LeBron James and Dwyane Wade also compete to see who can undo the most shirt buttons (Aaron Davidson/ Getty).

Professional basketball players are often competitive to pathological levels, and not just toward opponents. Teammates can challenge each other, too, even as they strive toward the same goal of winning a game, making the playoffs, and taking on all comers to earn a title. Sometimes they just need to fight each other to see who can score the most points, or grab the most rebounds, or get the most invitations to fancy parties held by national magazines.

The basketball world now places less emphasis on pure counting stats, though, and that's changed the nature of this sort of competition. It's now not enough just to score more points than a teammate, because someone who gets 30 points on 25 shots hasn't really played as well as someone who gets 20 points on 12 shots. Efficiency matters.

Proving the point, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade recently revealed that they compete against each other to see who can shoot 50 percent from the field. From Ethan Skolnick for The Palm Beach Post (via EOB):

“It’s like a competition me and D-Wade are having right now about who can shoot 50 percent, in each and every game,” James said, when asked a couple of days later. “I had no idea, because I don’t know what’s going on throughout the game as far as stats. I came in after the game, I saw 9-for-19 [against the Bobcats in late December] and I missed that last long three, I felt I could have gotten into the lane and got a layup. I’ve got to make up for it.” [...]

The NBA features a lot of really close games, because even the worst teams are capable of competing on a nightly basis. It stands to reason, then, that there are also a lot of games that go down to the final possession. And while the percentage of made game-ending shots is much lower than on any other random play in the game, they still go in often enough that teams get one every so often. Certainly, the gaps between them typically don't go on for especially long.

Yet, until Thursday night, the Toronto Raptors hadn't had a game-winning buzzer-beater since December 20, 2006, when T.J. Ford hit a jumper to break a tie against the Clippers in Los Angeles (info via The Point Forward and The National Post). That's a long time to go without one of the plays that makes the NBA the exciting league it is.

Credit shooting guard DeMar DeRozan with ending the streak. With 4.3 seconds left and the Raptors tied 95-95 with the Magic in Orlando, DeRozan took a pass from Jose Calderon, dribbled towards to his left towards the baseline, and hit a ludicrously difficult stepback fadeaway jumper over Glen Davis and an attending Arron Afflalo for a thrilling finish. The shot capped a nice night for DeRozan, who led all scorers with 22 points on 10-17 shooting.

Kyrie Irving and Russell Westbrook are set to wow the All-Star Game crowd (Layne Murdoch/ Getty).

One week after the announcement of the starters for the 2013 NBA All-Star Game in Houston, the league revealed the All-Star reserves during a special edition of TNT's "Inside the NBA" on Thursday night. (Additionally, many of the participants were reported by Yahoo!'s own Adrian Wojnarowski and Marc Spears before the announcement.) As usual, the teams feature a mix of familiar faces, new blood, and surprising snubs.

The West reserves are led by San Antonio Spurs linchpins Tony Parker (fifth selection) and Tim Duncan (14th selection). They're joined by Oklahoma City Thunder dynamo Russell Westbrook (third selection), former OKC reserve and current Houston Rockets star James Harden (first selection), Memphis Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph (second selection), Golden State Warriors power forward David Lee (second selection), and Portland Trail Blazers big man LaMarcus Aldridge (second selection).

The East reserves are highlighted by reigning Defensive Player of the Year and New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler (first selection) and Chris Bosh (eighth selection) of the NBA champion Miami Heat. Their one-day teammates will include Indiana Pacers forward and likely Most Improved Player candidate Paul George (first selection), Philadelphia 76ers point guard Jrue Holliday (first selection), Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving (first selection), and Chicago Bulls mainstays Luol Deng (second selection) and Joakim Noah (first selection), who have helped keep the team in the thick of the playoff hunt while superstar point guard Derrick Rose works through a lengthy knee rehab.

After the jump, check out more thoughts on the selections, including the biggest snubs.

The NBA's new flopping policies have worked pretty well (if only because we can now focus on agreed-upon offenders instead of freaking out over a vague threat to the league's integrity). Nevertheless, players still flop, and many of them see it as an occasionally necessary part of winning games.

Take, for instance, Brooklyn Nets guard C.J. Watson, who executed a pretty egregious flop on Minnesota Timberwolves guard J.J. Barea during the fourth quarter of Wednesday night's 91-83 win. With just over nine minutes on the clock, Watson took a slight shoulder bump from Barea and turned it into a case of assault, falling to the floor and earning his team a turnover.

It was notable in part because Barea is one of the league's most notable floppers in his own right. After the game, Watson even admitted that he flopped in part to give Barea "a dose of his own medicine."

Check out that video interview after the jump (via TBJ and The Brooklyn Game).

Conventional basketball wisdom dictates that a play cannot be both flashy and smart. By this rationale, the fundamentals are enough to succeed, because the opponent will eventually make a mistake that can be exploited. But this view limits the range of basketball possibility, particularly at the highest levels of the game. Sometimes, a player has to force a risky move to make a possession work.

Denver Nuggets center JaVale McGee has never been considered a heady player — in fact, on Wednesday morning, Jay Busbee noted that his coach said "lazy and crazy isn't going to make it work" in direct reference to him. On Wednesday night, though, McGee showed that he can build upon his athleticism with a little creativity. In the final minute of the third quarter, with Denver already up 78-64 on the Rockets in Houston, McGee took a dribble to his right, let Omer Asik fly by him on a shot fake, and saw an open lane to the basket. Lacking a dribble, JaVale threw the ball high up off the glass, exploded toward the rim, and finished the self-administered alley-oop with his right hand. It was a great, athletic play, and also a smart one. It was everything we've ever wanted JaVale McGee to be. It also helped the Nuggets keep the momentum up in their 105-95 win.

Apparently McGee understood that this play was a little out of the norm, so he finished it up by throwing up a fingerstache on the way back to the defensive end. The man clearly knows what we expect from him, and also clearly loves fingerstaches.

Video via our friends at the Yahoo! Sports Minute. Original video via @cjzero.

Sebastian Telfair celebrates his purchase of the new Norah Jones album (Jonathan Daniel/ Getty).

At this point, most of the NBA is on Twitter. It's a wild world of training updates, questions as to which movies they should go see, and explanations of their Call of Duty prowess. Every so often, though, you also get a picture into the more interesting aspects of NBA life. This feature is your window into that world.

Kendall Marshall calls out some teammates:

2 of my teammates put pics on IG saying "we outchea mobbin at Starbucks" & "early mornin bucks w/ the folks" you can't be hard at starbucks!

— Kendall Marshall (@KButter5) January 23, 2013

Spencer Hawes keeps it in the family

“@sonicsnba: Who is your favorite Sonic of all time?” Steve Hawes! — Spencer Hawes (@spencerhawes00) January 23, 2013

Kim English failed to wear a suit to his own personal draft night (via Instagram).

Every high-level basketball player dreams of the moment when his name gets called at the NBA Draft. These athletes work so hard for so long to achieve in a dream, and over the course of a few seconds there name is called and they belong to an real live professional basketball team. It's the culmination of a lot of things, and that's why draftees can break down and cry even when the circumstances of their selection had been decided days or even weeks before the event itself.

The moment means a lot regardless of where those players happen to be, but it's extra special for those in the building. Players get a special moment on stage, and the commisioner (or deputy commissioner, for second-rounders) officially welcomes him to the NBA fold with a firm handshake (or, in some cases, a hug).

Detroit Pistons rookie shooting guard Kim English, the 44th pick in last June's draft, did not make it to New York for the festivities. However, he recently ran into current deputy commissioner (and future commissioner) Adam Silver at the Pistons' practice in London last week. He asked for a photo and handshake, and Silver obliged.

You can check out the photo above (via TBJ and Zac Dubasik). After the jump, take a look at English's tweet.

Over 11 NBA seasons, journeyman forward Brian Scalabrine cultivated an image of a regular guy who just happened to play basketball. Eventually, many fans came to believe that Scalabrine was an Average Joe, not an elite athlete (as all NBA players are), and figured that he probably wasn't that great at the profession that earned him tens of millions of dollars. This summer, Scalabrine said that he resented this suggestion (even if he also heartily embraced the regular guy image), and in December he challenged any Boston-area amateur basketball players to games of one-on-one.

On Monday, Scalabrine faced four hand-picked competitors. He destroyed them all. From CBS Boston (via TBJ):