ESPN NBA

• It's near impossible to stop Chris Paul, but the trend around the league is to use a long, athletic swingman to smother the 6-foot point guard. That tactic has been effective for Golden State and Dallas, which used Dominic McGuire and Shawn Marion, respectively, to slow down Paul and the Clippers. But after reading this excellent post (with a great video of Paul discussing how he attacks taller players), I'm thinking that it takes more than one tall guy with quick feet to shut down CP3.
• Something new on Jeremy Lin: a stereotype scholar explains how racial stereotypes worked both for and against the Knicks point guard.
• Unexpected: John Hollinger says the Knicks are playing better defense when DPOY candidate Tyson Chandler sits. Expected: This has a lot to do with Chandler sharing the court with Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire. (Insider)
• Brandon Jennings has the foot speed to be a disruptive defender, but coach Scott Skiles would like to see him be a bit more conservative: “The thing that Brandon always has to battle is going for a steal, 'cause he can steal the ball. He had [Lou Williams] all bottled up, six, five left on the shot clock and he went for a steal, Lou went to his right hand and shot a dotted line jump shot. He’s still working on it, he’s just got to battle the urge to gamble when it’s just keep my man in front of me.”
• Is Chris Bosh better than LeBron James or Dwyane Wade? No. But he may be less dispensable to the Heat's offense. Brian Windhorst reports that Chris Bosh will return to the Heat lineup tonight after missing three games (two of them losses) following the death of his grandmother.
• The Raptors are fighting hard for new coach Dwane Casey, but it's still important that they lose their fair share of games in order to nab a high lottery pick. So, according to Prospect of Raptors Republic, last night was a perfect game: "The Raptors were outmatched, undermanned, but still somehow managed to put in a scrappy effort and almost won the game, pleasing tank nation while still giving the home fans a reason to show up."
• D.J. Foster on why the Clippers should be nervous about the postseason:"The best teams in the league force you to pick your poison, but the Clippers don’t really do that — Paul just administers the poison on his own and kills you himself. Eventually though, teams will start doubling Paul as soon as he crosses half court. We’ve seen it before in New Orleans — it’s not that crazy of a thought. They’ll get the ball out of his hands, and if they fail at that, they’ll collapse on him as soon as he moves towards the rim. Defenses will make anyone other than Paul beat them. A good portion of the time Paul will still beat them, but at times it will come down to things like this: Can Blake Griffin hit a mid-range jumper? Can Caron Butler hit the open 3 from the corner? Can Randy Foye make the right decision?
• Jan Vesely wants in the dunk contest. Anyone whose nickname is "Air Wolf" gets my blessing.
• Evan Turner's first start of the season didn't go so well. Should he be starting at all?
• For GQ, Bethlehem Shoals writes that fans give Lamar Odom the benefit of the doubt because he's never been shy about showing an emotional vulnerability that is unusual for professional athletes, but pretty common in most humans.
• The Charlotte Bobcats are making a legitimate run at being the worst team of all time. Related: Boris Diaw remains hopelessly out of shape, which may mean he's consuming calories equivalent to 200 White Castle burgers a week.
• Zach Lowe takes on the impossible task of quantifying Rajon Rondo's trade value.
• Plenty of people want to see Steve Nash get traded to a contender. But moving Robin Lopez might be more beneficial to the Suns.
• Despite missing Zach Randolph all season, the Grizzlies lurk as a sleeper to once again make a run in the Western Conference playoffs. But to do so, should they make a trade before the deadline?
• A lot has already happened since the All-Star break. Here's a funny video recap of it all (and some made up stuff, too).

(The Dallas Mavericks host the Los Angeles Lakers, Wednesday at 9:30 ET on ESPN)

Last month, the Lakers scored a season-low 73 points, but still managed to beat the Mavericks, 73-70. Although 73 points is low for the Lakers, their offense has struggled all season to score.

Last season, the Lakers averaged 101.5 points on 94 possessions per game. This season, they rank 22nd in the league in scoring (93.3 PPG) even though they are averaging 93 possessions per game.

The Lakers’ 102-90 loss on Sunday against the Phoenix Suns typified their offensive struggles, especially behind the arc. They shot 3-of-18 on 3-point attempts, and for the season the Lakers are shooting 30.1 percent from 3-point range -- down more than 5 percent from last season.

They shot 1-of-16 (6.3 percent) on 3-point attempts in a road loss to the Kings on Dec. 26, and failed to make a 3-pointer on 11 attempts in a road loss at Portland on Jan. 5. It was the first time Los Angeles failed to make a 3-point shot in a game since Nov. 16, 2003 against the Miami Heat.

Derek Fisher and Metta World Peace are posting career-low percentages on 3-point attempts, and Kobe Bryant, Steve Blake and Matt Barnes are shooting below their career marks as well.

Beyond their shooting struggles, the Lakers have not been able to run this season. They have the fewest transition points (330) in the league and average only 10.3 transition points per game. Only 8.6 percent of the Lakers’ plays have come in transition this season, second-fewest in the league behind the Orlando Magic.

Bench production has been another area of concern after the departures of Lamar Odom (14.4 PPG last season) and Shannon Brown (8.8 PPG last season). The Lakers have the fewest bench points in the NBA this season, 21.5 bench points per game, compared with 28.2 last season.

All of the Lakers’ offensive struggles have been magnified in road games where they are 5-11 this season, compared with 14-2 at the Staples Center.

Chris Bosh had the magic touch … again.

Bosh may only be a 29 percent 3-point shooter for his career, but there’s something about late-game 3-pointers that suits him well. On a night in which the Heat were without both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Bosh’s game-tying 3-pointer was the biggest shot in the Heat’s eventual triple-overtime win.

Since the start of the 2007 season, Bosh is now 6-for-10 from long range in the last 10 seconds of the 4th quarter/overtime of a tie or one-possession game.

That was one of a few remarkable stats from a remarkable game, in which the Heat outlasted the Atlanta Hawks.

Some of the others from this game included:

• The Hawks were shut out in the third overtime. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, this was the first game since the advent of the shot clock in the 1954-1955 season that a team went scoreless in the third overtime of a game or later.

• In 312 minutes last season without both Dwyane Wade and LeBron James on the floor, the Heat were outscored by 27 points. In 90 minutes so far this season, the Heat have outscored opponents by 12, including the seven-point edge in Thursday’s victory.

• The Heat outscored the Hawks by 24 points with Mario Chalmers on the floor. In eight games this season, Chalmers is +109.

Elsewhere in the NBA

Mavericks can’t shoot straight
The Mavericks went 1-19 from 3-point range tonight against the Spurs. That was their worst 3-point shooting in franchise history in a game with more than 10 attempts.

Lamar Odom was once again held to single digits, finishing with 6 points on 3-10 shooting. Despite shooting just 3-for-10, he actually raised his field goal percentage for the season. Last year, Odom scored in double figures in all but one of his first eight games.

Westphal out in Sacramento
Paul Westphal was fired by the Sacramento Kings just seven games into the season.

That's tied for the second-quickest firing since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976-1977.

The Kings can only hope to get the same turnaround as the 1977-78 Philadelphia 76ers, who replaced Gene Shue with Billy Cunningham six games into the season, a year after reaching the NBA Finals.

The team went 53-23 the rest of the way and Cunningham led the Sixers to eight straight playoff appearances and the 1983 NBA title.

Last year Jason Terry had the audacity to get the Larry O’Brien Trophy etched into bicep.

Last year Tyson Chandler and assistant coach Dwane Casey elevated the Dallas defense to elite levels.

Last year Dallas raced to a blistering 24-5 record before stumbling over Dirk Nowtizki’s twisted knee and limping into the playoffs with a three seed.

Last year the Dallas Mavericks made fools of those who scoffed at the notion of the Mavericks escaping a first round matchup with the feisty and physical Portland Trailblazers.

This year Jason Terry can touch the real life Larry whenever he chooses.

This year Tyson Chandler and Dwane Casey are gone--Chandler for a fat check in the big city and Casey for a long overdue chance to coach his own team.

This year Dallas is 0-2, spanked twice by playoff teams, and faces another hungry foe in the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight.

This year Dallas might not make the playoffs.

---------

NBA Champions often return from the offseason without the sense of urgency and all-consuming drive that took them to the top. Pat Riley called it “the disease of more.” His theory was that after winning a ring, the ultimate team accomplishment, players tend to look inward to their own goals of more playing time, more shots and more money.

It’s always tricky to speculate on the psyche of players thousands of miles away, but even from farflung couches one can see that this Mavericks squad has a severe and perhaps untreatable case of the disease of less--less talent and less belief. With little practice time and a bunch of new players, the Mavericks also have less time to right the ship.

Despite how devotedly Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Jason Kidd bail out the the boat, water will continue to flood the hull.

Riley’s theory is conveniently player-focused. It wasn’t his fault that the players he coached or signed couldn’t muster the requisite competitive zeal. But what is happening in Dallas is a direct result of front office personnel decisions that have almost nothing to do with this season or even last season.

For example Tyson Chandler had the best offensive rating in the NBA during last season’s regular season and playoffs. Simply put: when Chandler was on the court, the Mavericks scored more points per possession than did any other line up on any other team. As you might expect, Dallas’s most consistent defensive lineups also included Chandler.

Was $14.5 million per year over four years too high a price to keep a 29 year old center with 10 years on his injury prone legs? Maybe not, if the goal is to make a great run at winning again this year.

What about José Juan Barea, DeShawn Stevenson and Caron Butler--three overpriced (well, not Stevenson) but useful wing players Dallas let walk for nothing. On-court chemistry was an important part of what made Dallas special last year, but keep in mind that the graves of former champions are dug with imprudent signings of replacement value players.

These moves make perfect sense if the off-season goal isn’t to reload for a repeat run at a ring but to scrub your cap sheet in hopes of landing Dwight Howard or Deron Williams in 2012.

That’s probably a wise decision. Williams grew up in Dallas and Howard scribbled the Mavs on his shortlist of places he’d like to play. Nowitzki needs a stud to play with in the twilight of his career, and both would be a fantastic compliment to the sweet-shooting big man. Even if neither ever wear a Maverick uniform, Dallas will still have about $25 mil to bring in better talent next year.

But think about how these decisions must appear to players like Jason Kidd and Lamar Odom.

Kidd is still capable but has spent more time playing against some of the other coaches in the league than he has against the likes of Derrick Rose. He’s old and he’s aware that he doesn’t have many more seasons left. Now he’s toiling in what is in effect a stop-gap season.

Odom went from a perennial contender that always made the big move to put itself in finals contention to a team that is obviously renting him for one season to free up cap space. He’s gone from 6th Man of the Year and rotation player for the league’s best franchise to a player whose primary value is that you don’t have to pay him for more than one year.

Even Nowitzki, he of tireless work ethic, mentioned that his motivation was down following the euphoria of his brilliant playoff run and subsequent slog at the Euros.

In their first two games of the season, the Mavericks’ characteristically sharp passing and incisive offense haven’t just been rusty, but dull.

It’s not possible to quantify spirit, but the their struggles so far are nothing so esoteric as “wanting it.” They just don’t have as many good players and this happened on purpose.

The message that Mark Cuban has been trying to spin is that the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was the impetus for him gutting Mavericks roster. He told Dallas radio that “this is 100 percent about the CBA and understanding the impact it will have on the market."

That may be true, and it may very well be the smart play. But the the message to the entire team and coaching staff was “do your best this year, but your immediate success isn’t really our main concern.”

When, rightly or wrongly, the management views the current season as an afterthought, it must be difficult to muster the focus and passion that make last year’s Mavericks so special.

Beckley Mason is the founder of HoopSpeak. You can follow him on Twitter at @BeckleyMason.

The pick-and-roll is one of the most basic and difficult plays to defend in basketball. It’s also an accurate litmus test for how well-coached and well-practiced a defense is. In the NBA, if you can consistently stymie your opponent’s pick-and-roll attack, you can win a ton of games. Case in point: The Lakers are 0-2 in part because their offense is a mess, and in part because they are having real difficulty defending the pick-and-roll.

Thus far this year Los Angeles is surrendering a generous 1.32 points per possession (PPP) to the ballhandler in the pick-and-roll. You might remember Chris Paul and J.J. Barea eviscerating the Laker big men (no thanks to Derek Fisher) in last year’s playoffs, but LA actually defended pick-and-roll ballhandlers well over the course of the 2010-11 season (.74 points per possession allowed). That was not the case Monday night, when Marcus Thornton, Jimmer Fredette and Isaiah Thomas used ball screens to routinely find open jump shots and lanes to the paint.

Defending the pick-and-roll is so tricky because it demands not only the right personnel, but a disciplined scheme. Indeed it takes better timing and orchestration to defend the pick-and-roll than it does to score out of it. Thornton has been shooting pull-up jump shots off of ball screens for a decade. Mike Brown and Pau Gasol just met.

The Lakers are integrating a number of new rotation players and a coach charged with replacing an icon. Growing pains on both sides of the ball are to be expected, especially with a shortened preseason and training camp. But L.A. should take heart knowing that the return of Andrew Bynum should make solving these long-term challenges much simpler.

Players who can protect the rim and also possess the foot speed to show and recover on pick-and-rolls are an incredibly rare and valuable commodity. Kevin Garnett is the master at this maneuver. His fundamentals are flawless: he barks out orders when a screener approaches then shows great lateral quickness to cut off the ballhandler before retreating like a mad man into the paint with his hands high in order to obscure passing angles to secondary options.

The Celtics’ famous defense is built around their big men’s ability to contain the ball on the pick-and-roll, but it takes a special athlete and smart game planning to do that.

The Lakers big men lack that elite quickness, but historically they’ve more than made up for a deficit in speed with a surplus of size. Though departed 6-10 forward Lamar Odom had the requisite quick feet, the real catalyst of the Lakers pick-and-roll defense has been the pairing of Gasol and Bynum. The specific luxury of clogging the lane with an active 7-footer while the other shows on the screen and roll is why the Lakers were an elite defense last season.

The presence of that big man, whether it’s Bynum or Gasol, sinking back into the paint to pick up the roll man allowed the Lakers' other big men to be more aggressive on ball screens. Odom’s absence hurts, but Josh McRoberts is a similar combination of quick feet and long arms. Bynum, on the other hand, is irreplaceable.

Of course it’s not all up to the man defending the screener. That on-ball defender must also help by forcing the offensive player a certain direction and then slithering around the screen to recover to the ballhandler. Fisher is in his 16th NBA season and spends his evenings defending players who hadn’t yet learned what a pick-and-roll was when Fisher entered the league. Though backup point guard Steve Blake is no Tony Allen, he is more suited to harassing opposing point guards than Fisher. Neither is a strong defender, but both are heady and active enough to be adequate when paired with a smart and coherent system.

But the Lakers' defensive system is still very much a work in progress. While the Clippers ran successful Blake Griffin and Chris Paul pick-and-rolls while the other three Clips stood around aimlessly, defending the pick-and-roll always demands the awareness and discipline of five players. And that means it takes practice and conditioning to do it wel l-- two things that are in short supply this early in the season. But Brown is up to the task. In Cleveland he coached a top defensive team that gave up only .81 PPP to pick-and-roll ballhandlers despite Shaquille O’Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas -- two of the league’s least reliable away-from-the-basket defenders -- lurching about on defense like enormous zombies for long stretches every game.

Brown needs a chance to ingrain his system, that will take time -- perhaps time the Lakers don’t have given this season's abbreviated practice schedule. But more than anything, L.A. needs Andrew Bynum back. That will happen starting Saturday against the Denver Nuggets. Until the Lakers have control of Brown’s system, they can at least control the paint with sheer size.

The unknown factors in the Chris Paul trade saga remain a mystery. Smart people are still asking the right questions, but we still don't know what governed the decision to veto a three-way trade between the Hornets, Lakers and Rockets, then sign off on a package from the Clippers.

We don't know to what extent that first deal was agreed upon by front office principals in New Orleans, Houston and Los Angeles. We don't know whether the subsequent rejection of that trade for "basketball reasons" was just that -- a statement about the contents of the package, or whether the league had ulterior motives like throwing a bone to a segment of owners or listening to the wishes of a potential buyer.

What few have asked is why the Hornets felt the dire need to trade Chris Paul in the first place, a question Mavericks owner Mark Cuban addressed over the weekend in an interview with TMZ:

[W]e went through a long lockout, and one of the things we were trying to gain was that small-market teams could have confidence they could keep their star players ... There would be enough financial incentives for them to stay with the incumbent team. And within two weeks of the new collective bargaining agreement, the smallest-market team, which is owned by the NBA, threw up their hands and said, ‘We can’t keep our star player.’ So it’s not about Chris Paul. It’s more about the fact that the NBA kind of gave up on the CBA before giving it a chance. And to me, that made them kind of hypocritical -- or very hypocritical -- which didn’t sit too well with me...

... We had a lockout. What was the purpose of the lockout? One of the goals of the lockout was to have more parity. With free agency, players are always allowed to choose wherever they want to go, but they have to make a decision. Do they want to stay with their existing teams and make the most money, or leave on their own terms to wherever they want to go with cap room and take less money? My personal belief is 90 percent of the time players are going to take the greater money, which meant that Chris Paul could've, would've -- or any star player could've, would've -- wanted to stay in the smaller market. And you’ve got other teams that are making that conscious decision to stick it out like Orlando is doing. But of all the teams not sticking it out, you would think the team owned by the NBA and run by the commissioner would be the first to stick it out, and they weren’t. And to me, it’s hypocritical, and threw a lot of us under the bus.

Cuban argues that a team owned by the NBA should've been faithful to the spirit of a collective bargaining agreement that makes superstars choose between destination and treasure. Had Chris Paul opted out of the final year of his contract with New Orleans and chosen the Lakers, then so be it. Paul would've had to settle for only $75.8 million over four seasons rather than the $100.2 million over five seasons he could've earned only with the Hornets.

Critics of Cuban's argument would say that an unwillingness to trade Paul could mean the Hornets would be stuck with nothing in return.

But is nothing really so bad?

Wasn't the initial proposal -- which would've netted the Hornets Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Lamar Odom and Goran Dragic -- rejected because it would've made the Hornets too competitive? The Hornets would've been consigned to the NBA's middle class, not competitive enough to win anything meaningful, but not bad enough to secure a future superstar with a high draft pick. While treading water, the Hornets would be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars, even if those contracts are of relatively fair value, which they are.

In contrast, the Clippers delivered a likely Top 10 pick, along with an expiring deal for an All-Star center, a prolific young scorer and a forward prospect. Nevermind that the center won't be around next season, the scorer might not want to stick around and the prospect may or may not amount to anything. In fact, for teams in rebuilding mode, success presents serious problems. As Ethan Sherwood Strauss wrote last week at HoopSpeak, why pay to be competitive if you can tank for less?

Much of the appeal in this Clippers-Hornets trade is derived from how it makes the Hornets immediately, well, bad ... Obviously, Eric Gordon is a key get, but few observers believe he’ll take New Orleans to next year’s playoffs. And that’s the point. The Hornets will receive a high lottery selection to pair with Minnesota’s 2011 draft pick. A gutted team plus lotto hope makes for a more enticing situation than the playoff contention troika of Luis Scola, Lamar Odom, and Kevin Martin.

By shepherding this particular trade through, the commissioner is tacitly–maybe even overtly–singing a grand, bellowing ode to the glories of tanking. And he is quite correct, because ping pong balls determine so much.

This is why Orlando shouldn't worry too much about getting nothing in return for Howard -- and why New Orleans should flip Eric Gordon as soon as possible, lest he help them win 28 games and finish with the No. 9 or 10 pick.

Nuggets general manager Masai Ujiri deserves praise for engineering a strong deal when Carmelo Anthony declared he wanted out of Denver, but pull back for a second and consider what the future looks like for the Nuggets. Those nice assets accumulated in Anthony trade should, along with Nene, sentence the Nuggets to respectability. The team will be fun, likeable and utterly irrelevant on May 25, if not sooner. While the dregs of the league scout all the coveted incoming big men at the top of the draft board, Denver will troll the middle ranks of the first round.

It will be years before we can fairly judge whether the Nuggets would've been better off letting Anthony leave "for nothing," but if your goal is June basketball in Denver at the earliest possible moment, Top 5 picks and swaths of cap space for the foreseeable future might be preferable to Danilo Gallinari and a highly-compensated Nene, who is approaching 30. Nuggets fans won't have to cover their eyes, but they can probably forget about seeing tickets with holograms on them anytime soon.

When we learned last week of a Howard trade proposal that had Brook Lopez, Gerald Wallace, Jordan Farmar and a pick to Orlando, the early takeaway was that Orlando was getting the shaft. But the problem for Orlando wasn't that the deal was bad -- it's that it wasn't bad enough! The NBA is governed by a system that reserves its greatest rewards for abject failure, but tells teams striving to put a competitive product on the floor that it's wasting its time.

Think about the Houston Rockets for a second. While they had $40 million of annual salary tied up in two injured superstars, they continued to make wily deals, like offloading Rafer Alston for the Grizzlies' backup point guard, and stealing an Argentinian power forward from the Spurs for Vassilis Spanoulis. Kyle Lowry and Luis Scola have allowed the Rockets to remain competitive on a nightly basis -- and forever relegated to the middle of the first round of the NBA draft, where superstars are a once in a generation occurrence.

What do you do if you're the Rockets or the Hawks and have the talent in place to hang around the 45-win mark for the foreseeable future? Are you deluding yourself in a system with screwy disincentives and maddening inefficiencies? Are you better off conducting a fire sale and putting a sign at the arena gate apologizing for the mess while you remodel?

Mark Cuban is half right-half wrong. If the Hornets and/or the NBA made a mistake by dealing away Chris Paul, it isn't because they betrayed any tacit promise they owed to small-market owners (You want a promise? Get it in the form of a hard cap). It's because they acquired a player who has the potential to win basketball games and cost them lots of money next summer, two things that will work in opposition to getting atop the NBA draft board.

Orlando now finds itself in a similar situation with Howard. The two most desirable outcomes for the Magic are (1) figuring out how to retain Howard for the long term (2) putting themselves in the same position they were when they drafted Howard in 2004 -- 40 games under .500.

Offering him the most years at the most money is the only way to achieve No. 1. "Getting nothing in return for Howard" is the easiest way to get to No. 2.

But trading Howard for productive players is the sure-fire way to thwart both plans.

• Classmates of Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong-un, testify that the presumed successor in North Korea wasn't all that interested in politics when he was at school in Switzerland. What really got him going was basketball. "He worshipped basketball players in the NBA. A friend who visited his apartment at #10, Kirchstrasse, Liebefeld, recalls that Kim had a room filled with NBA-memorabilia. 'He proudly showed off photographs of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers. It is unclear where the pictures were taken. On at least one occasion, a car from the North Korean Embassy drove Pak Un to Paris to watch an NBA exhibition game,' the [Washington Post] said. In class, Pak Un was generally shy and awkward with girls, but he became a different person on basketball court, according to his classmates. 'A fiercely competitive player,' said classmate Nikola Kovacevic. 'He was very explosive. He could make things happen. He was the playmaker.'"
• Michael Pina of Red94 composes a stellar post on the psyche of trade bait. There are those, like Kevin Martin and Chauncey Billups, who take it a little personally. Others, like Lamar Odom, are driven to tears. Then there are Luis Scola, Rajon Rondo and Pau Gasol, who are able to convey detachment -- at least publicly.
• The Heat have pledged to switch up their offense this season by incorporating more fast-break attacks and putting more of a premium on spacing. Beckley Mason of HoopSpeak exchanges with a reader who explains what "the Invert" offense in lacrosse can teach us about defending the Heat.
• Charlie Widdoes of ClipperBlog feels the Clippers gave up too much for Chris Paul, and that staying the course with Eric Gordon and the salary flexibility that would've come with Chris Kaman's expiring contract was the right call.
• Aaron McGuire of Gothic Ginobili on the composition of the reigning champions in Dallas: "So where does that leave you? A short stint with a lineup where Lamar Odom is the primary ballhandler, employing Dirk and Marion as roll men with Delonte and Carter in the wings if the play goes sour? Does the team manage a point-by-committee sort of strategy? And who defends what? Dirk’s defense has gotten better over the years, but at this point Odom is essentially the best defensive talent in the Mavs’ big rotation. Do you cross-match Odom on the opposing center and hope he can draw them out of the paint? Do you keep Dirk at center and live with the terrifying defensive results? I really don’t know, and I’m not sure anyone else does either. And that’s part of what makes this Mavs team so interesting."
• Kris Humphries chalks up impressive numbers on the Wins Produced metric, prompting Andres Alvarez of Wages of Win to ask why the power forward remains unsigned.
• When Boris Diaw was growing up in France, his mom -- a former player -- ordered him not to join the throng of kids who'd storm the scorebook immediately after the game to tally their point totals.
• Watching Al Jefferson's deliberate but effective post game drives Zach Harper to thumbing through periodicals during live play, but Ricky Rubio and Derrick Williams are shiny!
• The amnesty deadline passed and Rashard Lewis is still a Wizard. Lewis is setting up house in Washington, where his daughter has enrolled at nearby Sidwell Friends, where the Obama girls attend school.
• Who would you rather be -- the Lakers or the Clippers?
• Kevin Durant's fans will scour North America for his backpack like it's an afikoman.

• Whither the franchise tag -- or designated player -- that was one of the major talking points last summer when a discussion of the next collective bargaining agreement was just getting underway? Zach Lowe of Point Forward revisits the idea, and looks at the repercussions of such a rule.
  
  My general feeling is that, no matter how much you incentivize a player to stay put with his existing team, it's still inordinately difficult to convince a guy to stay in a place he deems undesirable. As Lowe points out, eliminating the sign-and-trade and extend-and-trade will prevent suitors from manipulating the system so that they can offer a defector more money and more years, but it's still hard to imagine a world where Top 20 players stick around for a extra dollars and an extra year. Regarding the latter, locking in an extra season isn't all that compelling to a young superstar. In many cases, he's likely to score a heftier salary in the first year of his next deal (To wit, look at how many superstars are negotiating opt-outs after the third year of lengthier deals). And as Miami's superstars proved last summer, superstars are willing to take less money in a more desirable locale.
• Given how well Lamar Odom played during his stint with Team USA, Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Times says Odom would be wise to look overseas during the lockout.
• Charles Barkley takes a victory lap for his clairvoyance (at 1:21:40 mark of interview with ESPN Chicago): "Oh I was the first one. If you go back and look, I remember I was on a TV show last year when the season was going on; they asked me about next year, and I said ‘dude, I don’t think there’s going to be a season at all next year.’ And everybody looked at me like ‘that dude’s crazy.’ What I always knew was the owners were going to get the deal they wanted or they were not going to play."
• Politicians, restaurant owners and a vodka company's CEO will issue demands to the Knicks that the team has already granted -- full refunds with interest for season ticket holders.
• Did Tyson Chandler's injury history coupled with his free agent status inform his decision to reportedly turn down an offer from the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions?
• I was supposed to be at the Wizards-Celtics game in Washington last night. Bradford Doolittle of Basketball Prospectus continues his Sim Season series and tells us that I didn't miss anything, apart from a 3-for-14 night from John Wall. Doolittle's simulation doesn't track the keystone cop moments JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche had on defensive rotations along the back line, but the 108-94 final score in Boston's favor suggests they were plentiful.
• Twenty-eight years ago tonight, the Trail Blazers beat the Nuggets 156-116. After the game, Nuggets head coach Doug Moe confessed that, once the rout was on, he told his team to let the Trail Blazers score. Via the Oregonian: "'Our defense was getting so tenacious, I was afraid they (the Blazers) wouldn’t get to 150,' Moe said in laughing off his actions afterward. 'And they (the Portland fans) wanted it bad. I just told the team to back off and let them have it. I said, "Part the seas."'"
• Luol Deng is loving Arsenal veteran Alex Song.
• Metta World Peace: Courting danger on the dance floor.
• Life after the Association for Lamond Murray.

After 10 losses in as many road games against the Lakers in the playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks took care of business Monday winning Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals at the Staples Center, 96-94.

The Lakers had a chance to pick their match-up against Dirk Nowitzki nursing a one-point lead with 20 seconds remaining, and elected to go with Pau Gasol. Prior to the play, Nowitzki was 5-for-5 against Gasol, 5-for-11 against Lamar Odom and 1-for-6 against all other Lakers. Gasol fouled Nowitzki on the inbounds, sending him to the line and giving the Mavs a lead they would not relinquish.

Nowitzki finished with a team-high 28 points and 14 rebounds. It was his eighth straight playoff game with 20+ points and the seventh time in his last eight games with 25+ points.

Kobe Bryant scored 36 points in the loss; he now has at least 30 points in Game 1 of five consecutive playoff series. That’s the longest such streak in franchise history. George Mikan (1949-1950), Elgin Baylor (1961-1962) and Shaquille O’Neal (2000) scored 30 or more points in Game 1 in each of four consecutive playoff series for the Lakers.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Bryant is the first player to score at least 30 points in five consecutive Game Ones since Michael Jordan did that in seven straight playoff series, spanning the 1997-98 playoffs.

The Lakers are 0-2 in Game Ones this postseason. The Elias Sports Bureau also tells us it's the first time the Lakers have lost Game 1 in back-to-back series of the same postseason since May 1998, and the first time since 1972 that they have lost Game 1 of consecutive playoff series in the same postseason at home.

After a five-game losing streak earlier this month, the Miami Heat improved to 7-1 in their last eight games thanks to a big night from the "Big Three." Dwyane Wade had 39 points and 11 rebounds, LeBron James had 32 and 10 and Chris Bosh had 20 and 10 in a 111-99 win over the Philadelphia 76ers.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time in nearly 29 years that, in a non-overtime game, a team had a pair of players with at least 30 points and 10 rebounds and another with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds. Prior to Friday, the last team to do that was the Nuggets on Dec. 23, 1982 (Alex English, 43/11; Kiki Vandeweghe, 30/12; Dan Issel, 25/10).

It was the second time this season, but just the fifth time since April 1, 2006 that three teammates had 20+ points and 10+ rebounds in a single game. Prior to Friday, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom accomplished the feat against the Suns in triple overtime just this past Tuesday.

Speaking of Kobe and the Lakers, they improved to an NBA-best 14-1 since the All-Star break with a 112-104 win over the Clippers. With the win, the Lakers won the season series against their hometown rivals for the third time in the last four seasons.

It was also the first time in the last five nights that a Kings, Lakers or Clippers game at STAPLES Center did not go into overtime. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the four overtime games in four nights prior to Friday at STAPLES Center was a first for any former or current venue that hosted hockey AND basketball games.

Meanwhile, the Celtics fell to 9-7 since trading Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson to Oklahoma City after losing to the Bobcats, 83-81. Boston had a 13-point lead over Charlotte heading into the fourth quarter.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time in Celtics history that they lost a home game to a team at least 10 games under .500 after having a lead of 10 or more points entering the fourth quarter.

Finally, Nicolas Batum tipped in an alley-oop as time expired to lead the Portland Trail Blazers over the San Antonio Spurs in the Rose City. That was the 16th game-winning buzzer-beater this season and the first by Portland since November 6, 2008 when Brandon Roy had one against the Rockets in overtime. The Spurs fell to 1-2 without Tim Duncan this season.

The Los Angeles Lakers earned their first overtime win of the season in large part to Kobe Bryant who finished with 32 points and 11 assists. Bryant joins Deron Williams and Russell Westbrook as the only players this season with multiple games with at least 30 points and 10 assists.

This was Bryant’s fourth 10-assist game of the season and in doing so he recorded his 5,005th career assist. He becomes the third player in Lakers history to eclipse the 5,000 assist mark with the team, joining Magic Johnson and Jerry West. Bryant also became the seventh player in NBA history to register 25,000 points, 5,000 rebounds and 5,000 assists.
Bryant’s teammates didn’t do too bad Tuesday night either as Lamar Odom finished with 20 points and a season-high 20 rebounds. It was Odom's second career 20-20 game. Pau Gasol added 26 points and pulled down 16 rebounds.

The Elias Sports Bureau tells us that it had been exactly 38 years since two Lakers had at least 20 points and 16 rebounds in a game. On February 1, 1973, Wilt Chamberlain had 25/19 (points/rebounds) and Bill Bridges went 20/16 in a win at the Phoenix Suns.

The most interesting note of the day came from the Lakers opposition, the Houston Rockets.

Guard Kevin Martin, who leads the NBA in free throws made, was 10-11 from the free throw line. He attempted AND made every single free throw for the Rockets. The last player to attempt all his team's free throws in a single game (min. 10 attempts) was Steve Francis on April 8, 2002 at the Orlando Magic (went 7-11). The last player to make all his team's free throws in a single game (min. 10 attempts) was Bill Cartwright on November 13, 1979 vs the Washington Bullets. Cartwright was 11-11 while the New York Knicks as a whole went 11-13.

Elsewhere around the league, two hoopers notched career highs of their own.

LaMarcus Aldridge scored a career-high 40 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only two other Portland Trail Blazers starting forwards ever had 40/10 (points/rebounds) in a game. Maurice Lucas went 46/17 at the Boston Celtics in January 1979, and Zach Randolph had two such games in 2007: 42/12 in January and 43/17 in March, both against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Jason Smith, making his first NBA start at center, shot 9-11 (81.8 percent) while playing just 25:12 in the New Orleans Hornets win over the Washington Wizards. Only one other starting center in Hornets' history has ever shot 80 percent or better in a game while attempting at least 10 field goals and playing fewer than 26 minutes. Kenny Gattison was 10-12 (83.3 percent) in 20 minutes in a Hornets' 141-134 loss at the Cleveland Cavaliers on April 9, 1992.

• ESPN's panel of prognosticators picked the Celtics to finish with 51 wins and the No. 3 seed, following a season in which they finished 50-32 and entered the postseason with the No. 4 seed. Given the Celtics' flourish in the 2010 playoffs, that prediction has some Celtics fans riled. Zach Lowe of Celtics Hub (who was on the panel) tells his brethren in green to simmer down: "[I]t is perfectly reasonable to predict the C’s will again proceed through the regular season prioritizing health and rest over win total. Why wouldn’t they? They did it last year and got to the Finals, and all they’ve done since is make an old team even older while the Eastern Conference has improved at the top and in the middle."
• Don't like ESPN's predictions? Check out economist Ian Ayres' prediction tools that allow you to forecast everything from the price of Bordeaux to how long your marriage will last.
• Kevin Love tells NBA.com's John Schumann that he feels more appreciated by Team USA than the Minnesota Timberwolves.
• Drew Cannon's new positional system, which he unveiled at Basketball Prospectus last week, continues to generate interesting conversation. Cannon seeks to address the problem of designating specific positions to players who, increasingly, defy that kind of classification (think Stephen Jackson, Hedo Turkoglu or point guards whose defensive assignments are the 2-guard or even the small forward). Both Tom Ziller of Fanhouse, and Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game delve deeper into the discussion and expose some of the problems with developing a new model and throwing out the old designations like "point guard" and "center." Spend some time looking at Mahoney's revised model.
• For a league that's reportedly struggling financially, we're seeing a host of suitors line up every time a franchise goes on the block. The Pistons are no exception.
• Speaking in his native Lettish, Andris Biedrins tells Warriors World's Rasheed Malek that Don Nelson's comments about the young center's free-throw shooting bothered him: "When he said I should practice underhanded, I felt very disrespected. At one point I spoke to a psychiatrist who reminded me of some things, but it’s not so bad that they send you and try to brainwash you. It’s mostly about believing in yourself, because, before this season it was more or less OK."
• Here's an impressive video compilation of Scottie Pippen's defense. When we talk about a player's versatility, we're usually referring to his offensive repertoire. We all know that Pippen displayed an uncommon range of skills on the offensive end of the floor, but this reel captures how incredibly talented Pippen was on the other side of the ball. He was both a pest to point guards, but capable of pushing guys like Charles Barkley off the block. With Pippen in close proximity, there was no such thing as an easy entry pass.
• Steve Perrin of Clips Nation has a comprehensive and smart breakdown of the current 15-man Team USA roster.
• Remember Ali Farokhmanesh, who hit the ballsiest shot of the 2010 NCAA Championships when Northern Iowa upset Kansas? He's headed to Switzerland to play for Massagno in the Swiss league (LNA).
• Daily Thunder has your Serge Ibaka "Air Congo" t-shirt modeled by ... Serge Ibaka.
• Slide over, Lamar Odom. Michael Beasley confesses that, among his other nicknames, "Skittles" took hold at a fairly young age: "You know growing up I ate a lot of candy, if you were at my dinners you would know that, you know but I eat a lot of candy so from eight to probably like 15, you wouldn't see me without a pack of Skittles." On the tart vs. chocolate debate, Beasley is very decisive: "I'm not a chocolate man. I'm skittles, anything made by Wonka, you know I like candy not chocolate."
• Jefferson Boswell of Salt City Hoops recounts a nice story about his grandma and Karl Malone during a physical therapy session. What did Malone mutter when he stepped up to the free throw line? Only Grandma Alene knew.
• DeJuan Blair: Menace under the glass; menace with CAP LOCKS!

• The Nets hosted the much-anticipated workouts for DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors. The Nets are sitting with the No. 3 pick on Thursday night and will likely have a choice between the two big men. Cousins impressed, but the Star Ledger's Dave D'Alessandro believes that the Nets are leaning toward Favors: "DeMarcus Cousins passed every test they gave him — with honors." But, D'Alessando disclaims, "He failed to prove that he is better equipped and contoured to play the power forward position than the more athletic and equally promising Derrick Favors. And in a draft that is now predominantly about marking and developing Brook Lopez’s frontcourt sidekick, that’s a problem for Cousins."
• Every June, David Stern steps up to the podium and announces a few draft selections with international pedigrees. The immediate reaction from casual fans of the teams making those picks is generally, "Whooooo?" Jay Aych of The Painted Area offers a primer on a couple of potential first round hopefuls from across the pond.
• Dan Steinberg of D.C. Sports Bog is blown away by John Wall's skill set. One observation: "Wall runs faster while dribbling a basketball than Kevin Durant runs without a ball."
• We tend to poo-poo ballplayers who are characterized as single-dimensional. But Fran Fraschilla points out that a specialist fills an important place on an NBA roster. Fraschilla has divided his list of talented niche players into three categories: shooters, energy guys and rim protectors.
• Speaking of specialists, you could do a lot worse than plucking a monster offensive rebounder and nasty screen-setting big man like Brian Zoubek in the second round.
• Plan on heading over to Madison Square Garden for the draft? Tickets don't go on sale until the morning of the event at 11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
• Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm on Evan Turner's resilience at Ohio State: "I started gawking at the kid’s numbers five games into last season. I thought they’d tail off (and they did, sort of), but the fact that they were there showed what he was capable of, and when trying to determine a ceiling, that’s a pretty good sign. Then he broke his back. I figured that meant a drop to the teens for him. I mean, the kid broke multiple vertabrae. Who comes back from that? Who fights through that?"
• The pros and cons of Xavier Henry for the Warriors.
• Is Paul George the sleeper of the 2010 draft?
• Doc Rivers says that the Celtics were too eager to help off Ron Artest in Game 7. He's also getting regular texts from Paul Pierce and Ray Allen pleading with him to stay with the Celtics. (via Sports Radio Interviews)
• Do you remember when a portrait in Life Magazine represented an official induction into the highest rungs of celebrity? Free Darko does.
• Lamar Odom, Jerry West, W.H. Auden, Joseph Stalin, Mike Tyson and Kobe Bryant all in one place.
• The arrest count in Los Angeles from last Thursday's post-game violence now tallies 45. For those who love the city, who appreciate that our municipality can ill-afford frivolous expenditures and who feel for business-owners who stuck it out downtown when central Los Angeles was being written off (and found their property destroyed when they came into work Friday morning), images of what transpired in the name of celebration evoke profound sadness.
• Zach Lowe of Celtics Hub continues his catharsis. Lowe lists some of the most painful losses in Celtics history.
• Watch the draft with Raptors Republic.

With just under 40 seconds left in Game 3 and the Celtics down five, Lakers big man Lamar Odom had apparently rebounded a missed Paul Pierce free throw. But as Odom came down with the ball, Boston guard Rajon Rondo dashed onto the scene and inserted an arm. The ball spurted out of bounds.

Odom raised his hands in a gesture that said “it wasn’t me!”

Which is how it was called. Yet ... the referees exercised their right to review the play, to see if in fact the ball may have gone off Odom. The referee crew reviewed the video, as did the enormous audience watching on television.

In real time, nobody in the arena was certain about anything, but in slow motion it was plain as day. The ball was off Odom.

But only, as everyone at home saw clearly, after Rondo fouled Odom by pulling his hand off the ball.

The referees could not, by rule, call that potentially game-changing and obvious foul. Instant replay is their silver bullet to avoid the embarrassment of everyone at home knowing far more than they do, but they are limited in their use of it, and are only allowed to review the call that was made. The call that was made was out of bounds. Video showed that call would rightly go the Celtics’ way -- the ball had gone off Odom. The foul that was obvious to millions would be ignored. Celtics ball.

Laker coach Phil Jackson says he knew that the instant replay rule was always going to invite this kind of trouble: “Those are the things that we questioned immediately when they brought in the rule, if you're going to see a lot of things happening now on this type of thing where if it's a 3-point play, a guy might have stepped out of bounds and no one saw it and he comes back in and now you're looking at is it a 3-point shot or not, and you miss the fact that he stepped out of bounds, what are you going to do to rectify the fact the officials missed a call? So they made the decision that we can't do that, we can't make the adjustment.”

The league's executive vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson acknowledges what he called a clear foul by Rondo, but defends the system where such a foul can not be made via video review -- which is used only for simple tasks such as who touched the ball last, whether the shot clock had expired, or whether a player stepped on the 3-point line. More complex issues like fouls are not part of the system, by design.

"Judgment calls are not part of the system," he explains. "Once you begin reviewing judgment calls, which in basketball there are many, you put yourself on a very slippery slope in terms of what could be reviewed, and ultimately the number of reviews that could take place that would make it unweildly.

"We anticipated that in some instances we would have a situation like we had with Rondo and Odom, but the decision was made to keep the system narrow, and excluding judgment calls. As it stands right now, under certain instant replay triggers, for instance by example, a made basket at the end of the period, if you have a trigger and it's reviewed, the system does allow you to review whether or not the clock expired, whether the field goal was called correctly as a 2 or 3, whether or not the shooter committed a boundary line violation, whether or not the 24-second clock expired, it also allows you to determine whether there was an eight-second backcourt violation. But it just does not allow for you to review matters involving judgment calls, or subjective calls."

Jackson says there have not been, to his memory any recent similar situations where a replay showed a clear foul that had not been called.

Phil Jackson can see no way around changing the rule. “Rondo grabbed his arm and pulled his arm off the ball,” says the coach. “So you know, they can't make that adjustment with the replay, but it's a foul after they haven't called it. … Those are things I think the Rules Committee will have to discuss during the offseason, and we'll come back and probably refine it and tune it up a little bit better.”

Jackson points out that the first step in getting the rule changed would be for league's instant replay committee, which first met last July, and will meet again next month. Of note is that one of the members of the committee is Celtics GM Danny Ainge. (Others are Maverick coach Rick Carlisle, Thunder GM Sam Presti, Rockets GM Daryl Morey and Sixers GM Ed Stefanski. Former Clipper coach and GM Mike Dunleavy and former Cavalier GM Danny Ferry were also on the committee last summer, but as they're not in the NBA currently both will be replaced.)

"I can tell you that the committee has not," says Stu Jackson, "entertained the notion of reviewing judgment-type calls."

Odom isn’t appealing to the league, the rules or anything else. He envisions a different solution to prevent this issue next time. “I was mad at myself” he says. “I have to be a lot stronger with the basketball. Make my space. You have to do it with your elbows a little bit, to keep guys off you. That’s the way it is.”

Anyone who witnessed the carnage at Staples Center this past week knows that the Phoenix Suns have serious defensive issues. Suns head coach Alvin Gentry even went so far as to playfully solicit suggestions from the media at his postgame press conference following Game 2. To the naked eye, nobody on the Suns' roster has appeared more culpable for the team's defensive meltdowns than Amare Stoudemire. Defense has long been a major knock on Stoudemire's game, and there have been countless instances in the first two games of the Lakers-Suns series that seem to affirm Stoudemire's reputation as a defensive liability.

How bad has Stoudemire been? I put a call into David Thorpe to get his impressions -- and Thorpe's response was surprising: