In this episode, I am fortunate enough to have the best Wizards bloggers on the planet and three of the best bloggers I know, period on with me as I completely butcher their names in a massively pathetic way. Kyle from TruthAboutIt.Net stops by to bring the LeBron Hate, while Mike Prada and Jake Whitacre from Bullets Forever also chime in with trying to figure out how this thing will all go down. And we damn near avoid mentioning the word “injury.” Hooray!

(Note: We had some technical difficulties on this puppy. I edited out a few of the rough spots, but in the interest of getting this thing posted quickly, you’ve got a few moments of me calling people back. Essentially, I’m lazy. So there’s that. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!)

Oh, and check us on iTunes, sweetheart. You’ll never love anyone like you love us.

From NBA.com:
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Dwyane Wade will sit out the Miami Heat’s preseason game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night with a strained muscle in his left rib cage.
Miami coach Erik Spoelstra says Wade has practiced the last two days, but that it makes sense to rest the star guard at least one more game. Spoelstra says Wade might play Thursday night when the Heat face the New Orleans Hornets in Kansas City, Mo.

Wade dressed Wednesday night and said before the game that if it was a regular-season game, he would likely try to play.

ORLY?

(UPDATE: It looks from all accounts like Wade actually managed to be at both. Wade had said they were getting into KC at 12:30AM, and Chalmers said the same thing on his Twitter. So essentially, these guys played in an NBA game- or watched, in DWade’s case, then immediately flew to KC, got off the plane, and went to Lucky Strike. Basically, by the time my wife had dragged me into bed, these guys were just brushing aside the front door guys in the P&L District. Dang.)

HAT TIP: Justin Kendall @ the Pitch

A common approach for NBA teams is to surround their superstars and offensive playmakers with efficient shooters who are more than willing to hit the open three-pointer when given a chance. The playmakers draw much of the defense’s attention and command double and triple teams. Therefore, it is prudent to collect efficient shooters around them.

Do the numbers support this way of thinking? Do teammates of superstars take more threes when the superstar is on the floor? To answer these questions, I turned to the play-by-play data available at Basketball Geek. I picked 10 superstars and broke down their team’s three-point shooting data to see how often the team shoots three-pointers when the player is on the court versus how many it shoots when the player is off the court. The superstar’s own three-point shooting was not counted. To measure three-point frequency, I calculated the total number of three-point attempts divided by the total number of field goal attempts.

Let’s take a look at the chart:

As you can see, most of the players increase the three-point frequency of their teammates while they are on the court. The most extreme case is Dwight Howard, who increases the Magic’s three-point attempt percentage from 32% when he’s off the court to a staggering 43% when he’s on the court. In other words, if you’re playing with Dwight Howard, there’s a 43% chance your next shot will be a three-pointer. Big men in general tended to have the largest effects on three-point frequency, supporting the common strategy of having a dominant post player who demands double teams and can kick out the ball for open threes. The Magic, in particular, killed teams with this strategy.

Two of the three point guards I looked at had similar effects as the big men, while swingmen were a mixed bag.

Why do some superstars not increase the three-point frequency of their teammates? I had a hypothesis about this: when those particular players subbed out of the game, three-point shooters were replacing them. This, of course, would make the three-point frequency when those superstars were off the court deceptively high.

To test my hypothesis, I went through the play-by-play data of the four superstars that did not increase three-point frequency: Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Brandon Roy, and Steve Nash. Which players were substituting in for them? The following tables report the top subs for each player and the three-point attempt percentages for those subs:

Except for Steve Nash, it appears as though my hypothesis was correct. Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant, in particular, had subs that can be considered three-point specialists. If these superstars had subs that were equally as fond of two-pointers, I imagine their impact on team three-point frequency would be similar to the other superstars I looked at.

So what’s the deal with Nash? His subs weren’t particularly in love with three-pointers, yet Nash did not increase team three-pointers. I think there could be two things behind this. For one, Nash is not a typical superstar that overwhelms his opponents with his physical abilities. He may draw the attention of defenders, but he’s certainly not demanding many double teams. Second, Nash may just be really good at setting up open looks by the basket, as I imagine Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion can attest. In the end, if one player doesn’t fit in with the rest of the superstars, I’m not very surprised if it’s Steve Nash.

It’s nice when the statistics confirm the common dogma among NBA teams. Teams collect three-point shooters to surround their superstars, and these strategies appear to be valid. These same shooters, when the superstar is off the court, don’t shoot nearly as many threes. I believe the results of this study should serve as further encouragement to NBA front offices that they should continue to acquire efficient, three-point shooting role players if they have a superstar on the roster.

RESEARCH UPDATE: One thing I should have done in my study was take teammates more into account. I took a look at the top subs of some of the players, which was hinting at the issue, but I didn’t delve into it further. A player’s impact on his teammates’ three-pointers could be deceiving if he tends to be on the floor with certain teammates frequently. For example, I pointed out that one of Dwyane Wade’s top subs was Daequan Cook, a long-range bomber. This makes Wade’s impact on team three-point shooting look smaller than it actually is. What about the players who often play next to long-range shooters? Dwight Howard plays a lot of minutes with Rashard Lewis, so it makes sense that the Magic shoot a lot of threes when Howard is on the court (but not necessarily because of Howard).

To get around this, you have to look at it on a player-by-player basis. Below I have tables for four of the players in the original study. Each table includes the superstar’s impact on the three-point attempt frequency and efficiency for every player on his team. At the bottom, I calculate a weighted average.

When we use this approach, the results tell us something different. Dwight Howard still has a large impact, but it’s no longer the biggest of the bunch. On average, Dwyane Wade increased each Heat player’s three-point attempt percentage by 11 percent. Even Steve Nash, who I originally said had no effect, creates an average increase of 4.1% for his teammates. Additionally, Nash makes his teammates shoot three-pointers more efficiently, raising their 3PT% by 4.3%.

This new data may change the specifics, but it further confirms the original idea: superstars create good three-point looks for their teammates.

• Royce from Daily Thunder talks to Adam Brown, the Sonicsgate producer, on the first DT podcast. It’s a terrific interview, and covers a lot of things I feel are glossed over in the whole Sonics-thing. Nice to hear that Adam had no intention of blasting or blaming OKC. I haven’t been able to find time to watch the damn thing yet (NEED DOWNLOAD, POR FAVOR), but I look forward to it.
• 48MoH checks in with Ilardi on the whole Durant Debacle, while Pelton digs a little deeper. These are actually much better analyses than what Winston himself is providing (triple exclamation marks, WW? Really? Are you going to be posting an OMG YouTube video screaming “Leave Plus/Minus alone! (!!)” next? Additionally, I’m not really fond of the headline grabbing with this stuff. If you know metrics as well as he does, then you know that plus/minus, like PER or anything else, isn’t going to tell the whole story, same way scouting won’t. So to say you wouldn’t grab him for free is pretty clearly an attention grabber. And that’s just not in the spirit of research.
• I just like this photo.
• DWade, who went to school at Marquette, thinks Tulsa is depressing. Can’t wait for what he says about KC in two days… when I talk to him. (I won’t actually talk to him, but I will be attending the game. Expect lots of tweets.)
• On Limbo, tinkering, and stuff.
• I have no idea if Benson is still on squad or not. I damn well hope so.
• Before bolting overseas, DJ Turtleface drops an epic Grizzlies preview that captures the very “hopeful, yet still stuck in a wasteland” feeling of the Grizzlies.
• You’d think videos of Crazy Pills being Crazy Pills would get tiresome. But it’s like Sports Night. I can watch them all, get to the end, and then want to rewatch them.
• No one else seems to think so, but I think the new TNT spots are hilarious. I’m concerned this may mean I would like Tyler Perry’s House of Pain.
• Ryan Anderson, stealth money.
• When the Celtics picked up Marbury, everyone said he was going to be a great contributer for a championship team. I said he was going to Stephon Marbury, useless tool who Walsh and D’Antoni were able to squeeze a few precious million out of.  Well, now. This is like the cherry on the sundae.
• Another terrific podcast from a bunch of incredibly smart basketball guys. Also nice to throw in Cleveland to the “fans who are delusional in thinking their team can win 70 games.”

Hallo! Welcome the return of the links! Submit your peasant lives to their greatness!

• Durantula is not so hot on the +/- criticism. You know, a lot of people talked about how close he is to his mom and the similarities between him and Vince Young when I was in Austin. The Texas athlete breeds phenomenal ability and the occasional sensitivity to the barbs of criticism. Even though the TrueHoop article wasn’t criticism. (BONUS: Daily Thunder does a kickass job of evaluating +/- and defending his superstar without copping to the “Plus/Minus is stupid” tactic, which is like saying, “Game Theory is stupid.” It’s just another way of trying to gain insight.)
• In the process of trying to maintain level heads in Blazerland, Dave from BE digs into the value and meaning of culture within a locker room.
• I find Pierce’s quote about parity really interesting. Not because Truth is finally able to look down on the rest of the league, which must be nice after all those years of being the mediocre team, but because of the real story behind it. Revenue sharing and boosting the smaller market teams’ ability to pay players is going to be a central point for the CBA discussions. Even though the NBA has a better system than baseball (one that actually works, imagine that!), there’s still a glaring disadvantage for small market teams that haven’t been lucky enough to build support (San Antonio, Utah) with wins.  The players’ union has identified this as an area that they need to attack in CBA discussions (bully for Nate Jones for calling that).  Parity is bad for players on great teams in terms of wins and losses, but bad for the union as a whole and could be what the players use as leverage if the owners come calling for salary restrictions, which the players obviously don’t want to give up.
• I hated the Andre Miller signing. Hated it. I wouldn’t say I’m an Andre Miller hater. He’s fine. I don’t hate him. I nothing him. He’s a good player, if you asked me to weigh in on the good/bad scale. But with that cap space, with those assets, with this market, you went after Andre Miller? Really? And now things seem to be headed in an outright negative direction. Portland is a place for open hearts, open minds, and open passing lanes. Not grizzly point guards moping around and tinkering with the offense. I think the overall effect will be a “better” team results wise, but the beginning of the death of the Grand Era of Blazer Rise. Which is okay. We all have to grow up sometime, after all.
• Another way to describe this would be “How To Kill Five Guys And Get Paid To Do It.“
• SLAM Online wins for Tyreke Evans new nickname (though we’ll undoubtedly give him one that won’t stick and we’ll only use. That’s how we roll.) ‘Reke Havoc.
• This was the best non-Jones podcast I’ve listened to this year.
• For those of you wondering if I’m still staunchly anti-Bynum, the time has past. I asked for people to allow him time to arrive before anointing him the new and rightful King Of the Down Low Jungle. His work ethic is still for crap, but Jesus, what’s the point of being really big if you have to work hard? Anyway, he’ll be excellent this season. What’s worse is that he can actually do more damage coming off the bench.
• Wait, is Brandon Roy really concerned about getting the ball? Brandon, do you see me sitting around saying “I wonder if I’ll go bald?” No. You know why? My hairline is not receding, it’s already laid down its arms and gone home to make up stories about its valor, and you could land a LOLopter on my head. Take the evidence in front of you. You’ll get the ball, man. Hell, McMillan’s idea of a final out of bounds play is the same as Vinny Del Negro’s. “GIVE IT TO THE SMALL GUARD GUY! THE SMALL GUARD GUY! SAVE US, SMALL GUARD GUY!”
• “Rockets seek aggressive Ariza as he adjusts to new role.” Let’s edit that, shall we? “Rockets seek aggressive non-sucky Ariza as he adjusts to new role not having Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum as teammates.” There.
• Keep it simple, Speights.
• Boom Got Them Censorship.
• The idea of Farmar getting out of LA makes me giddy. I’ve liked him since he came into the league via D-League assignment, and the fact that he’s on Numb3rs (Shut up, it’s a good show! It does graphic things that make me think of Ziller!) makes him even better. And what with the “SHANNON BROWN CAN DUNK! THEREFORE HE SHOULD START AT POINT!” silliness ramping up, this seems more likely than ever.
• The Celtics are not shy about their chances this season.

We kick off our season previews on the podcast paroxysm right on time (read: COMPLETELY LATE) with a discussion of the Bobcats with David Arnott from Rufus on Fire, Brett Hainline of Queen City Hoops, and Trey Kerby, for no discernible reason.

Oh, and check us on iTunes, sweetheart. You’ll never love anyone like you love us.

Last time I introduced my TPS (Talent Plus Style) system and a basic statistic using that system called Playmaker Score. Today I’ll show a couple more statistics I’ve developed using TPS.

The first rating is something I called Paint Presence Rating. Before I go any further, remember that all ratings are adjusted for position, so some point guards rate higher than centers, even though they are obviously not greater “paint presences.” Paint Presence Rating is determined by a player’s Composite Score, Close Attempt Percentage, Close True Shot Percentage, free throws/field goal attempts, and Rebound Rating. Composite Score reflects a player’s all-around ability while the other four are all affected by a player’s skills/tendencies around the basket.

The second rating is Perimeter Threat Rating. This rating reflects a player’s tendency to shoot three-pointers and his ability to make them. It consists of three components: Composite Score, Three-Point Attempt Percentage, and Three-Point True Shot Percentage.

The third and final rating I will release today is called Super-Efficient Rating (it sounds silly, I know). It incorporates three elements: Offensive Rating, True Shot Percentage, and Turnover Rate. Offensive Rating is a good catch-all for every efficient thing a player can do offensively, while the latter two measure a player’s ability to hit shots when he needs to and not turn the ball over. Things such as assists and offensive rebounds are also part of offensive efficiency, but they are only partly incorporated, through the use of Offensive Rating.

To see all the numbers, go to: Link.

As some of you know, I write the TrueHoop Sacramento Kings blog – CowbellKingdom.com. What many of you probably don’t know is that I’m not a Kings fan in the slightest. I actually am a devoted Timberwolves fan that enjoys long walks on the beach, tirades about not surrounding Kevin Garnett with the proper talent to make him a title winner in ‘Sota, and trying to figure out if Randy Wittman has a learning disability.

So why would I write about the Kings? Well, I’ve lived in Sacramento for the majority of my life and have experienced this team in purple as a close bystander throughout this time. I thought it would be fun to run a team-specific blog as someone who isn’t a fan of that team. It would allow me to be objectively pithy and provide completely unbiased coverage. It was supposed to be groundbreaking! People teased me that I would become a fan of the team and I scoffed. Boy, did I scoff! And I still scoff because I’m not a fan of the team by any means and would never pretend to be. The only reason I have to root, root, root for the home team is so I can cover playoff games in person. But something has happened to this little experiment and its name is Tyreke Evans.

Tyreke Evans has turned my entire world upside down. Pre-draft, I wanted the Kings to draft Ricky Rubio because I thought it would be phenomenal to cover his story. I assumed he’d be here in Sacramento this coming season and would set the world on fire like an updated version of 1998 Jason Williams. But alas, the Kings weren’t enamored enough with the young Spaniard. They opted for the soft-spoken, out of position heir to Derrick Rose’s throne in Memphis. I was disappointed from the frame of mind as a Kings blogger and thrilled from the viewpoint of a Wolves fan.

I didn’t expect Tyreke Evans to do much for me. I knew he was a good basketball player. I really did. But to me, he played the same position as the Kings best player and was going to be terribly out of position as an NBA point guard. And then I went to the Las Vegas Summer League and watched him over the course of three games before I headed back home.

Matt Moore tried to explain to me how good this guy was. And I never really considered his words as anything more than Midwest pride for a one-and-done Memphis Tiger. But once I saw him in the LVSL, I was ready to proclaim Geoff Petrie as the draft genius tag he was once regaled as.

The thing about ‘Reke is that he’s one of those quiet assassins. Remember when Derek Fisher Tony Twist’d Luis Scola and said something about “beware of the quiet kid in the corner?” That’s Tyreke Evans. You need a boom mic to have a conversation with the kid because he’s so soft-spoken. In fact, he kind of makes Derrick Rose look like Joy Behar in an interview setting because he doesn’t try to give interesting answers and he’s a bit of a low-talker. But don’t let that fool you.

Tyreke Evans is the Dread Pirate Roberts.

So much has been misunderstood about Evans. He nearly surrendered his career at such a young age because he happened to be driving a car when his cousin turned real life into Grand Theft Auto. But his trainer, friends, and family wouldn’t let him get caught up in an area that despite popular opinion isn’t always sunny. He was groomed from a young age to be an NBA player. It was his destiny. He went to bed every night in the heart of Chester, Pennsylvania with his hometown telling him, “Good night, Tyreke. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

And now? He’s a bit of controlled chaos wrapped in a large man’s body barreling down the lane. He’s unable to be stopped by cement barricades, tack strips on the road, or brick walls reinforced by God-himself. He’ll break through all of those with a reckless abandon and compose himself and his motion just before he flies by the basket. The result is a free-throw line trip, a lay-up, or a combination of the two. And he’s the reason why the Kings aren’t going to be nearly as bad as you assume they will.

This team has a small semblance of talent and it all starts with whatever Evans can do on the court as he figures out the NBA game. He’s feeling out the pro game in a sword fight and after a couple months of regular season under his belt, I suspect he’ll show us that he’s not left-handed. He’ll use his swift, cunning attacks to fluster and confuse his opponents. He won’t be afraid to go against Andrea Bargnani, Marco Belinelli or any Sicilian with death on the line – iocane powder is what he sprinkles on his Corn Flakes in the morning.

The only questions that surround him are his teammates. Kevin Martin is a terrifically efficient scorer but what else can he do? Is Martin willing to seek out Kobe Bryant, withstand puncture wound after puncture wound and proclaim that his name is Kevin Martin, Kobe killed his franchise, and now he should prepare to die? Is Spencer Hawes more likely to be set on fire while riding a wheelbarrow and terrifying villagers or playfully asking if “anybody want a peanut?” At a certain point, it will be up to Tyreke to make those decisions for the franchise.

Tyreke Evans will never be a pure point guard. And he’ll certainly never be a boisterous leader on and off the floor. But his play and how his teammates play around him determine their fate in California’s capitol. If they can’t cash in on the attention he draws from infiltrating the defense then they’ll eventually be shipped away or just let go. Sacramento, Arco Arena, and whatever arena gets constructed years from now are his for the taking. He’s the franchise player they’ve been craving since Chris Webber’s knee gave out on the Kings and their fans.

He’s come to save this franchise, put a small market on his back, and battle the rest of the Western Conference to the pain. And he’ll do so with the quiet, stealth demeanor of the Dread Pirate Roberts persona. Evans hasn’t turned me into a Kings fan but he also isn’t allowing me to remain an innocent bystander either. I’m stuck somewhere in the limbo in between these two worlds. My man crush for ‘Reke is growing with each drive to the basket, as is his eventual legend.

After all, Tyreke Evans is going to turn into true greatness. You think this happens everyday?

Zach Harper also runs Talkhoops.net, a general NBA blog, and Cowbell Kingdom, a Sacramento Kings blog part of the TrueHoop Network. You can email him at zharper[at]talkhoops.net. You can also follow him on twitter here and also here.

The NBA preseason is not where amazing happens. Truthfully, it’s exceedingly stupid. Sure, there is the “Nice, basketball is almost back” factor, but it is generally such a poor indicator of how the upcoming season will transpire that there is very little that can be gleaned from watching the games other than misinformation.

Still, hoops is hoops, so I watch a little.

Last Sunday afternoon, for instance, I caught some of a Knicks vs. Nets encounter, which, in my city, is probably as big as a preseason game not involving LeBron can get. The game featured all the wonderfully misleading hallmarks of the preseason: Jared Jeffries reminded Knicks fans how much they hate him by hitting three first-half treys; Chris Douglas-Roberts looked like a potent NBA scorer, finishing in at the rim and getting to the line like the next coming of Paul Pierce; Danilo Gallinari got his Rooster on; and Toney Douglas convinced me that he will be this year’s winner of the “Mario Chalmers Commemorative Face Palm Award” given in honor of the point guard who every GM will instantly regret not drafting.

Ultimately, however, the game accomplished its objective of getting me excited about the start of the season. So, bored by the only NFL game being broadcast locally — a truly terrible Giants/Chiefs game — and too hungover to go the nearby bar with Sunday Ticket, I fired up an NBA game from last season that I still had on my DVR for some reason. Appropriately, it was the Nets vs. the Sixers. But this wasn’t just any old contest between 1-95 rivals. No, this game featured one of the most unbelievable endings in NBA history. This game featured Devin Harris hitting an absurd, game-winning half court shot at the buzzer.

For those of you who don’t remember the game, here’s the play in question. It was an exceptional finish.

You don’t see many according to Hoyle walk-off shots in an entire NBA season. Nor do you see all that see many court shots. And in your whole life, you don’t see many walk-0ff half-court shots. And never do you see a walk-off half-court shot that looks as strange as Devin’s.

Jerry West made probably the most iconic buzzer-beating half court shot in NBA history — from well behind the line and in the Finals nonetheless — but The Logo’s shot actually only sent the game into overtime because there was no three-point line back then. Chauncey had a similar game-tying one in the 2003 Playoffs, albeit from a few feet in front of the line (at the 1:46 mark). Billups’ teammate Rasheed Wallace hit an even more impressive one with this marvelous game-winner in 2007. And didn’t Starbury hit one in the playoffs with the Suns? Could have sworn that happened, but I can’t find any evidence since Google is becoming less and less useful by the day to find things older than last week.

Those are the only others I can come up with. (I’m sure there are more. Mention some in the comments.)

Regardless of how singularly unique (© PTSA, 2008) the shot was, rewatching it got me to thinking about some of the other “games of the year” from 2008-09, and Vince Carter’s amazing double buzzer-beater game in Toronto last December leaped to mind. For some reason, I didn’t see a ton of praise given to this game on the end-of-season countdown circuit, but I remember watching the annihilation that Vince enacted that evening in the Air Canada Centre [sic] and, goddamn, does that man love to piss off Canadians.

To me, it was the regular season game of the year.

Not only did Vince’s 12 points in the final 40 seconds of regulation nearly equal his cousin TMac’s legendary 13 points in 35 seconds a few seasons ago, and not only did Vince’s catch-and-shoot three to send the game into overtime match the range of Brandon Roy’s dagger against Houston last year, but Vince’s game-winning, alley-oop, reverse dunk possibly even exceeded the splendor of Dwight’s alley-oop dunk that stunned the Spurs a few years ago.

Much like the 2000 Dunk Contest when Vince combined various historic contest-winning dunks together (e.g., his 360/windmill and his bounce-off-the-floor/alley-oop-between-the-legs), Vince combined three of the more memorable game-winning performances of the past five years all into one evening.

Devin Harris didn’t provide the most memorable heroics in that game, but despite getting sick in the locker room during the second half (reportedly due to “his pre-game grilled cheese sandwich not sitting right”), he had a helluva fourth quarter, scoring 17 points in the period to help lead his team back from an 18-point third quarter deficit and set the stage for Carter to give Toronto a giant middle finger—twice.

A strange evening, indeed. Still, the ever-humble Harris knew the night was all about Vince.

Harris called Carter’s performance “incredible.”

“He’s been doing that his whole career, but I’ve never seen it firsthand,” Harris said. “I was out there watching it just like everybody else.”

Prior to that night, Devin was also involved in one of the stranger luxury tax-era trades we have seen when Dallas shipped a young, inexpensive, highly regarded commodity for a much older, much more expensive, much less effective commodity who, oh, by the way, plays the same position. (That would be you, Jason Kidd.) Mark Cuban is one of the few execs in the NBA who is relatively unconcerned about paying the dollar-for-dollar tax, and he also desperately needed to rebrand his team after its epic first-round loss to the eighth-place Warriors in the first round of previous season’s playoffs, but it was still a head-scratching move. Who trades a 24-year-old point guard with Finals experience for a past-his-prime, 35-year-old point guard making $20 million a year?

Speaking of Devin’s Finals experience, that Heat/Mavs Finals, that has to be the strangest title series in some time. Not only was the combination of Flash, Shaq, Glove, Toine, Zo, JWill and Posey one of the strangest lineups to ever win the Larry O’Brien trophy, but the series also featured the rare “reverse sweep,” during which Miami lost the first two games only to win the next four straight.

There were also some issues with the officiating that you might have heard about. If you don’t recall, just start typing “2006 NBA Finals” into Google and check out some of the search-term suggestions that its algorithms think you might be trying to find.

So between the half-court game winner, the “Vince Pimp Slaps Toronto Show,” the Kidd trade, “Dwyane’s Referee Circus” and being the only NBA All-Star to get clowned on the playground by an English bloke in a v-neck, Devin has been at the center of a lot more strange situations than most players his age.

Considering that the reigning MVP, LeBron James, is only 24-years-old and that two future MVPs, Chris Paul and Derrick Rose, are 24 and 20, respectively, we tend to forget that 26 is pretty young — particularly when you might be the quickest player in the league with the ball and you will remain an above average athlete well into your physical decline. Devin’s young, talented and getting better. But he’s also old beyond his years.

All this Devin discussion naturally led me to start thinking about the Nets. I like this team. I know the roster isn’t much on paper. But I just have a good feeling about this team. I can’t identify exactly what that feeling is, but it exists.

It’s not excitement. It’s not hope. It’s not envy or even hungry. And it’s definitely not love — I know what an erection feels like. (© GOBias Industries, 2005)

Ultimately, I just don’t think they will be nearly as bad as many NBA experts are anticipating.

Look, no one, including me, is saying that the 2009-10 Nets are going to be good good. But I think they can at least be “under-the-radar not horrible.” That may be the back-handed compliment of all back-handed compliments, but I think a lot of people expect New Jersey to battle for worst-team-in-the-league status. I think they’ll be pretty far away from that.

And if anyone has some Ewing Theory potential, it has to be Vince Carter — especially if you factor in the cumulative effect of Rod Thorn running all three of his well-known stars out of town for cap space. The last time we saw a triumvirate of talent cast off with such abandon was when Seattle lost Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez in quick succession. And didn’t the 2001 Mariners win 116 games out of the blue? In losing JKidd, Vince and Richard Jefferson, the Nets clearly haven’t lost three first-ballot Hall of Famers like Seattle did. And, obviously, there is no actual parallel between a baseball team from a decade ago and the current Nets roster. It’s a huge stretch, I get it. All I’m saying is that the addition-by-subtraction principle has caught many a sports fan off guard many a time.

The Nets are not going to make it to the second round of the playoffs or anything, but I wouldn’t be totally shocked to see them flirt with 40 wins.

Brook Lopez has some similar thoughts:

“I want to say we can be a good playoff team. I definitely think we can make the playoffs. We have enough talent, enough intelligent guys.”

Anyone who has seen this 2008 NBA Draft day video montage knows that we really shouldn’t be taking Brook’s quotes on intelligence seriously. But what we should take seriously is Brook’s game. After Al Jefferson, he might have the best back-to-the-basket game of any big man under 25. And as one of the few legitimate centers remaining in the league, Lopez used that game to put up some gaudy rookie numbers last year. In all, he had 18 double-doubles, including monster games of 24/17, 31/13 and 18/20. Not bad for a rook who didn’t become a focal point of Laurence Frank’s offense until mid-season. Brook may be among the last of a dying breed when it comes to traditional post players, but he sure does look like a must-double weapon on the block.

I realize that there’s not much else in the cupboard after Devin, Brook and, to a lesser extent, Courtney Lee, who gives the backcourt a second young guard with Finals experience. But regardless of what happens in 2009/10, these three could be the start of a good, young nucleus — particularly with the $30 million in cap room likely coming next summer.

The Nets are still at least one or two major pieces away from approaching legit, obviously. But if CDR can start scoring regularly at this level, Yi can provide anything resembling consistent production and rookie Terrance Williams can offer any promise, Jay-Z’s favorite team might have a shot at becoming a decent little squad.

And if Shawn Carter’s “I’m bringing LeBron to Brooklyn” plan turns out to be half as possible as I figure it just might be, I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor Thorn.