On escorting Ricky Rubio at the 2009 NBA draft.

What it was like to play against a 17-year-old Nowitzki.

An oral history of Dirk.

His Airness isn’t just the best player in NBA history. He also had the least ambiguous career trajectory—early defeats followed by unending success—of any athlete in the history of pro sports. Yes, LeBron James has (as of yet) not won an NBA title. But the reason his path seems so troubling is that it’s been the exact opposite of Jordan-esque—less of an arc than a flat line, one that’s missing both Jordan’s formative struggles and subsequent triumphs.

On Rasheed Wallace, Robert Horry, the 2005 NBA Finals, and feelings of regret:

I believe Sheed took responsibility for the blown coverage, but I didn’t fault him anyway. The only honest explanation would be that he made an instinctive, split-second move under pressure. And it was the wrong move. It was clearly the wrong move.

When LeBrondown 1 happened against the 2010 Celtics (Game 5), we were so perplexed that conspiracy theories started flying within 12 hours. The most popular (never proven): that a teammate slept with his mother. True or untrue, the real reason felt like it had to be THAT crazy. Tuesday night, we learned that you could explain what happened in that Game 5 only if it happened again. Because it did.

A profile of William Wesley, a.k.a. Worldwide Wes, the “most connected, most discreet, most influential man” in basketball:

So why have you never heard of him? Whenever I told journalists, players, agents, and NBA executives the subject of this article, the common reaction was an amused chuckle and then “Good luck.” Very few people, even Wes’s friends, are able to describe his role. Chicago Sun-Times writer Lacy Banks recalls his confusion upon meeting Wes twenty years ago: “I thought he worked for the Secret Service or the FBI or the CIA. Then I thought he was a pimp, providing players with chicks, or a loan shark or a bodyguard or a vice commissioner to the league.” The few people who know what Wes is really up to aren’t talking. And that’s the way Wes likes it.

On the Miami head coach’s rise through the Heat organization:

Spoelstra has traveled about as far an NBA lifer can — from The Dungeon to the first chair on the most scrutinized sideline in recent NBA history. But in many respects, his temperament hasn’t really changed. The office might be cushier and he’s no longer chasing cargo planes in the middle of the night, but he’s still fundamentally the same guy with the same habits.