Eric Gordon gazes upon an uncertain future, or just waits for a play to start (Christian Petersen/ Getty).

Last July, New Orleans Hornets shooting guard Eric Gordon became a restricted free agent and promptly did everything in his power to convince the team not to match a four-year max offer from the Phoenix Suns. In Gordon's view, the Hornets disrespected him by not immediately offering him a five-year extension, despite the fact that it was perfectly logical and expected that they would see what other teams would offer a very good player with a questionable history of injuries.

[Also: Celtics' Rajon Rondo could return earlier than anticipated]

Gordon eventually came to terms with this situation and reported to camp with the misguided but impressively optimistic belief that New Orleans would be a playoff team. Unfortunately, his relationship with the organization got complicated soon after, with a knee injury of uncertain severity. It looked like Gordon and the Hornets had serious communication issues.

He and the team resolved that conflict, too, and Gordon has played in 16 games this season — the Hornets have gone 9-7 in those contests — despite struggling with back problems. He certainly appears to be a part of their long-term plans. Yet he seems unhappy once again. From Sam Amick for USA Today:

Shawn Marion handles the ball against a bad team (Ronald Martinez/ Getty).

The NBA trade deadline falls on Feb. 21, which means that teams are frantically assessing their needs and deciding if they want to be buyers, sellers, or loiterers in this market. Our Kelly Dwyer ran through some of the hottest rumors on Monday, and in just a few days those stories have mutated and developed into about 400 different scenarios. 'Tis the season, I guess.

The Dallas Mavericks are one team that's likely to sell. Owner Mark Cuban has already said his bank is open, and the Mavs aren't looking much like a playoff team at 21-28 and 11th in the West. Some of their veterans could be on the block. That list includes versatile forward Shawn Marion, one of a handful of Mavericks left from the 2011 NBA champions. Marion is the sort of smart, capable player that a contender can use at both ends. Yet, with a sizable contract expiring after next season, he could also prove valuable to a young, rebuilding team willing to wait for its cap space.

Except, according to Marion, he has no interest in playing for a bad team and won't report to one if he's dealt. From Tim McMahon for ESPNDallas.com:

Don't worry, he's just getting coverage for the edit bay. (David Sherman/NBA/Getty Images)

A look around the league and the Web that covers it. It's also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren't always listed in order of importance. That's for you, dear reader, to figure out.

C: Heat Index and Grantland. Tom Haberstroh and Zach Lowe got access to a bunch of data from STATS' SportVU — a 3D video camera-based tracking system that films games from a variety of angles, using in-game player position coordinates to offer a ton of detailed info about player speed, distance, player separation, ball possession and more. Fifteen NBA teams have purchased these camera systems, and, as a result, probably have a crazy amount of information about not only their teams, but every other team in the league. Haberstroh and Lowe parse it to give us some awesome, granular profiles about guys like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and many, many more. So much fun, whether you're a hoops nerd or not. (Although being a nerd probably helps.)

PF: BBall Breakdown. Virtually every NBA team uses the Horns set — a point guard triggering the ball up top, two players (usually bigs) at the elbows, two players (usually wings) spacing the floor in the short corners — on offense, but despite its prevalence across the league, there are plenty of different actions and counters teams run out the initial alignment. Coach Nick runs through a bunch of variations, showing how individual player motions and decisions can create loads of offensive options.

SF: Waiting for Next Year. Kirk Lammers breaks down how Cleveland Cavaliers sophomores Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson used simple high screen-and-rolls, with slight tweaks from possession to possession and great execution down the stretch, to kill the Oklahoma City Thunder last weekend.

Greg Oden in March of 2012 (Getty Images)The Cleveland Cavaliers rank 27th in defense this season, and with Anderson Varejao out for the season (and possibly traded during the offseason) the Cavaliers are reportedly set to offer a contract to one of the greatest defensive big men of his generation. Even if he didn’t actually play for most of this generation’s term.

Jason Lloyd covers the Cavs expertly for the Akron Beacon-Journal, and on Friday he reported that the Cavaliers will offer Greg Oden a two-year contract following the Feb. 21 trade deadline, utilizing cap space that would presumably put the Cavaliers ahead of Oden’s various other suitors, ones that would be offering him a minimum contract. And this is only if the Cavaliers go past the deadline without acting as a trade facilitator with that extra cap space.

From Lloyd’s report:

Oden is living nearby in Columbus. His agent, Mike Conley Sr., said last week Oden has been to see the Cavs a couple of times already, but was evasive when pressed as to what capacity.

“Greg has been up there (to Cleveland) before and he’ll probably be up there again in an official capacity,” Conley said Friday.

'Tssss. Tssss.' (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBA/Getty Images)

Washington Wizards shooting guard Jordan Crawford is a lot of things — a game-winner, a dominant scorer who passes all the time, a man with strange ideas about shoe storage and a dude with a remarkably irrational amount of confidence. He's also someone who seems like he'd be fun to talk to, as evidenced by his engaging apperance on ESPN's "Dan LeBatard Is Highly Questionable," available in podcast form here, in which he relates a pretty great story about the first time he ever matched up with Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant:

LeBatard: Can you give me a time that you were on the court, on a professional basketball court, and you looked to your right or your left and said, "I can't believe I'm up here with this guy?"

Crawford: I did it with two people. I did with Vince Carter my rookie year. I couldn't believe I was playing him, I was checking him. And then Kobe, of course. When I first played with Kobe, I was hearing — like, they call him "The Black Mamba" — and then he was doing, like, the little snake sounds when he wanted the ball. (laughs) It was crazy. It was crazy. It was crazy. So, them two moments.

LeBatard: Wait a minute — what was this sound? He was calling for the ball by making a snake sound?

Crawford: Yeah, it's like, tssss, tssss. It's like, "Fish, Fish, Fisher — tsssss, tssss." He'd do that. (laughs) And it's like, they call him, they say — like, everybody tells you he's gonna do it before you play him. Like, "Wait 'till you hear him do this." And then he do it, and it's like, "What?" Like he's really a mamba.

The Denver Nuggets can say goodbye to these uniforms for a while (Getty Images)

It’s easy to dismiss Denver’s 126-98 win over the Chicago Bulls from Thursday because the Bulls are working with a shorthanded, injured roster. A 32-point win is a 32-point win, though, and the triumph marked Denver’s eighth victory in a row. The squad’s record currently stands at 32-18, fourth in the west, and the team has finally evened its home and road contests at 25 apiece. This was the hoped-for but not entirely expected response to a tough start to the regular season, one that saw the team play 22 out of its first 31 contests away from Denver.

[Also: Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard were skeptical of their union]

That’s an unlikely and unfortunate statistical quirk that the Nuggets have all but remedied with sterling home play. Now that the season’s first 50 have passed, though, and the team can settle in for a final 32 spent equally on the road and at home, can George Karl’s group be counted on to go over the top and join the three world-beaters (San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles) ranked above them out West?

Denver columnist Mark Kiszla isn’t convinced yet, all while chiding Andre Iguodala for not playing the sort of all-around ball that typically earns someone making as much as Dre does. From the Denver Post:

Iguodala is a clamp-down defender, a true professional and a compelling interview.

But the NBA is not a spelling bee. You don't get paid $15 million for giving intelligent sound bites or getting eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

James White can take off from very, very far away. (Joe Murphy/NBA/Getty Images)

When the names of the participants in next Saturday's 2013 Sprite Slam Dunk Contest at All-Star Weekend in Houston were announced on TNT on Thursday night, one name seemed to generate the widest range of reactions from basketball fans — James White.

To casual fans, White's inclusion elicited Barkley-style "Who he play for?"-level inquiries; after all, the Cincinnati product's played a grand total of 377 NBA minutes in 44 games over the course of three seasons spread over seven years, spending most of his professional career bouncing around between the NBA, the D-League and Europe before catching on in an end-of-the-rotation capacity with the New York Knicks this season. To those who've been up on the man they call "Flight" for years, though, the news was met with rapturous joy — finally, the guy who's shut down dozens of competitions over the years with his array of behind-the-foul-line aerial acrobatics is going to get his shot to shine on All-Star Saturday Night.

[Related: Past champions highlight 2013 Dunk Contest field]

And while the 30-year-old swingman's far from a household name, he's planning on changing that by bringing a loaded arsenal to Houston, as he told SLAM's Kicks blog:

K1X: Did you prepare for it? Or do you know which dunks you’re going to do?

JW: To be honest, I never practice dunks. I just do whatever comes to my mind.

K1X: But when do you decide what you want to do? Do you decide in mid-air? Granted, you do have a little bit of time up there.

JW: [Laughs] I have a general idea of what I want to do when I take the ball and get ready to jump. Everybody knows that I have the dunks from the free throw line and all that stuff in my back pocket. I can always pull those out. I watch what my competition does in the dunk contest and then decide which of my dunks I will do. I have about five dunks where I’m absolutely certain that I will get a 50 on those. So it’s just a matter of when to use which of those dunks.

Usain Bolt dunks in New Zealand in 2012, but that country's upside-down so it doesn't count (Getty Images)

On Thursday, the NBA announced the participants in the Sprint NBA All-Star Celebrity Game, which is that contest on Friday night that absolutely nobody watches because it’s one of two days in the regular season that we get to take a break from NBA basketball. It’s typically a borderline unwatchable affair filled with bad jokes and bad basketball, even though this year’s roster is rife with unintentional comedy potential. I mean, look at this lineup:

[…] the celebrity rosters will include actor Kevin Hart, rapper Common, R&B singer Ne-Yo, actor Nick Cannon; actor Josh Hutcherson; and ESPN radio host Ryen Russillo.

The teams will also include former NBA players Dikembe Mutombo, Clyde Drexler, Sean Elliott, and Bruce Bowen; and WNBA stars Tamika Catchings and Maya Moore.

I’ve heard of some of those people, I used to listen to one of those people back when he did podcasts, Nick Cannon is hilarious, and Dikembe Mutombo is Dikembe Mutombo.

[Related: NBA announces participants for All-Star Saturday night events]

Usain Bolt is also on the roster. The Jamaican sprinter and six-time gold medalist would seem to be a fascinating and compelling watch, something we were denied in 1984 when the Chicago Bulls drafted but did not sign the legendary runner Carl Lewis. The world’s fastest human playing a sport predicated on speed and athleticism. Dribbling around Ne-Yo, even.

And then, early on Friday, The Basketball Jones’ Trey Kerby had to go and ruin the whole image for us. Watch Usain Bolt stink up the court shooting around after a German playoff game in 2012. Watch: