Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and Steve Nash look back. (Getty Images)

Check out the noses for the ball on these three, huh? Turned completely the wrong way and leaning away from the ol' leather pumpkin. Great basketball IQ, guys. Championship-level stuff, I tells ya. Oh, brother.

Best caption wins another lap, and I swear we'll keep runnin' 'em until Paul, Griffin and Nash decide they'd like to get their heads in the game, because this kind of sloppy practice sure as shootin' ain't gonna beat McKinley High! Good luck.

In our last adventure: The hope of a new generation lives inside Rodrigue Beaubois' eyes. (Unfortunately, he has just been whistled for a foul.)

Neither Stephen Silas (left) nor his father Paul have any idea what Eduardo Najera is doing. (Getty Images)

Charlotte Bobcats assistant coach Stephen Silas, son of head coach Paul Silas, has been taking a more active role on the bench of late, taking over head coaching duties from his dad for several Bobcats games. With Paul Silas, 68, reportedly "leaning toward" spending one more year on the sidelines (if the Bobcats will have him, as his contract expires at year's end), Stephen's acting-coach stints are being viewed as on-the-job training, whether for becoming his dad's successor in Charlotte or to ramp up his resume as a candidate for the next vacancy that opens elsewhere.

The arrangement appears to be above-board, and the Bobcats' front office is down with Stephen coaching about one game a week for the remainder of the season. But according to Rick Bonnell at the Charlotte Observer, the NBA wants to know which games exactly those are going to be.

Coach Paul Silas told me at shoot-around this morning that the league has asked the Bobcats for a heads-up whenever lead assistant Stephen Silas is taking over the team for a game. [...]

It makes sense that the league office wants to inform that night's officiating crew in advance that Stephen Silas is in charge. Referees give head coaches more latitude — to stand throughout the game, to argue calls, to ask for interpretations — than they do assistants. So it makes sense for refs to know how to delineate between Paul's and Stephen's roles.

I, for one, wish the league wouldn't have made this request. The prospect of two Silases standing and yelling at Bill Spooner for calling a foul on Bismack Biyombo, followed by Spooner issuing a technical foul that leads to father and son pulling a "Who's on First?" routine over who should get the T is exactly the kind of thing that might make me watch a 7-41 team that just became the first team of this NBA season officially eliminated from postseason contention. Why do you have to ruin our fun, NBA? Bits like these don't come around all that often.

Good morning, friends. The coaching staff of the Denver Nuggets wants you to LOOK ALIVE.

According to the description of the clip, which was posted on the team's NuggetsTV YouTube channel, these outbursts are a nightly occurrence. Before each Denver game, when the pregame clock passes the four-minute mark, Nuggets equipment manager Sparky Gonzales yells, "3:59, time to go to work!" That's the cue for Nuggets assistant Chad Iske to follow up with "a guttural scream that typically lasts six to eight seconds." And judging by this video compilation, that's the cue for head coach George Karl to impassively critique Iske's barbaric yawps, decrying their brevity, tone and passion.

According to Nuggets.com's Aaron J. Lopez, Iske's vocal exercises replaced a more physical pregame tension-breaker the Nuggets staff used in years past:

Dressed in suits and ties, Nuggets coach George Karl and members of his coaching staff would lower their shoulders and slam into one another as a final bonding moment in the minutes before tipoff.

"As coaches, you've got to have your energy, you've got to be excited," assistant coach Chad Iske explains. "Hit each other, bang around. We used to have a little mosh pit trying to knock each other off our feet for 10 or 15 seconds and then head out [to the court]."

Unfortunately, Ponyboy, nothing so gold as a pre-tip mosh pit of total adults can stay. As Karl assistants/key moshers Scott Brooks, Bill Branch, Rex Kalamian and Chip Engelland left for other gigs, "the body-slamming [was] replaced by vocal expression."

With five games now under his belt as a Nugget, I say we've got about another week before JaVale McGee is not only joining Iske's scream team, but also bringing the bellow on the court after very JaVale McGee plays like this steal and explosion of Toronto Raptors point guard Jose Calderon.

There are basketball reasons (no Stern-o) to love Ian Mahinmi. The 25-year-old Frenchman has provided largely solid two-way play as part of the Dallas Mavericks' big-man rotation this season, kicking in 6.4 points and 4.8 rebounds in a career-high 19.3 minutes per game for a Mavs team taking a center-by-committee approach to replacing Tyson Chandler. While Mahinmi's game certainly remains rough around the edges, he's remarkably athletic and fluid on the floor for a 6-foot-11, 230-pounder, and given a defined role and extended playing time, he's proven to be both a talent worthy of nurturing for the future and a valuable contributor in the here and now.

Today, though, none of that matters, because now we have this video, which gives us all the non-basketball reasons we'd ever need to love Ian Mahinmi.

[Related: Michael Jordan, David Beckham among athletes with hot clothing lines]

The clip, posted to the "ianmahinmiTV" YouTube channel, features Mahinmi walking around a hotel in a plush blue robe, working out shirtless in hipster glasses and a bracelet, getting a massage on what appears to be the roofdeck of a luxury hotel, and coming face to smiling face with five doppelgangers, each of whom gives the blue-robed Mahinmi a hearty thumb's up. The whole shebang is soundtracked by a slick disco-remixed lounge groove, which makes everything infinitely more hilarious.

Rodrigue Beaubois, bright-eyed and bearing gifts. (AP)

You will never in a million years guess what it is, referee Jason Phillips. Rodrigue Beaubois spent like six hours shopping on Amazon, but it was totally worth it, because he thinks you're really going to, oh crap, he forgot to wrap it, didn't he?

Hmm. Oh, well. Still, happy National Spanish Paella Day, I guess.

Best caption wins a pretty cool basketball friend, not unlike Phillips just received. Good luck.

In our last adventure: Baron Davis isn't feeling so great.

Long-injured Eric Gordon could suit up for the Hornets as soon as this week. (Getty Images)

For the New Orleans Hornets, there's nothing but pride left to play for this season. Coach Monty Williams' team stands at 12-37, the second-worst record in the NBA, having lost seven of its last 10 and 14 of its last 20 with a 29th-ranked offense that has averaged less than a point per possession on the year. With a month left in the regular season and no chance at a playoff berth, it would be perfectly understandable if the Hornets just closed up shop, played out the string and rolled up as many losses as possible to keep their ping-pong-ball count high.

So, naturally, they're expected to bring back long-lost guard Eric Gordon, who was expected to be the team's offensive centerpiece before missing all but two games with a right knee injury, to give the team a shot in the arm for the stretch run. Wait, what?

Word of Gordon's possible return started to spread Monday after Monty Williams said the injured shooting guard "could be back on the floor in 'five days to a week,'" according to Hornets.com's Jim Eichenhofer. The talk solidified Tuesday, when Gordon was slated to go through a full practice that Jimmy Smith of the New Orleans Times-Picayune called the "final step in [Gordon's] rehabilitation process" after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery on Valentine's Day:

"I didn't do anything for about 2 1/2, almost three weeks," Gordon said. "Next thing you know, I started lifting on it, and then started running [...] I've had no problems cutting, jumping, and now it's just all about having that comfort level and being ready for contact."

Heading into the Los Angeles Lakers' Tuesday night tilt with the Golden State Warriors, Kobe Bryant needed 25 points to pass Michael Jordan for the second-most points scored by a player for a single NBA franchise. He got 30. We now have a definitive answer; finally, the debate can end. Kobe Bryant is better than Michael Jordan.

(in terms of number of points scored with one particular team)

Check out Kobe's landmark moment and the rest of Tuesday's top sports stories, thanks to our friends at the Yahoo! Sports Minute.

Tuesday's milestone marked the second time in 31 days that Bryant has passed Jordan on an all-time scoring list. With a third-quarter dunk on Feb. 26, Kobe jumped MJ to become the top scorer in NBA All-Star Game history. This time around, he didn't even have to get his nose broken or suffer a concussion or anything, which is a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

After popping for 30 for the league-leading 22nd time this season — Kevin Durant has 19 games of 30 or more points, LeBron James and Kevin Love each have 18, Russell Westbrook has 13, Monta Ellis has 10 and nobody else is in double digits — Bryant now stands at 29,283 points in his illustrious 15-plus years with the Lakers. As the @NBAHistory Twitter account noted Wednesday morning, Jordan, now third on the list, scored 29,277 in 13 years with the Chicago Bulls. The all-time leader? Karl Malone, who poured in 36,374 points during his 18 years with the Utah Jazz.

Those leapfrogs aside, Bryant's still got some ground to cover to pass Jordan on the league's all-time scoring list — MJ finished up with 32,292 points, thanks to his late-career comeback with the Washington Wizards. (I, for one, can't wait to see Kobe head to the nation's capital at the end of his career, then insist that he's just doing it because he wants to, and not because it's what Jordan did.)

New York Knicks guard Baron Davis. (AP)

Baron Davis played 34 minutes in the New York Knicks' 89-80 win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night. The last time that he played that much was two teams and more than 13 months ago (also, interestingly enough, against the Bucks). He spent much of the second half looking like he was going to throw up. It was ... unseemly.

Then again, maybe the fire in his eyes here isn't due to a fire in his belly. What do you think has Baron pointing and out of sorts? Best caption wins a nice, long swig of Pepto Bismol. Good luck.

In our last adventure: Kevin Garnett says "cheese." (He only wants American, though. If you bring him any European cheeses, he will flip out so hard.)