LOS ANGELES – Everyone else on the Los Angeles Lakers had left and gone home Sunday night, and finally Kobe Bryant was on his way, too. He had slid into a side room to visit with a child from the Make a Wish Foundation, and now walked down the long corridor toward the Staples Center loading dock. A text message popped into his phone. It was coach Mike Brown, and he wanted to run something past his star player.

Bryant stopped and asked a locker room attendant: “Hey, is Mike still here?”

Told yes, Bryant turned around and marched back through the double steel doors and disappeared into Brown’s office for a 20-minute consult. For Bryant, it’s a different dynamic with a coach, a partnership born on his own clock. Until this year, he had never had a coach awake at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., to trade thoughts.

“He’s like me,” Bryant said later. “He doesn’t sleep. We talk all the time, and about everything: What we need to do, how we need to adjust. Constant communication.”

Bryant loves that Brown’s

As the Orlando Magic consider deals for Dwight Howard, the Golden State Warriors have emerged as aggressive suitors for the NBA’s best center, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Golden State management is willing to take Howard as a one-season "rental," with the hope of selling him on signing a long-term deal before he enters free agency this summer. Like most teams, Golden State has inquired with Orlando Magic general manager Otis Smith, but the Magic have yet to commit to aggressively pursuing a trade of Howard.

For the Magic to become intrigued with package, two things would likely have to appeal to them: rebuilding around young point guard Stephen Curry; and the Warriors' salary-cap space to absorb the three years and $34 million left on Hedo Turkoglu’s contract. The possibility of the pursuit could be complicated by questions about the sturdiness of Curry's surgically repaired right ankle. The Warriors are willing to part with either of their two guards – Curry or Monta Ellis –

NEW YORK – For all the star power on the New York Knicks – a roster to resurrect Mike D'Antoni's coaching career – Boris Diaw had come to deliver his old coach a most sobering "this-is-your-life" stroll into a far sweeter yesterday. This system was always so good to Diaw, and now he was manipulating it with shot after shot inside Madison Square Garden. Only, it was the wrong side of the ball, the wrong end of D'Antoni’s flawed basketball belief system.

Forty pounds too heavy, a step and a half too slow, and, still, it was old times for Diaw. Shots everywhere on the floor, easy drives to the basket, and D’Antoni stood ashen as Diaw destroyed him and the Knicks on Wednesday night. The desert mirage of D'Antoni's Phoenix Suns offense had been called, "Seven Seconds or Less," and all these years later that’s how long it took Diaw to pump fake at the 3-point line, drive to the basket and score on the porous Knicks defense.

In the final year of the $45 million contract that his agent Doug

NEWARK, N.J. – When it was time to be serious, the most immature of the Indiana Pacers clowned on the practice floor and scoured stat sheets in the locker room to tease struggling teammates over poor performances. For all the burgeoning talent in the room, the culture had been too sophomoric. For every tough-minded young player, there was someone else to play the fool a season ago.

Pacers president Larry Bird made Frank Vogel his coach and carefully chose his assistants to complement a young voice. But ultimately the guidance, the policing, works its way inside out. For everything free-agent forward David West has brought to the Pacers – a classic, refined presence – he's declared his loud, bold arrival in the most subtle of ways: performance over promise, correction over criticism, a raised eyebrow over a harsh word.

"I don't tolerate a lot of ignorance, and I think guys are starting to figure that out," West said. "I'm not a preachy guy, but I just try to represent something

NEWARK, N.J. – Tracy McGrady forever will be remembered on the wrong side of the superstar alliances, a career of what-ifs with those Grant Hill and Yao Ming partnerships perishing with fractured bones and twisted ligaments. Between Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard, McGrady had been the smaller, sleeker franchise star wanting to leave the Orlando Magic.

Now at 32 years old with the Atlanta Hawks, the knee operations behind him, McGrady has been seared with the scars of professional regret. He won scoring titles, earned tens of millions of All-Star votes and made tens of millions of dollars. As history goes, it's never worked out right for T-Mac. No titles, no finals, no significant advancements in the playoffs.

Nevertheless, McGrady was one of the originals who inspired franchises to clear salary-cap space, to partner with another All-Star, and few have lived the free-agent frenzy like him. Yes, McGrady knows of Howard requesting a trade to the New Jersey Nets to play with Deron

Somehow, it's the 1990s all over again: As the NBA season starts, people are getting trampled and stabbed for overpriced Air Jordans. The planet's most powerful center wants out of Orlando. Everything and nothing has changed. Michael Jordan is still the biggest shadow over the sport, still the relentless comparison for stars. For better and worse, he never goes away.

Jordan was a silent, but hard-driving owner in the NBA's labor lockout, determined to beat up the sport's players in the board room the way that he always did on the court. All these years later, the Chicago Bulls are a championship contender again, and the residue of the sneaker explosion born out of Jordan's marketability probably makes the title path a little tougher for the Bulls.

For now, Dwight Howard has delivered the Magic a list of three teams that can trade for him this season with the assurance he'll sign a contract extension with them: the Los Angeles Lakers, New Jersey Nets and Dallas Mavericks. The Bulls

Harvey Araton had grown up a New York basketball fan cheering for two of the most fascinating championship teams – the 1970 and '73 New York Knicks – in one of the most extraordinary cultural times. These were the Knicks of Willis Reed and Walt Clyde Frazier, Bill Bradley and Phil Jackson. They were an eclectic, fascinating collection of characters and talent, a study in the changing dynamic of socially conscious athletes in professional sports.

In his new book, "When the Garden was Eden: The Captain, Clyde, Dollar Bill and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks," Araton digs into the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings and a changing political and social climate in the NBA's locker rooms to write the best kind of sports book: One that, with the passing of the era, allows characters and sources the context and distance to make better sense of it all.

Araton, the preeminent voice on the NBA for three decades at the New York Times, has written several terrific books on

Kenyon Martin has severed ties with the Xinjiang Guanghui Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association, but he won't be able to secure a FIBA letter of clearance to return to the NBA until the team’s season ends sometime in February or March, sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The regular season runs through mid-February for Xinjiang, but the Flying Tigers expect to qualify for the playoffs.

For Martin and Xinjiang, the breakup was simply a chance to end a partnership that hadn’t been productive. Martin, who turns 34 on Dec. 30, had been nothing resembling a dominant force in the CBA, averaging 14 points and seven rebounds in a league with few NBA-level big men.

After playing out his contract with the Denver Nuggets last season, Martin is an unrestricted free agent. There are NBA teams interested in him, but clearly they’ll take a close look at his knees and try to understand why he struggled to find his past explosiveness in China. Was he simply not playing hard enough, or is he not