Websites are reporting that the Dallas Mavericks will bring in Kevin Willis for a tryout.

Okay, back in the day, Willis was a physical specimen. He once commanded double teams from opposing defenses. He always respected the game. And he accepted his role as a practice player for San Antonio when they won the NBA Title in 2003.

Willis deserves respect. He could still contribute as a practice player.

Games are a different story. Willis is 44. That’s 3 years older than the age listed on Dikembe Mutombo’s birth certificate. The other day Willis was on TV as part of The NBA’s Greatest Games. He played in the epic 1988 postseason series between the Atlanta Hawks and Boston Celtics. That’s almost 20 years ago.

If Willis pulls a Rocky and signs with the Mavericks, then the flood gates are open for all retired posts to consider a comeback.

After hearing about Willis, these five are probably scheming on a comeback right now:

1) Michael Cage-Bring back the Jerry curl.

2) Benoit Benjamin-If your first 14 years don’t succeed, try again.

3) James Edwards-‘The Buddha’ could serve as a team’s spiritual mentor.

4) Larry Nance-He could still pack it on fools.

5) Charles Barkley-Did you see his race against Dick Bevita?

Steve Francis has blinders on. He refuses to accept that ‘The Franchise’ is no more, replaced by ‘The Role Player.’

His teams have never advanced past the first round of the playoffs. He creates controversy. And his numbers are on the decline.

But Francis lives in a time warp, believing he’s still entitled to two perks of NBA superstardom: unlimited minutes and never-ending shot attempts.

His warped sense of entitlement has led to a public dispute with Isiah Thomas, the New York Knicks controversial coach. He still earns superstar bank, pulling in 15 million dollars per season.

Ironically, Francis’ salary makes the trade he so desperately covets impossible. No team will touch his fat contract and the Knicks are reluctant to buy him out.

For now, Francis will remain frustrated, refusing to take off his blinders, refusing to see the obvious, and not caring that his team is slipping out of the playoff race.

In this post, Oly looks at Shaq’s recent run of great games.

The Take: Shaq Looking Like Superman Again.

It was January, 1991. The fresh-faced, statuesque center from Louisiana State University rose from the bench to re-enter the game. The score was tied, five minutes remaining. His opponent, the nationally ranked Arizona Wildcats featured four future NBA players: Jud Buecheler, Steve Kerr, Sean Rooks, and Bison Dele.

So far, the Wildcats had successfully neutralized the young giant. The rest of the game would be different. He dominated, throwing down several dunks, grabbing every available rebound, and contesting all shots.

His team won. A wide smile, that would become his trademark, suddenly appeared. Shaquille O’Neal had arrived.

Years later, the smile is still there. It never left. Some of his skills did leave, until recently.

Shaquille O’Neal is in the middle of a basketball renaissance. Since Dwayne Wade’s injury, ‘The Big Aristotle’ has returned to his old form.

He’s demanding the ball. He’s competing on defense. He’s setting the table for teammates on offense by creating an inside-outside flow.

Most importantly, he’s having fun again. The bounce in his step is back. The creative celebrations are back. And the nicknames are also back. The tattoo is once again applicable; Shaq Clark Kent is no more and Superman has taken flight.

His teammates have noticed, too. The Heat, a veteran squad, have rallied around their rejuvenated pivot, posting an impressive record since the injury to Wade. Even Coach Riley’s hair looks younger-which could be good or bad, you decide.

It’s not 1991. He’s no longer the future. But Shaq is still worth watching.

Last Night’s Hi-Flying Highlight: Fourth quarter, Lakers versus Grizzlies. Rudy Gay, Memphis’ athletic rookie, gets the ball on a fast break. He elevates and extends his body, hoping to put Kobe Bryant in a poster. Gay barely misses what would have been a classic dunk. It was still impressive.

Worth Watching: The T-Wolves, Kevin Garnett aside, are dysfunctional. Last night, they blew a 25 point lead and ended up losing to Seattle. Minnesota must make wholesale changes.

In this post, Oly reflects on Bryant’s place amongst the all-time great guards.

The Take: Watching Kobe’s Quest For Five Straight 50+ Games. Is He The Greatest Guard Ever?

Kobe Bryant starts the game by absolutely going off on the Golden State Warriors, connecting for 17 points in the first nine minutes. So far, he’s hitting everything: fade away jump shots from both corners, tough drives to the basket, and impossible three-pointers.

It’s a remarkable display the greatest of Kobe-haters have to respect. Personal feelings aside, #24, in classic purple-and-gold, deserves unconditional props for his recent play.

 Watching Bryant forces me to reflect on a larger and more important question: is he the greatest perimeter player ever? You heard correctly. Is the current version of Kobe Bryant the greatest perimeter player to ever don an NBA jersey?

That’s what these games are really about-figuring out Kobe’s place in the hierarchy of hoops immortality. Here’s the answer: currently, he’s balling at a level none of the all-time great guards can match. None of them can touch him.

The old school, Oscar Robertson, Bob Cousy, and ‘Pistol’ Pete, lack Bryant’s athleticism. And Kobe Bean’s a better defender and all-round player than Mr. no-look, himself, Magic Johnson.

To me, the 2006-07 Bryant is an evolved and improved version of Michael Jordan. That’s right, evolved and improved. He’s bigger and more athletic than MJ. He’s a better defender. And he possesses a greater arsenal of offensive moves.

Of course, basketball purists will disagree with my opinion on Kobe. They’ll compare Jordan’s six NBA Titles to Bryant’s three. They’ll compare Jordan’s relationship with teammates to Bryant’s relationship with Shaq.

However, it says everything that Bryant, at just twenty eight years old, can be part of such a question. Oh yeah, he fell short of 50 points, scoring a ‘disappointing’ 43 in a win over Baron Davis and the Warriors.

Last Night’s Hi-Flying Highlight: Kevin Garnett’s game winning turnaround shot against the Trail Blazers. This play is further evidence that ’The Big Ticket’ is still doing his thing for the Wolves. Too bad, he’s surrounded by underachieving journeymen, all of whom earn the mid-level exception.

Worth Watching: The rumor that Ron Artest will retire at season’s end. This could be the trigger that finally forces Sacramento to blow everything up and start that much needed rebuilding plan.

In this post, Oly examines why Kobe Bryant will always be a complicated and controversial figure.

The Take: Don’t Judge Kobe’s Latest Scoring Spree!

He’s damned if he scores in bunches. And he’s damned if he facilitates the offense, pass-first, Dick Vitale style.

 Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. This is the problem facing Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers All-World superstar.

Bryant’s always going to be judged-and never meekly. Everybody loves going Simon Cowell on this guy. He’s judged by all media: TV cats, print writers, and radio broadcasters. He’s judged by every type of basketball fan: casual and die-hard. And he’s even judged by the non-basketball watching public, who only recognize his name from the World Wars with Shaq and his rape case.

Here’s the thing with Kobe: he’s big. But he’s different than MJ big. And he’s different than Shaq, LeBron, or Wade big. Kobe Bean is big because he polarizes basketball fans and society in a way few athletes or people ever do. Kobe polarizes like ‘W’. Heck, Kobe polarizes like the Yankees, Manchester United, and G-Unit all rolled into one. There’s no in-between. There’s no half way. Nothing. You either hate him or love him.

His last few games have been overshadowed by this polarizing thing. I mean 65, 50, and 60 points scored-out of necessity to help his team win. Not for individual glory like the past, but to simply help the Lakers win.

But the hottest topic amongst fans is Kobe’s so-called selfishness. What a shame-a damn shame, indeed.

He’s no longer about ‘getting his’. And he’s no longer treating the Triple-Post offense as his personal all-you-can-eat smorgasbord for shot attempts. But it doesn’t matter when you polarize. Welcome to the world of Kobe Bryant. Welcome to the world of getting criticized no matter what you do. And welcome to Kobe’s perpetual dilemma and never-ending struggle.

Last Night’s Hi-Flying Highlight: Anything involving Los Angeles’ #24 against Memphis. You pick.

Worth Watching: Kobe Bryant, of course. Can half-Italy, half-illadelph life score fifty or more for the forth straight game? We’ll see because tonight the Lakers take on the Hornets.

After years of the free-lance game, Oly Sandor is bringing his unique brand of NBA analysis exclusively to Hoopsvibe, the hottest basketball website in the game. Oly and the Hoopsvibe staff invite you to join him everyday at NBAblog.hoopsvibe.com, where he’ll tackle The Association’s most controversial issues.

Read any half-assed, AP-derivative report on Denver’s past two games, and you’re likely to come across the word “experiment” before long. It refers, of course, to the pairing of Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony, who, as you’ve heard more times than you needed to, ranked first and second in the league in scoring at the time of the trade that sent The Answer out west. 

With Carmelo’s similarly over-mentioned suspension for his hit-and-run job on New York’s Mardy Collins keeping the pair apart for a few weeks following the big swap, most media types were left stewing in their own tentative predictions as they waited to see whether the duo would become the league’s premiere one-two punch, or simply a punch in the sack for G.M. Kiki Vandeweghe. Thankfully, I didn’t join my esteemed colleagues in tagging this as the next potential case of what I term “roundball blue-balls” (i.e. discomfort caused by a lack of touches). Instead, I did something very unusual – and advisable – for a writer: I shut the hell up.

You can check the archives on that one if you don’t believe me. As a matter of fact, you can scour the message boards, rifle through my outbox and ask my friend(s), too. No matter how hard you look, you won’t find word one from my beige behind concerning this exper…affair.

As you can probably tell, I’m not fond of the word “experiment”. Experiments, you see, generally tend to have binary outcomes. My sixteen-year-old self discovered this in the spring of 2003 during a chemistry class when, as the teacher’s most despised pupil, I was called to the front of the lab to perform an experiment he had detailed just moments earlier. Of course, my attentions had been dedicated to anything but his prosaic pedagoguery, in particular my fantasy roster, which I usually spent my science lessons rearranging. Rather than admit my ignorance, however, I decided to do the best with what I knew and see if I couldn’t bring about the desired result by way of some educated guesswork. To prevent a short story from becoming longer, I added some red crap to some blue crap when I shouldn’t have, and the end result was an evacuated laboratory and a few hundred dollars’ damage. 

Although my “Buy a new one, you rich motherf*ckers” defence spared your boy any financial repercussions, I learned an important lesson that day: Take risks, but never experiment. Fortunately for us Denver disciples, it seems as if the suits at the Pepsi Center didn’t have to set fire to a workbench to find that out. Hence the title of this feature and my moniker for the A.I. and ‘Melo show: The Nugg Project.

Why “project” instead of “experiment”, then? Simple: Experiments require good fortune; projects need only perseverance. Success is somewhere down the road for these brash bucketeers, and the matter is not so much an “if” as a “How soon?”

Timmy and Dirk may not have them on their hit list just yet, but they’d be well advised to watch their backs regardless. Right now, the Nuggets are something like a Smallville­-era Superman: precociously powerful, but still learning how to harness their abilities. Still, you don’t need super-vision to see that the skills are already there. Carmelo and J.R. Smith are leaping defenders with a single bound. Ivey, eleven years and twenty thousand points in, is still faster than a speeding train. Forget the cape, side parting and outer-underwear, though; this super-squad is more headbands, cornrows and arm-sleeves.

So, how do they safeguard against their early success going Bizarro on them? Well, that’s the task George Karl is charged with, and at present he seems to know what he’s doing. His questionable decision to turn The Prodigy into The Sixth Man appears to be paying dividends as Smith has put up thirty-nine points from the pine in the last two, a period over which the Cambyman has also contributed some mighty healthy numbers despite limited touches. What’s more, my main man Nenê, his tender knee still shrouded in enough tape to wrap a mummy, has shot a combined nine-of-twelve in mid-rotation minutes, making a strong play to reclaim his old starting spot from newcomer Reggie Evans.

This analysis may well be premature, and there’s a good chance that these early victories are more a case of beginner’s luck than an instant rapport. Still, whatever the next few weeks hold for Denver, the Nugget Nation can feel confident that good times are in store. If the team’s super-strength component, Kenyon Martin, can overcome the Kryptonite poisoning that was his microfracture surgery, it may not be long before they make it through May and have the chance to go for gold. Until then, however, we just have to practice patience and hope for health. Just hearing what Allen and Carmelo have to say makes the wait seem better, though.

“It’s like a new beginning for us.”

“I believe we can win.”

I can’t tell you exactly where it’s going or how it will end up, but I know this much right now: The Nugg Project is underway, and there ain’t nothing experimental about it.

- CYE

No smart-ass intro could possibly increase or mitigate the impact of the video below, so I’ll keep this brief. In the clip which follows, you see a fully-grown (and then some) man lose his dignity in front of a crowd of thousands and a host of television cameras transmitting the embarrassment to the rest of the world. Although, as I have said, there isn’t much I could possibly say to alter what happened, I’d like to try to put it into context for those of you haven’t yet managed to fully appreciate its gravity.

Nate Robinson, the shot-blocker, is 5’9’’. Yao Ming, the shot-blockee, is 7’5’’. By my calculations, that gives Monsieur Ming a height advantage of twenty inches over Nasty Nate. The equivalent for me (I stand an even six feet), then, would be to have my shit swatted by a man of 4’4’’. Such an individual would stand a full four inches shorter than Gary Coleman.

So, what point do I make by this? Basically that Yao was bitched. I probably could have said that at the beginning and saved us both some time. Ah, well.

I’m going to be honest and make this admission before we start: Despite having family and other acquaintances up there, I’ve never taken the time to visit the city of Toronto. As such, I’m just going to have to assume that the general population of T-Dot and the rest of the Golden Horseshoe isn’t slower than Greg Ostertag in lead sneakers. If this is a fair assumption (and the fact that the city’s still intact shows that it is), then I’m going to have to call Rafael Araujo out for his recent comments in the Toronto Star.

"The fans (in Toronto) didn’t know what I can do," Araujo said yesterday. "Here they know what I can do. I was a good player, I’ve been a good player and I just didn’t have the right fair chance."

What self-help tapes has this dude been listening to? You averaged two and three last year, Hoffa. As a 6’11’’, 270-pound waste of space (and money), you managed to shoot a princely 36.6% from the field. This, folks, is a player who started thirty-four games for an NBA team. I really don’t know what to say about comments such as the one which follows.

"I did my best there, I worked hard for two years," he said. "The coaching staff and the director (general manager) part, I couldn’t control that."

Now, I accept that certain players are limited by circumstance. Boris Diaw was never given the opportunity to show off his full skill set in Atlanta. Tracy McGrady didn’t get his chance to shine while playing alongside Vince. Gilbert Arenas wasn’t able to express his talent while in Oakland. Rafael Araujo, however, does not fall into this category. 

He was picked far too early in the draft and immediately justified public scepticism at the selection. In his second season, his game somehow deteriorated before the Raptors showed mercy and sent him back to Utah. There were many factors holding him back, but – and you should get your necks limber to nod in agreement here – the suits in the upper tier at Air Canada weren’t one of them.

They say you can’t teach height. Well, you can’t teach bitch either. If the folks in Salt Lake City don’t tear this guy a new one, they’re either giving him a pass for playing at BYU, or they’re simply showing that trademark Mormon politeness. (Admission number two: My knowledge of the Mormon character is derived entirely from the movie Orgazmo. It may not be accurate, but it’s funnier this way.)

- CYE

While most coaches have the liberty of blaming their roster on a scapegoat from time to time, Zeke is in the unusual position of having to deal with the mess he created. It’s for this reason that Isiah Thomas’ recent comments about Eddy Curry’s “progress” have been fairly moderate. Read on for an example of the triumph of rhetoric over the truth.

"We have a lot of time. We’re not asking Eddy to dominate the league at twenty-three years of age. That’s a tall task for anyone. I don’t remember too many twenty-three-year-olds coming in and dominating, regardless of how long they’ve been in the league. Twenty-three is still twenty-three."

How old is Eddy again? I’d guess he’s twenty-three or so if this is his sixth season out of high school. I do my best not to criticise (watch me lie, America), but from time to time I just can’t help but take a sip of my Haterade and tear the players apart like Michael Sweetney does an ice cream sundae. Do you not think that more than half a decade’s experience in possibly the most competitive sporting league in the world would be enough for most players to begin to realise their potential? Apparently, all Eddy Curry has realised in his NBA career is that most foods taste better with cheese on them. 

I don’t mean to turn this into a fat joke-fest (I lie again), but if there’s anyone I’d expect to watch their weight, it’s a professional athlete with a heart condition. With a belly better suited to sumo than hoops, however, it’s clear that counting Curry’s calories would have Stephen Hawking reaching for the calculator. For the second time today, I find myself having to reproach millionaires for not finding inordinate amounts of cash sufficient motivation to do what’s necessary when 99.99% of the world’s ballers are happy to work their tails off without seeing a penny for it.

He doesn’t exactly help himself with crap like this.

Houston’s 26-year-old, 7-5 center took Curry to school when the teams met in Houston Nov.10, outscoring him 35-7 (on 15-of-21 shooting to Curry’s 2-for-11) and outrebounding him 17-5 in the Rockets’ 103-94 win.

"Don’t let him get 30 or 40 on me," said Curry, who shot 2-of-9 for seven points and sat out the fourth quarter of Saturday’s loss to Boston. "We gotta do somethin’. I mean, Yao went crazy last game."

The next time somebody tells me that the Knicks “didn’t show up last night”, I’m going to take it literally and assume that Eddy Curry ate the rest of the squad. Seriously, I can’t bring myself to do anything more than mock a guy who, despite having access to countless physicians, trainers and nutritionists, chooses to hurt his team by keeping his holiday weight on all year. You’re fat, Curry. Fat. That’s really all I’ve got.

- CYE

If anything’s guaranteed to undermine your credibility as a coach, it’s having your star player directly contradict you, and in a way that makes it clear you were spitting misleading half-truths to the media like a senator caught in a brothel. Such was the scenario (the lying, not showing up in a whorehouse) for Coach Cheeks following his post-game interview, as Allen Iverson took his point and treated it with as much respect as Antonio Daniels’ ankles. Cast your eye over some excerpts from this report, and join me in a little game of Spot the Lie.

"I loved our effort…We didn’t win but I thought our effort was big, was huge."

But when asked whether he liked the Sixers’ effort as well, Allen Iverson spit out a "no" as if he had just found something strange in his cheeseburger.

"Look, I’m not trying to be an ass, I promise you," Iverson said in the visiting locker room at Staples Center before getting three stitches in his chin courtesy of an accidental elbow by Corey Maggette on Maggette’s drive to the hoop. "But I don’t care nothing about that."

Could you find the fib? Call me a cynic, but, having watched Philly play a few times this season, I’m more inclined to consider AI’s sentiment the genuine one. After all, with a sub-.500 record and the burden of scoring, passing, initiating the plays, raising morale and tying the starting five’s laces (Iggy’s cool, though; he’s got velcro), you’d be a little irked as well. It’s not surprising, then, that The Answer should have a sardonic response for his coach’s suggestion that a little effort compensates for the fact that the team blows harder than Stan Van Gundy after his “Buns of Steel” workout.

"I don’t care who you’re playing against, if you’re playing a little rec-league team. The effort is supposed to be there every night. So it’s not a big thing for me. To say, ’Yeah, we gave effort’ or whatever, you’re supposed to give effort. But when you go out and play basketball, you’re supposed to win the basketball game."

“Effort? What you want, a cookie?” I couldn’t help but connect Bubba’s comments with Chris Rock’s famous Bring the Pain diatribe, and I probably wasn’t the only one. If men earning millions of dollars for doing something that I and countless others do for fun are being praised for putting in a little effort, I just don’t know what to say. Perhaps incentivising this squad with cookies and other treats might not be the worst idea. Who knows? Maybe Samuel Dalembert would stop wandering around the paint like he’d just been thrown in a spin dryer then maced if Mo promised to buy him the new bicycle he requested in his letter to Santa.

- CYE