Nets, though? They're in a worse spot. Neither team will have any options whatsoever to really remake their roster in an intelligent way. The weaknesses they show in the next two seasons will be almost impossible to allay, and that's what makes their position especially poor. Neither of these teams, as constructed, can really compete for a title. They're essentially in the same position as the 2009-2012 Atlanta Hawks. Their ceiling is a somewhat entertaining team to be made second-round fodder by Indiana, Miami, or Chicago. That's it. That's their ceiling. And they've put together a roster with absolutely no flexibility or avenues for improvement. They basically just need to hope every single man on the roster makes a quantum leap while their coaches suddenly become the next coming of Popovich. Both of these teams should be entertaining. The Knicks will be a Nash-led offense with a Chandler-backed defense, and that should be good for 4-6 in the east. The Nets have a chance to be one of the best offenses in the league, although their defense will most likely be bottom-10 -- so they'll be 5-8 seed in the east. But do they get better? Do they compete for a title? Not really. And while I eagerly await watching these teams next year, I wonder if mortgaging your future like that is really a good idea on their part.

I don't think so. But you're welcome to disagree.

• • •

QUESTION #11: How awesome would a Kyrie/Harden backcourt be? How much should the Cavs give up to try and get him? from @sstewart1617

It'd be pretty awesome. With Kyrie, Harden could play to his strengths a lot more -- as a cutter, as a spot-up three man, and as a general pressure-salvo to keep the defense honest on the team's star. I've been saying for a while that the Cavs should be trying really hard to trade for Harden. Essentially everything but Kyrie should be on the table -- as much as I love Varejao, he's essentially the perfect trade piece for a deal like this, because he's an underpaid-relative-to-his-production top-6 center with the ability to play PF or C depending on the matchup. He's exactly what the Thunder need. A package of something like Waiters+Varejao+Gee+Thompson for Harden would be a lot to give up for the Cavs, but it's probably what the Thunder would want to make the deal happen. Especially if it happens post-extension. Still. I think the Cavs should have Presti on speed-dial -- a Kyrie/Harden backcourt would be immediately the best backcourt in the league, and if you can manage to keep a semblance of the Cavs' front line, that's a top 4 team in the East with the potential to get even better.

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QUESTION #12: Are offenses actually more efficient when they feature a "true" starting point guard instead of a score-first point guard? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Tim sent in a bevy of great questions, which will make up our next three. This is the first of them, and it raises a good point. Many commentators get a tad salty when discussing so-called "score-first" point guards -- the conventional wisdom, as most know, is that offenses get significantly better when you're using a "true" or "pure" point guard that defers more than he scores. At least, that's the conventional wisdom. Does it still hold true? To answer this, I'm going to look at the last two years of offenses.

I will name off the 5 "purest" starting point guards in the league in that year according to PPR -- Pure Point Rating, a statistic that measures how pure a point guard is from a passing/turnover perspective -- and how their offense ranked in the league that year. This doesn't necessarily differentiate a scoring point guard from a passing point guard, but in general, the more possessions you use on offense the higher your turnovers are going to be. Thus, this is a decent pastiche for a short back-of-the-envelope analysis. Let's get the table together.

The answer? Not really. Conventional wisdom seems pretty incorrect, here -- in 2011, the offenses helmed by the top five "purest" point guards actually did worse than the rest of the league. In 2012, they did better on average, but that's only because Tony Parker was considered one of the five purest point guards that year due to a dearth of pure point guards -- most would consider tony a scoring point, and if you take the Spurs #1 ranked offense out of that fivesome, once again do the "pure point offenses" lose out to the field. So to answer your question? No. Offenses aren't more efficient when they feature a "true" starting point guard. At least not recently.

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QUESTION #13: How much has Manu Ginobili declined in the last 3 seasons? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

This is pretty easy -- not much at all. Last season, Manu put in one of the most efficient seasons of his career -- he played limited minutes due to the injury woes, but put up per-36 averages of 20-5-7 on percentages close to the god-tier 50-40-90 mark (53-41-87). The season before, Manu played more minutes than he'd ever played before and averaged a per-36 mark of... wait for it... 21-4-6. And the season before that, when he was up for a new contract? Manu put up a per-36 mark of (stop me if you've heard this before)... 21-5-6. Manu's minutes have been fluctuating wildly these last few years as Pop tries to find the best mix between too much and too little, but one thing is certain. There's been no indication of a dropoff or a decline so far, despite the injuries. He's been playing above his career averages and playing his hardest. As he does. Chances are high he can put together at least one or two more seasons where he produces at a best-in-class level for his position, albeit in limited minutes.

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QUESTION #14: Wouldn't the Lakers be better off to trade Kobe Bryant and keep both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Sort of a sacrilegious question, but I'll bite. It really depends on the package. While Pau/Bynum is a great big-man pairing, Pau is playing slightly out of position as the big forward and might be better suited to play center going forward. But if a Kobe trade would theoretically bring in a few decent wings, a solid point guard, and a backup big man that can eat some of Pau's minutes? This sort of a trade would probably bring more value to the Lakers in the long run, especially considering that Kobe HAS shown signs of decline these last two years (unlike, funny enough, Manu -- Manu's older than Kobe, but his minutes have been managed better by Pop than by Phil/Brown/Kobe himself, and as a result, he's stayed significantly more efficient than Kobe).

It's unlikely Kobe (or anyone) has a "bounce back" season after the age of 30, so if the Lakers could move him for a big package of young prospects and solid guys, it's probable they'd win the deal. Problem is, Kobe has a no-trade clause and a huge trade kicker (if I remember right). So... no, that wouldn't happen. Even if they could get Kobe to agree to a trade, Kobe wouldn't let them do it if they were leaving another team's cupboard bare. So it really, really isn't going to happen. And even a Pau trade is rather difficult -- Pau is a 31-year-old that's declined quite a bit the last few years, and he has a massive trade kicker that makes him really hard to move. But if the Lakers really want to improve to a title-contending level, that's probably what they're going to need to do.

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QUESTION #15: I did a rough statistical analysis of Kawhi Leonard's rookie season and his actual & per36 #s were very similar to Danny Granger's rookie year, which surprised me a bit. Do you think Granger's production since then is a good expectation for Kawhi going forward? from @ChattJacket20

This is an interesting question. I've thought pretty long and hard about what to expect from Kawhi going forward, and my conclusion was relatively similar -- going forward, I think it's reasonable for Spurs fans to expect Kawhi to eventually evolve into a player something in-between Danny Granger and Gerald Wallace on the offensive end. If he focuses more on developing his offensive creation game and his scoring, he could be a 20 PPG type player -- if he focuses more on developing within the team concept and focusing on his rebounding, he could develop into a Gerald Wallace type. On defense, he'll almost certainly be superior to Danny Granger, and comparable to Crash -- the question is what he choses to focus on out of the scoring/tertiary stat dimension. I think Granger's a good comparable, though it's sort of like one out of a series of 3 or 4 possibilities.

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QUESTION #16: Dwight said he didn't want to play second fiddle to Kobe. If he does get traded to the Nets... is he the 2nd banana or the 3rd banana? from @afa_moritz

Depends on how willing Joe Johnson is to defer. Johnson has been the first option on every team he's been on since Phoenix, and he left Phoenix partly because he wanted to be "that guy." The Hawks rather explicitly showed that he's not. If the Nets were to most efficiently use their pieces, I'd probably have them playing inside-out with Deron playing a sort of high-power Hedo Turkoglu role and Joe Johnson spotting up to play the Rashard role on offense -- with that kind of a setup, they could probably be one of the 4 or 5 best offenses in the league, and Dwight could carry them to becoming a top 10 defensive team. More likely, though, the ball would stay in Deron's hands far too much, Joe Johnson would be their secondary option, and Dwight would be playing off-ball in almost every situation despite being one of the most dominant post options in the league.

I don't think Avery Johnson is a good enough tactician to put together a 2009 Magic-esque offense, even with pieces like that -- more likely see him going the Mike Woodson or Paul Westphal route of scarcely planned offenses that mostly just coast on the talent of their perimeter players. As you might've noticed, I think Dwight might be a bit wasted under Avery. Especially with Joe. We'd have to see, and it's possible the Nets hire a few offensive guys who can figure out a scheme and build a Stan Van Gundy-style offense. But I have a sinking feeling the Nets would be a pretty awful place for Dwight to land, at least in terms of how that team as composed would utilize him. I could be wrong, though. Also, just to point out -- yes, Dwight wants to be the 1st option. If he leaves the Magic, it's unlikely to happen.

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QUESTION #17: How will discovery of the Higgs Boson change the way basketball is played? from @deimachy

For a few years, it won't. But the Spurs will pick it up in a stash pick, and in 5 years, it'll come over from Europe and wreck havoc on the game. Whoops, sorry, just spoiled the end of the next lockout. I think the spoiler alerts mean it's time to wrap this up. Thanks for the great questions, ladies and gents. We'll do this again in a month or two, when the season's a bit closer. Keep chill.

• • •

So, as with last time, there are a few ways to submit questions. First, you could tweet me at @docrostov. Second, you could simply post them on twitter with the hashtag #gothicginobili. Third, you could leave a question in the comments. I'll be answering questions until I decide to make dinner. So ask away, friends.

"They didn't let me push them around." could be a summary of Dwight's plea to the NBPA. Twisted, turned and hyperbolized, Dwight came out accusing the Magic of blackmail, while another collective "LOL" and "WUT" descended upon the twitterverse. Had this been the pre-Web 2.0 Dark Ages, the editors would've probably double-checked the story before printing it in tomorrow's news. But today, as information becomes moot with every minute, those with sources have no such restraint. They'll throw whatever their sources tell them out to the masses, which will be subsequently reposted, reinterpreted in a thousand of ways.

And as the story of Dwightmare 2: Electric Boogaloo unfolded, I wanted to write an instant reaction, just as many others. Because waiting? That means that the interest goes dry. Waiting means that people probably already said what you've wanted to say independently. Fast wins, and when a few days later something changes, you always have an excuse for your too-quick reaction post.

All things considered, I've narrowly avoided that.

• • •

Now that a bit of the fog of war has cleared, we know one thing. He never said "blackmail". And while it might be an unimportant detail in the big picture of his treatment of Orlando, it's also a tweak to his image. Still egoistic, but not insane. Still a child, but not as annoying. The rationality of his argument, the intent of his actions seemed to hinge, at least to me, on that one word. Suddenly, my whole perception changed; he went to get advice, rather than to blithely attack the Orlando Magic. He was just looking for a way out of this situation, rather than doing stuff best described as "literally insane." What's the truth? How should I know? Unless Dwight Howard is our source, it's all speculation.

All that said, Dwight remains our villain. He gave Orlando hope just because he didn't want to be shipped out anywhere else but to New Jersey. He could've left in Free Agency, yeah. But a 5-year contract was -- evidently -- just as important as reaching the promised land. It's really hard to empathize with an annoying dude earning millions of dollars, especially when he's acting like a spoiled brat. Still, I don't really feel significant anger towards Dwight. Not as much as pity.

Dwight is a part of a rare (and dying) breed in the NBA. He's a superstar drafted out of high school, he's been a superstar since day 1, and he's probably going to be a superstar when he retires. As I mentioned in my recent LeBron James piece, while a lot of people probably think that it's fun to earn millions at the tender age of 18 (and doing it through the sport they love, too!)... I don't really think so. Not with the scrutiny of today's sports world. It's much akin to a life of a Hollywood celebrity, only they don't get death threats for missing free throws instead of passing on a role in a deranged fan's favorite reboot. While these celebrities fall into addiction and depression as the result of their fame, NBA players generally don't. Maybe it's because they're famous at a different level, or in a different way, or maybe because they don't spend their lives having to pretend someone that they're not. I don't know. But for the most part, NBA players deal with it.

So, here's Dwight, an 18-year-old baller, making decisions. These are decisions that change his life. I remember when everyone around me told me that my IB Diploma exams could ruin my life. I can't even imagine what a choice between going to college and going pro must've been like, even if it seemed easy on the outside. After all, everyone in his big family wants a piece of the cake he'd bring home. From there, it's just more and more people banking their hopes on him, some financially, others in a fan-capacity, but whatever it is, it's always pressure. And it's not just Dwight*.

* I'm not trying to suggest that the early-entry is to blame for Dwight's behaviour. This happens to one-and-doners, two-and-throughers, juniors and seniors all. It's just that it seems to me that college is a very good adjustment period for the fame to "kick in", if you will, an adjustment period that Dwight, LeBron, Kobe and others never had. They were thrown into the deep waters straight away, and that's not all that easy, I feel.

• • •

I've already discussed LeBron, noting how the decision and a post-heartbrake outburst were the biggest gaffes of his career thus far. One of them, I'd always felt, was an unintentional faux pais. I doubt that LeBron, with all his faults, would want to rub in the faces of Cleveland. Or maybe he did. The conference seemed to me to be the plea of a frustrated man, and beneath the venom, there was a snippet of truth. Almost everyone was surviving a moment of Schadenfreude at the expense of one man that never really wronged us, but simply pissed us off by teaming up with some other good players.

(It's only wrong if you're younger than 30, mind you.)

And LeBron's not the only one struggling with his own ego, Kobe had a Battle Royale with Shaq and more than a fair share of outbursts before he matured, while Kevin Garnett seemed to focus all that negative energy into his on-court persona. In Dwight's case it's not an outburst, or a weird on court persona. It's not a single gaffe or a big P.R. misstep. It's something much more fitting his goofy charm -- it's this spoilt, child-like conviction to get what he wants no matter the cost. When someone stops him from doing so, he seems to play the victim, losing sight of rationality.

And in all that? Dwight just seems lost. Just like it took time, mass hatred, and a myriad of defeats for LeBron to develop, Dwight needs more time. He's a victim of fame, as much as he is a villain. He will be hated by Magic fans, and people who hate to see behaviour like this, and (in time) Dwight will be loved by the franchise he commits to. And in time, he'll realize what he's done wrong, and rather than beg forgiveness, take a lesson for the next time he'll be in a similar situation. Just like a regular human being, which must be said. After all, think of how often we forget, that these marvels of athleticism and skill we observe through our magical machines, are people just as much as we are.

So no, I don't hate Dwight, and neither should you. You may dislike what he does, or his approach, but in the end, we should cut him some slack. Not despite him being a famous basketball star earning millions of dollars. Because of it.

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Stealth reminder from Aaron: tomorrow, we'll be doing a fourth-of-July Statistical Q&A. For those wondering what those are, check the first installment of the series. General discussion topics will be the cap, free agency, and next season's predictions. These Q&A sessions are only as good as the questions we get, so we hope everyone comes up with some great ones. You can start sending questions today on twitter -- just send them to @docrostov or with the #gothicginobili hashtag. See you tomorrow!