More than anyone, Houston Rockets owner Les Alexander believed Jeff Van Gundy was holding back his basketball team. Alexander berated his ex-coach for playing too deliberately on offense and costing him customers. Why, the owner lamented, can’t we play like the Phoenix Suns?

As it turns out, Van Gundy wasn’t holding the Rockets back.

He was holding them together.

After Alexander dropped Van Gundy for Rick Adelman, new general manager Daryl Morey had sold people on the Rockets as a serious challenger for the Western Conference championship. He traded for Argentine forward Luis Scola, signed Steve Francis and activated Bonzi Wells. There was a growing belief that he had constructed a roster to benefit Adelman’s accomplished offensive mind.

Yes, the Rockets insisted, the handcuffs were gone. Now, the Rockets could let loose.

And how’s that going?

They discovered the truth about this team’s limitations. From Tracy McGrady’s mental and physical fragility to an absence of athleticism, they

Once the roster had been determined in training camp, Phil Jackson gathered his players for a meeting at the Lakers hotel in Hawaii. All around the room, they were required to stand one by one, give their name and say something about themselves.

And so, the rookies, Javaris Crittenton and Coby Karl, rose, and the old returning champion, Derek Fisher, and finally, the most famous man in the room climbed to his feet.

“Hi, I’m Kobe Bryant and I want to win a championship.”

Smush Parker has returned to Miami where his agent said the Heat front office has invited the banished guard to rejoin the team.

“(Heat general manager) Randy Pfund called me (Wednesday) and told me that they need Smush back down there,” the agent, Billy Ceisler, said Thursday afternoon.

Parker flew from New York to Miami Thursday afternoon.

President and coach Pat Riley made Parker leave the Heat after an altercation with a valet parking attendant on Nov. 27. Upon signing a two-year, $4.6 million free agent contract over the summer, Parker played just nine games before the exile. He had been working out in New York recently, waiting to learn of Riley’s next move.

Parker, who had been the Lakers starting point guard for two seasons, became eligible for a trade on Dec. 15, but league executives have been wary based on Riley removing him from the team. The Heat aren’t required to announce his activation until an hour before game time on Friday night against Orlando at American Airlines

Everyone told Alonzo Mourning to walk away with the Miami Heat’s championship two seasons ago. What else was left? Perhaps the parade down Biscayne Boulevard would’ve been a perfect storybook ending for everyone else, but ’Zo’s journey had been so different, so dramatic, maybe it wasn’t perfect for him.

His life, his story, had never been neat and tidy this way.

So yes, the disturbing tearing of tendons and muscles on Wednesday night was a horrible scene. Mourning crumpled to the floor clutching his knee, his basketball season, his career, over. And then, there was ’Zo. They wanted to carry him off the court, but he bit his lip, climbed to his feet and declared that he’d be damned if they were going to wheel him out of the gymnasium. He threw his arms around his teammates, and Alonzo Mourning, the last tough guy, limped to the locker room.

BOSTON – Karma, Joe Dumars was saying. He's taught the Detroit Pistons to believe in karma, taught them that the good comes back to you. This is the reason he never got angry with Chauncey Billups for playing the part of buddy to Kevin Garnett, for telling him it would be wise to take that trade to the Celtics.

Back in the summer, Billups shrugged and explained himself this way to Dumars: "Hey, it's good karma, man. I did what's right."

Five months later, on a cold December morning at the new Boston Garden, Dumars considered the consequences of Billups' act of friendship for an old Timberwolves teammate.

Chauncey, you told KG to do … what?

"I did have to swallow hard," Dumars said with a smile, "but I accepted the good karma."

As it turns out, these Celtics are the best thing to happen to these Pistons. Deep down, Dumars loves it. Hours before Billups punctuated a magnificent performance with old-school guard play on Wednesday night, beating the Celtics with guile and guts and two free

The look in the poor kid's eyes told Bob Hurley that the long, spindly kid out of Starkville, Miss., was lost. Drills? Offensive sets?

Just a blank stare.

As diligently as the St. Anthony of Jersey City (N.J.) coach tried to direct Travis Outlaw to play LeBron James in the 2003 Roundball Classic in Chicago, it felt useless. The difference between the first two high school players picked in the 2003 NBA draft – No. 1 and No. 23 – promised to be monumental.

If James had been the most prepared prospect to ever make the prom-to-the-pros leap, Outlaw looked like the longest of shots.

"He had a hard time getting through the organization of one of those practices," Hurley said. "He was totally unprepared."

Just imagine how lost and confused Outlaw would be upon arrival in Portland as a teenager out of that small Southern town, an earnest, naïve kid walking into the backend of the Jail Blazers era. At 6-foot-9, a specimen selected on the rawest of athleticism, Outlaw could've been considered a

With just a quarter of the NBA season behind us, it is still too soon to make sweeping conclusions about the season. Even so, why not?

So, here are the award winners out of the season’s first six weeks…

MVP: LeBron James, Cleveland. If you had any doubts about his sheer force, all you had to see was what the Cavaliers looked like without him on the floor for 5½ games. Without LeBron, the Cavs wouldn’t win the Big Ten. Seriously, he’s been playing on a level unseen in the sport in years. One of these years, he’s going to threaten Oscar Robertson’s feat of chasing a triple-double average for the season.

John Nash pleaded with Ed Stefanski to let go of his midlife crises. Stay out of the basketball business, he told him. And what about those four boys you need to get through college? His old friend had a successful mortgage business, a cushy college basketball television job, a good, balanced life in Philadelphia.

“He was giving up a lucrative career for what could’ve been a short-lived NBA experience,” Nash said. “I tried to dissuade him.”

Eight years ago, Stefanski told Nash, then the Nets GM, that he wanted to make this leap of faith before it was too late in life. He told Nash to keep him in mind. Nash had always believed Stefanski had the beautiful basketball mind and the iron will to validate those in the New Jersey front office questioning, Who is this guy?

Now, Nash said, “he’s exceeded my wildest expectations for him.”

How about Stefanski’s own? The 76ers brought Stefanski home as president and general manager to restore their lost cause. There are dream jobs, and there is