Latrell Sprewell allegedly wants you to turn the music up. (Kent Horner/NBA/Getty Images)There's a pretty good chance that you had more fun on New Year's Eve than Latrell Sprewell did on New Year's Eve, because even if you wound up getting sick after having too much to drink or being shot down by that special someone with whom you wanted to share a 2013-starting kiss, at least you didn't get arrested at 4 in the afternoon. (We hope.)

The 13-year NBA veteran, who last suited up for the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2005, was arrested for disorderly conduct on Monday following "repeated complaints about loud music coming from a house on E. Pleasant St. on Milwaukee's east side," according to Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Police would not release details of the incident other than to report that police had received two complaints within one hour Monday afternoon and had received several complaints of loud music from the residence in recent months.

Sprewell, 42 and a graduate of Washington High School, was booked into the jail about 4:15 p.m. [...] Monday's incident has been referred to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office for investigation.

We'll hold off on scolding Spree for the time being — you know, that whole "presumption of innocence until proof of guilt" thing — but we'll just note that you'd likely have to be playing music pretty loud for it to result in a call to police at 4:15 p.m. Or, at the very least, have a very different conception of what "loud" entails than your neighbors do. Which reminds me: Now I kind of want Sprewell to move in next door to Andrew Bynum. Oh, what reported fun they'd allegedly have with one another's homes.

With 1.3 seconds left in the third quarter of Tuesday night's year-opening tilt between the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Clippers, Denver point guard Andre Miller prepared to inbound the ball with a chance for one final shot. So, understandably, he looked for the Nuggets' irrepressible 7-foot secret weapon:

Somewhere — perhaps wearing a reversible Santa Cruz Warriors practice jersey — surely, Lil B was smiling down upon this moment. Which is appropriate, because I'm not sure if there's a more based player in the NBA than JaVale McGee — excluding, of course, Metta World Peace. (Also, it's kind of perfect that JaVale dusted off a move that peaked in popularity sometime between fall 2010 and early 2011 to celebrate a play made on New Year's Day 2013.)

The long ball — which, as you might expect, was the first of the 7-foot center's five-year NBA career — put the Denver Nuggets up 75-59 heading into the fourth quarter of their matchup with the Western Conference-leading Los Angeles Clippers, and Vinny Del Negro's team never got closer than 13 in the final frame en route to a 92-78 loss that snapped L.A.'s franchise-record and NBA-best winning streak at 17 games.

Dwight Howard shoots while the best backcourt of the previous generation watches (Getty Images)

It’s become more than obvious, after an entire offseason spent away from basketball and the first significant injury of his career, that Dwight Howard is far from healthy. That sort of uncertainty and lack of confidence can affect all aspects of a player’s game, but when you couple that sort of trepidation with what could be charitably described as unimpressive effort, you have what could be an MVP-level anchor working as a saddening sponge instead.

What you can’t criticize is his approach to free throws. He works at it, repeatedly, in practice. In actual practice during games, though, Howard stinks. After perhaps his worst game as a Laker in a loss on Sunday, he’s at just over 51 percent on the season.

[Related: Kobe Bryant blames 'old' Lakers for latest loss]

What if it’s the application, and not the effort, that’s due for a change? Howard recently started lining up a good six or seven inches behind the free throw stripe, and while the results haven’t turned him into a regular Jack Sikma from the line, things are turning up. Whether you can attribute that to the change in lineup or myriad other factors is up to you, but the percentages aren’t lying. From the Los Angeles Times:

The half-step back has resulted in some forward movement in precision.

Howard had made 56 of 91 (61.5%) free throws over the 11 games preceding the Lakers' game against the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night at Staples Center.

After missing the first 30 games of the 2012-13 season following left knee surgery, Amar'e Stoudemire returned to NBA action on Tuesday night when the New York Knicks took on the Portland Trail Blazers at Madison Square Garden, as Yahoo! Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski first reported he would. And while New York's front office has reportedly worked diligently to move him elsewhere, the MSG faithful were happy to see him come home, as Stoudemire was met with a standing ovation when he checked in at the 3:31 mark of the opening quarter:

Unfortunately, the rest of the evening didn't go quite so smoothly for Stoudemire, who — somewhat expectedly — looked rusty on both ends of the floor, clearly didn't have his legs or wind back after so much time on the shelf and offered relatively little in the Knicks' 105-100 loss to the Blazers.

Shortly after entering the game, Stoudemire got his first touch on the left block, defended by Portland power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, and promptly turned the ball over by stepping out of bounds while trying to make a post move on Aldridge along the baseline. (Here's hoping Hakeem wasn't watching.) He got his first shot up two possessions later, hoisting a jumper from the left elbow that went wanting ... as did his next four shots, leaving him scoreless in 9 1/2 minutes of first-half action.

Deron Williams rises and fires, but he and the rest of the Nets kept shooting blanks. (D. Clarke Evans/NBA/Getty Images)On some level, it's fitting that the Brooklyn Nets capped their disastrous December by setting a franchise record for offensive failure.

After all, a month that began with boundless excitement over a red-hot 11-4 start — excitement that has completely disappeared thanks to a monthlong meltdown spurred by a foot injury to Brook Lopez, a complete devolution on both sides of the ball, the franchise point guard complaining about the offense, the super-famous power forward getting benched, the stalwart small forward calling out his too-casual teammates and a million other things that led to Avery Johnson's firing — has to end with a bang, doesn't it? Or, perhaps more accurately, with a brick. Eighteen of them, on 20 tries, over the space of 12 minutes on Monday that turned what had been a tight game at halftime into an absolute laugher before the fourth.

Playing without injured spark plug Gerald Wallace, the Nets scored five points in the third quarter in a 104-73 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on New Year's Eve. They missed seven of their eight tries at the rim, all six of their 3-pointers, and made just one of six midrange attempts; their shot chart for the quarter, captured by Devin Kharpertian at The Brooklyn Game, is a sea of red with one brief sliver of green. They turned the ball over seven times, leading to 12 Spurs points. Only one Net — point guard Deron Williams (2 for 6, all five points) — hit a shot in the third; seven Nets posted ohfers. On successive possessions midway through the quarter, Regge Evans (who had taken all of three shots from further than nine feet away all season) shot a midrange jumper that bounced over the backboard, Andray Blatche threw a scoop layup out of bounds and Deron Williams put a jumper off the side of the backboard. Yep: That bad.

It wasn't the lowest-scoring quarter in NBA history — the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors both have two-point frames in their record books — but it was the lowest single-quarter scoring output in the 46-year history of the Nets franchise. After the game's merciful end, interim coach P.J. Carlesimo looked back on his Nets' 10 percent shooting in that awful third quarter and told Raul Dominguez of The Associated Press, "I'm actually surprised it wasn't worse."

Kemba Walker and his fellow Bobcats guards sliced through the Bulls D on Monday. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)How did you celebrate the end of 2012? Raising a glass of champagne, putting on a sweet hat and blowing into a noisemaker, maybe? That sounds pretty sweet, but I'm guessing it wasn't quite as sweet as getting your first taste of victory in more than a month, like the Charlotte Bobcats did with a 91-81 win over the Chicago Bulls at the United Center on Monday afternoon. After all, snapping an 18-game losing streak gives you the same buzz without that meddlesome hangover.

Yes, the 36-day drought is over, and Charlotte's head coach doesn't want to hear anything else about it, according to Dave van Dyck of the Chicago Tribune:

"What streak do you mean? One win in a row?" Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap asked.

That's right, Mike. When positives are present, you have to accentuate them, and for the first time in quite a while, there were a lot of bright spots for the Bobcats.

After weeks of ineffective offense bogged down by turnovers and poor execution, Dunlap said he decided to "put the playbook in the freezer and just let our guys go at them," eschewing standard sets in favor of a freer-flowing motion-heavy style. Perhaps Dunlap should keep it in the deep freeze; against the league's No. 4 defense, guards Kemba Walker, Gerald Henderson, Ramon Sessions and Ben Gordon combined for 64 points on 45 field-goal attempts, giving Chicago's backcourt — which was without Kirk Hinrich, who missed the game due to "a compilation of things," according to Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau — fits with their quickness and ability to penetrate off the bounce.

Rick Carlisle is out of answers (Getty Images)

A lucky 13 years ago, almost to the day, Mark Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks. In the seasons since, save for a trip to the lottery a few months after he bought the club, the Mavericks have continually rung the 50-win bell while grabbing one championship out of two NBA Finals appearances. At no point, even during the team’s frustrating Finals defense in 2011-12 or the struggles that met Cuban when he took over during the 1999-00 season, has the team lost six straight. In fact, Cuban’s first week as an NBA owner saw his new squad end a five-game losing streak under Don Nelson.

Under current coach Rick Carlisle, the Mavs had no such luck on Sunday in snapping a five-game swoon. Instead, though the Mavs showed signs of competing, the team was blown out by the San Antonio Spurs in a 111-86 embarrassment. And Carlisle, according to the Dallas Morning News’ Eddie Sefko, has had it up to here.

(Points to his forehead.)

“I [have] to be inventive and find ways,” he said. “I don’t have a better answer than that. The last week, I’ve had to literally scream in the face of two guys in practices and shootarounds to get the point across. And I will continue to do that.

“If I have to start suspending guys for not doing things they’re supposed to be doing on the court, I’ll do it. And Mark and I will get into it about that. But somehow, things have got to change and it can’t just be about that it’s a tough schedule. It just can’t.”

Gregg Popovich considers reaping the whirlwind again. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

It's been just over a month since San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich decided, mere hours before a marquee nationally televised matchup with the defending NBA champion Miami Heat, to send four of his top five players back to Texas so that they could rest up after a long road trip rather than suit up to entertain TNT-watching audiences. You remember what happened next: David Stern got super mad, the Spurs reserves played great and would've won if not for Jesus Shuttlesworth, we all got an awesome game to watch with (in all likelihood) way more interest than there would've been previously, and yet still the commish slapped the Spurs with an unprecedented $250,000 fine for doing "a disservice to the league and our fans." (It was a whole big thing.)

Now, you might be asking yourself: "Dan, we're on the brink of a new year. Why are you bringing up the past? The future, that's what counts, you history-obsessed dork." To which I say: Hey, take it easy. We're all friends here.

OK, now that we've established that, let's take a look at the schedule. San Antonio played on Sunday, taking care of the Dallas Mavericks for the second time in a week, and welcome the Brooklyn Nets — about whose coaching situation Pop has some thoughts — to the AT&T Center on Monday night. After an off day Tuesday, the Spurs take on the Milwaukee Bucks on New Year's Day and then head to Manhattan for a matchup with the New York Knicks on Thursday. By my reckoning, that's four games in five nights, with the final game coming in a high-profile contest against an Eastern Conference power.

I mean ... he wouldn't do it again, would he?