Doug Collins tries to take it easy on Lou Williams and Jrue Holiday (Getty Images)

If you were around for his stints in Chicago, Detroit and Washington, you know the storyline by now. Doug Collins is a brilliant basketball coach who tends to wear on his players after a while. In Chicago, it took three years before he was able to exhale his way to a TBS/TNT gig. He stayed two and a half years in Detroit before things went sour, and Collins went to NBC. In Washington, it took two full seasons. And now, just 138 games into his tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers, could Collins be losing his grip on the team he appeared to be expertly piloting earlier in this season?

Perhaps that's what a lockout, and a ramped-up schedule, does to the timeline. On Friday, former 76ers beat writer Kate Fagan wrote that "at times" the Sixers have "reached the point of tuning [Collins] out," and later that afternoon Collins lambasted Fagan as "someone who has not been around our team all season long" before calling her piece "totally untrue." Fair or foul, the 76ers went on to lose Saturday to a reeling Orlando Magic squad, and were blown out by 24 points on Sunday by a Boston Celtics team that it is in desperate competition with for the Atlantic Division lead. And, by extension of a division win, a chance to face a Miami Heat team in the first round that both squads match up well against. Even before that loss, Collins could only lament the relative sensitivity of his players. As quoted by SB Nation's Gethin Coolbaugh:

"The one thing about players today is that they're very sensitive, and very fragile," Collins said before his team's game against the Boston Celtics on Easter Sunday. "They didn't grow up with tough coaches. You know, I had my ass kicked since I was six. It's a different time, and so I treat this team very much with kid gloves. I really do, and I'm still looked at as an ogre."

Antoine Walker in his last week with the Idaho Stampede (Getty Images)

There was a time when the Boston Celtics were as obscure, and as inconsequential, as any other NBA team. Though the current Celtics are just sixth in the Eastern Conference as of Monday, the team still seems to play on national TV every other day, and are the subject of great concern when things go terribly wrong, or exhilaratingly right. That wasn't always the case, though. And during Antoine Walker's first three NBA seasons, well, the dude might as well have been playing for the Grizzlies, or Warriors. Before the advent of League Pass, Antoine Walker was someone you had to see to believe. And by the time we got League Pass, nobody seemed ready to believe. Not with that shot selection.

Walker retired on Saturday, calling it quits following his D-League Idaho Stampede's win over the Bakersfield Jam. It was Walker's second stint with the team, and both versions saw the former NBA All-Star look decidedly out of shape. Nobody should have expected the 35-year-old to keep up with players a decade younger than him, but this turn was supposed to be rehabilitation of sorts. A run created to show that Walker's guile and smarts could aid one of the 30 NBA teams that happily employ players in their mid 30s because of their combination of production and leadership.

Instead, Walker showed up to Idaho completely out of shape. Sports Illustrated's Chris Ballard detailed his fast food and sugar-cereal strewn apartment in his must-read feature on Walker's hoped-for NBA return, and Antoine's play reflected the unholy marriage of his shape and NBA stylings. He was still the same old Antoine, shooting endless 3-pointers because there were no 4-pointers to take, well over four per game despite playing only 25 minutes a contest and a terrible 20 percent mark from long range. It was every Antoine Walker stereotype, come true.

Bob Knight, ready to shake down your Uncle for forty bucks (Getty Images)

The Indianapolis Star was nice enough to Bob Knight to describe his performance at Carmel, Indiana's Center For the Performing Arts as a "speech," but that's about as misleading as performance reviews come. This was an event. Bob Knight is on tour, charging (as far as we can tell) in upwards of $40 a show to have you dabbing at your eyes with his latest telling of the Landon Turner story, in front of a rapt audience that no doubt wishes things were way, way different.

Knight wishes college basketball was different, and we don't blame him. The product, since young athletes determined they could succeed in other collectives while being paid for their work, has suffered in recent years. Knight, and no doubt his audience, is a bit ticked that NBA-level basketball players won't stick around the NCAA for a few years to ramp up their college credits, and he's decided to call players that play NCAA ball for one year before moving onto the NBA "a disgrace." That's right, he likes it better when these guys only stick around long enough to make money for their colleges, CBS and various auto insurance companies, and not themselves and their families. As quoted by the Star:

"I think it's a disgrace," Knight said of players who attend college for one year to fulfill the NBA's requirement to be drafted. "If I was an NBA general manager, I would never want to take a kid 18, 19 years old, a year out of college. I'd wait until someone else worked two or three years with him to adjust him to the NBA and I'd trade a draft pick."

Just more than 13 years ago, with his Oklahoma Sooners playing in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament, forward Eduardo Najera set a blind screen on Michigan State guard Mateen Cleaves that resulted in a scary collision that knocked Najera completely out with a concussion. In a move that thankfully wouldn't be replicated today, Najera returned to the contest 14 minutes later, to the great delight of applauding Sooner fans willing to look past the degree of danger he was putting himself in by playing so soon after a concussion. Even just 13 years ago, those were different times.

Now a Charlotte Bobcat, Najera recently suffered a less visually frightening but potentially more dangerous injury on the court. On Friday night, Eduardo took an inadvertent elbow from Milwaukee Bucks big man John Brockman that can be seen at the 17-second mark of this video. It won't make you as squeamish as the clip from his NCAA days, but the impact is decidedly more severe, even if Najera stayed on his feet:

Mark Cuban. You don't want this guy at the NBA lottery, anyway (Getty Images)

It's easy to dismiss the ranting of an oft-crazed (in the basketball sense) billionaire that decides to replace perfectly good metaphors like "shoot yourself in the foot" with the much scarier "shoot yourself in the forehead." But Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is onto something when he points out that the NBA's collectively bargained insistence that NBA draft hopefuls spend at least their first year outside of the NBA helps absolutely nobody. College basketball isn't all that great any more, the NBA doesn't get that extra year of cherished free development time as a result, and only Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings has decided to spend that year overseas rather than acting as a "one and done" player at college.

There's not much the league can do about it, though. At least not until the next NBA lockout's bargaining negotiations. Cuban would prefer the NBA enact league-wide legislation that makes it so players would have to go three full years before hitting the NBA. The NCAA is the obvious option, of course, but overseas play and the D-League are still possibilities. Perhaps with new rules, potential one'ers would think twice about Kentucky, and go get paid with the pros in Europe. Here's Mark, as quoted by ESPN Dallas:

"It's not even so much about lottery busts," Cuban said. "It's about kids' lives that we're ruining. Even if you're a first-round pick and you have three years of guaranteed money -- or two years now of guaranteed money -- then what? Because if you're a bust and it turns out you just can't play in the NBA, your 'Rocks for Jocks' one year of schooling isn't going to get you real far.

Dwight Howard seems a little scared of Kobe Bryant (Getty Images)

It's entirely possible that the latest twist in this Dwight Howard saga is at once the most ridiculous and most understandable. The New York Post is picking up on months' worth of rumors that had the Orlando All-Star (and budding GM) scared at the thought of either having to act as Kobe Bryant's clear number two in Los Angeles, or working under a heightened sense of expectations after being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. As a result, says one "Orlando source," Howard was actually threatened with a deal to the championship-contending Lakers unless he picked up his contract option with Orlando for 2012-13.

And instead of the Lakers, Kerber relays the fact that most in the NBA have known since the beginning. That Howard, all along, wanted to go to New Jersey instead. The easy hook here is, "not Los Angeles … but New Jersey?," and you're right to take it. From the Post:

According to league sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Orlando brass got fed up with Howard's yes-no-maybe posturing and threatened to trade him to the Lakers, not his desired location, if he did not sign an agreement to waive the opt-out clause for the final season of his contract. Howard eventually signed the papers, but only after he was told "he would be a Laker by the end of the day," according to one source.

Doc Rivers doesn't want to hear about the Tumblr you never update (Getty Images)

The storyline doesn't need much embellishing. The Boston Celtics, championship hopefuls, have lost two different times to Chicago Bulls teams that were playing without injured star Derrick Rose. Both defeats came in Chicago, to be sure, but Boston nearly blew a close win against the Rose-less Bulls in Boston last month. If anything, you would think that Rose's healthy cohorts would have Boston's attention by now, but that didn't stop the Celtics from blowing an 11-point lead on Thursday night, and C's coach Doc Rivers from blowing his stack soon after.

From the Boston Globe:

"We were cool tonight. We were the cool Boston Celtics tonight. That's what we looked like. You could see it, walking the ball (up court). We couldn't get the ball inbounds? Nobody wanted to work. It was a joke. We were the "cool Celtics." And there's nothing about me that's cool, I can tell you that. You don't play basketball cool."

Karl Malone in front of "every camera he could find" in February of 2011 (Getty Images)

Remember back in February, when word leaked that Utah Jazz legend Karl Malone had to purchase a scalped ticket to see his former team play? Well, either he paid for a scalped ticket or refused the team's offer of a free seat. Either way, the game was the team's first since the Jazz and longtime coach Jerry Sloan parted ways, Malone was not too happy with the Jazz at that point, and a year after that newish Jazz owner Greg Miller lashed out at his "high-maintenance" Hall of Famer for trusting hearsay and assumptions in his take on how the Jazz and Sloan divorced.

Two months later, with Malone back in Salt Lake City to see the Jazz fall to a never-die/can't-die Phoenix Suns team, everyone appears to be cheery again. Malone has made up with Miller, publicly embracing the Hall of Famer before Wednesday's game. Here's the scoop, from The Salt Lake Tribune:

"Karl and I have got it worked out and everything's good," Miller said.