Name	Height	Weight	College	Age
Keith Clark	6-8	245	Oklahoma	23
Joe Crawford	6-5	210	Kentucky	24
Michael Fey	7-0	270	UCLA	27
Ryan Forehan-Kelly	6-6	195	California	30
Gabriel Hughes	7-0	240	California	30
James Peters	6-8	215	UNLV	29
Frank Robinson	6-4	220	Cal-State Fullerton	26
Diamon Simpson	6-7	230	St. Mary's (CA)	22
Dar Tucker	6-4	205	DePaul	22
James Wright	6-1	185	Colorado	29

For those keeping track at home, the D-Fenders not selected were: Lawrence McKenzie, Ray Reese, Rodney Webb, and Horace Wormely.

The Legends still do not have a roster. Though they now own the rights to the selected 10, not all of those players will be in the D-League next season, much less in Frisco. As Scott Schroeder of Ridiculous Upside noted last week, Diamon Thompson, Michael Fey, Ryan Foreham-Kelly, and Frank Robinson have already signed contracts to play overseas next season, and thus will likely pass on the opportunity to play for the Mavs’ affiliate. Of the remaining six, some will at least make it to Legends camp, though it’s unknown how many of those players will actually make the final roster.

The Legends have begun to take shape. Even if, for the moment, that shape is something of an amorphous blob.

UPDATE: Here’s Schroeder’s take, again from Ridiculous Upside.

I’m not quite sure how this slipped by me last week, but here’s the latest of the Texas Legends promo videos. Featuring: the exquisite stylings of J.R. Slagendorff, and relative newcomer on the scene, Draino.

Or, for those who can’t handle videos longer than 30 seconds:

From the team release:

The roster for the inaugural Texas Legends season, which tips off in November, will begin to take shape by way of an Expansion Draft, it was announced today. The 14-player expansion draft pool is made up of solely of the returning players from the 2009-10 Los Angeles D-Fenders, which will be on hiatus for the 2010-11 season.  Included in the pool are guard Dar Tucker and center Michael Fey, two of the 30 players invited to the 2010 NBA D-League Elite Mini-Camp, held in June in Chantilly, VA.

…“This is another step towards our inaugural season,” Legends Owner Donnie Nelson commented.  “The D-Fenders had a number of very talented players who have a real chance to develop into NBA athletes.  The opportunity to draft their rights is the first step towards forming our team.”

Essentially, the Legends will have the right of first refusal on all of the D-Fenders, and there should be plenty of refusing. L.A. had the worst record in the Western Conference last season (and the second-worst record in the D overall), and the overall talent of the roster reflects that. I’m sure some of the D-Fenders will end up with the Legends to start the season, but don’t mistake this for anything more than the most basic of starter kits.

Available for the picking are Dar Tucker (also known as he who did this), Michael Fey, Joe Crawford, Diamon Simpson, Ryan Forehan-Kelly, Gabriel Hughes, Lawrence McKenzie, Frank Robinson, Horace Wormely, James Wright, Keith Clark, James Peters, Ray Reese and Rodney Webb. You can view all of their statistical information here, but keep in mind that someone has to produce on every team, even the second worst in the D-League.

UPDATE: Scott Schroeder of Ridiculous Upside ranked the top 10 D-Fenders and described them in greater detail. I’m inclined to defer to him on these matters. Follow along with Schroeder as he briefly explains each of the top 10 options, their relative standing, and why it makes sense to draft the rights of some players that have already signed deals to play overseas.

He didn’t need hijinks to be polarizing. Howard did that all on his own.

Zac Crain did a terrific job of capturing what it was that made Josh Howard Josh Howard over on FreeDarko last week, and that piece, like so many other thoughts and views of Howard, has been doing laps inside my skull. The fact that Crain used Mike Finley as a mechanism with which to view and understand Howard is even more confounding to me, as I’ve long considered Finley to be one of the more deeply flawed yet still sympathetic figures in Mavericks lore.

All of this is to say that Josh Howard throws me for a bit of a loop. I’m not entirely sure how to make sense of his time in Dallas (his inclusion on lists of the all-time Mavericks seems so wrong and about right), but I’m glad that Crain can.

As much as the positional revolution is a reflection of basketball progress and modernity, it also symbolizes something very basic and quite fundamental. Positionality is basketball’s existentialism, as looking into the nature of on-court roles is the closest the sport ever comes to pondering how the players as we know them have come to life. When a person steps onto a basketball court they become a player, and more specifically, a shooting guard. Or a center. Or a wing. Or a scorer/D2. They become something else and something more, and trying to understand that transition is a fascinating endeavor.

Fascinating enough, in fact, that the recent swell of discussion over positional freedom has sparked plenty of interesting writing in our little corner of the basketball world.

• Last week, Jesse Blanchard of 48 Minutes of Hell honed in on the D1. After all, is any player in the league really capable of keying in on an opponent’s premier, quicker, point guard-type player? While I think the same could be said of the elites at every position, Blanchard’s point is well-taken, and his alternative system — which focuses on three different defensive styles (disrupt, deny, contain) — provides some delectable food for thought. Something to consider, though: Do Blanchard’s defensive positions really signify defensive function? Or are they merely stylistic descriptors? Does that even matter? Those classifications are a terrific exercise regardless, even if they aren’t best served as positions.
• Matt Moore, writing at NBA FanHouse, chose to examine the revolution with Tyreke Evans as one of its foci: “An example? Tyreke Evans. Evans can attack the basket, snare rebounds, has terrific length and instincts defensively, and knows how to find his teammates (despite calls he’s a terrible passer, he averaged five assists his rookie campaign, with little to no weapons on the Kings). But because he’s tall and has better scoring ability than passing ability, he’s “not a point guard” which automatically makes him a shooting guard. Except he’s not a shooting guard. He’s best with the ball in his hands, setting up and creating within the offense. Hence our problem…So what’s so important about this discussion? At the scouting level, it means that players that could be very real assets for teams are either ignored or devalued based on their inability to fit our more traditional 1-5 positions. Unless they are super-freaks like LeBron James, we struggle with how to really implement them into systems (and even James has positional problems due to him consistently playing the small forward position, which has restrictions). From an evaluation standpoint, we assign negative values to players like Tyreke Evans, who are incredible stars, simply because they don’t fit our traditional model.”
• Bethlehem Shoals took Moore’s take and ran with it, not only echoing the valuation of Tyreke Evans’ significance, but asserting that “point guards are the gateway to positional change.” The point guard designation carries with it the most specific and sacred responsibilities, so it’s no wonder that Shoals — and Blanchard, and Moore, and myself — see it as such an elemental part of a potential shift.
• Kevin Arnovitz’s take, inspired by Kobe Bryant’s endorsement of positional evolution, preaches pragmatism. Not necessarily in the way that we talk about players or positions (in order to even engage in this discussion, your head needs to be at least brushing with the clouds), but in the way that a post-position (or at least post-traditional positions) world would need to function: “In short, pro basketball is ripe for a positional revolution — but like every revolution, those challenging the status quo must be ready to govern once they take control.”

Ay, there’s the rub. All of these scribes — and the many others who have tackled the revolution in the past and will hopefully continue to do so in the future — agree that we need a change, but what then? The point of our union is obvious, but moving from ideological consensus to actual implementation comes with a million hang-ups along the way. The easiest part of the transition is in the works: more and more people are beginning to understand and think about how terribly limiting traditional positions can be. From here on out? It gets exponentially more difficult. There are already numerous ideas for various positional frameworks (including the Scorer/Rebounder/Creator — DX system that will tentatively be utilized here), but determining their utility, viability, and all the while creating a system that is somehow new, informative, and accessible is no simple task. Yet as a collective of thinking fans, it’s our task.

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Lost? Start here, turn left there, and make a slight right here. Keep going.

“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”
-Abraham Lincoln

Of course as the season went on, and teams grew wiser and wiser to Beaubois’ leaping abilities as well as Kidd’s intentions, Dallas ran the play less and less. It was broken up here or there by this team or that, and when Beaubois was buried in the rotation mid-season, so too was the play.

The sequence is easily identifiable (not many Maverick sets trigger with the same hand-off action on the wing) though, and for little purpose other than re-living one of Beaubois’ first NBA highlights, we’ll break down the set-up using FastDraw.

Note: The numbers do not indicate positions, but actual jersey numbers. For this example, the Mavs’ lineup will consist of Kidd (#2), Beaubois (#3), Dirk Nowitzki (#41), Shawn Marion (#0), and Brendan Haywood (#33).

The play begins with Kidd bringing the ball up on the left side of the floor, while the other four players remain stationary. Kidd hands off the ball to Beaubois, and begins to cut toward the baseline.

Nowitzki sets a pick for Kidd, who attempts to brush his man off on Nowitzki’s screen. From there he continues to cut baseline, heading toward Marion on the opposite wing.

Marion sets a similar brush screen for Kidd, who rounds the corner and heads back out to the perimeter while Haywood runs interference with another screen. Keep in mind that the purpose of these picks isn’t really to free up Kidd as it is to draw the attention of the defense. If the Mavs are running three screens for Kidd, it seems clear that they want him open in a specific spot. In a sense they do, but the screens here, while certainly beneficial in executing the play, are largely misdirection.

Beaubois dribbles to the top of the key as Kidd cuts up the sideline, positioning himself to make a simple feed back to Kidd.

Kidd receives the easy pass from Beaubois, likely with his man still trailing behind. At this point, the play resembles a set designed to open up Kidd for a three-pointer, but he doesn’t shoot. A defense may misread this as early success, thinking that they’ve botched the Mavs’ primary option on this play. Dirk heads to the free throw line extended, as he often does when the Mavs’ sets break down. Beaubois, after making the pass back to Kidd, begins to drift back to his prior spot on the left side of the floor.

Rather than receive the ball at the elbow, Nowitzki is another decoy. He sets a screen on Beaubois’ man at the elbow, and Beaubois darts toward the basket while the defense watches Kidd and Dirk. The opposing bigs are likely with Nowitzki, who is moving in the opposite direction, and Haywood, who is standing on the right wing. This allows Beaubois to cut to the rim, and finish with an undeterred slam.

Basketball positions are the names by which we call any player. Just as a rose by any other name would swell as sweet, a lanky 7-foot German would shoot as sweet by any other positional designation. They’re terms and notations that matter to others, but should hardly matter much to the players themselves. After all, it shouldn’t matter much to Chris Paul what position someone thinks he plays, as long as he’s busy doing what Chris Paul does: dominating basketball games.

Then again, it’s foolish to ignore just how loaded positional terminology can and has become. Part of the reason why re-defining positions is so alluring in the first place is the ability to clear the air of positional expectation. ‘Point guard,’ carries with it an arbitrary set of expected, predefined abilities, and our (our meaning the collective who creates, consumes, and reflects on the sport in just about any capacity) willingness to malign players who don’t color within the lines of those designations is nonsensical.

For those who have followed along through the first two posts, this line of thinking is nothing new. However, the weight of positional expectation adds another interesting party to these discussions: the players themselves. While positions shouldn’t theoretically matter to the players, the fact that their position is so often used as an evaluative criterion gives them reason enough to be interested. I’m not saying that Jason Terry is going to stop by the comment section for a chat, but the opinions of the players have a place in this process, and it’s a mishmash of perspectives that’s hard to encapsulate.

That said, one NBAer has emerged, serving as a temporary spokesperson. From Dime Magazine (via Matt Moore of FanHouse):

Kobe Bryant has seen the future, and it is … him. Or something close to him. Speaking to the media during his World Basketball Festival appearance at Harlem’s Rucker Park last weekend, Kobe said the influence of international players in the NBA has helped create a “hybrid” culture, where players of all sizes possess skills in all areas and can conceivably play any position on the floor.

“That’s the one difference I’d like to see us kind of shift to,” Kobe said.

Bryant’s vision of a world with positional nebulousness is nice. Beautiful, in fact. A universe where all ballers can play in perfect harmony, stand as equals, and worry not over the endless criticism regarding their positional performance. That’s the endgame of all of this, and the fact that Kobe sees it too is a positive sign. Positions as we know them aren’t quite dead, but when one of the league’s pillars decrees them unworthy from atop his ring-and-trophy-adorned tower, people would be wise to listen.

Bryant is far from infallible, but he’s one of the sport’s more active scholars. He knows where this game has been and where it’s headed, and he has an intimate look into the eye (or rather, an eye) of the storm, to boot. From Pau Gasol to Derek Fisher, Shannon Brown to Ron Artest, and Lamar Odom to Kobe himself, the Lakers have a lot of versatile talent that evades convention. The entire league has a lot of versatile talent that evades convention, and that’s something both you, I, and Kobe can agree on.