Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.
If you're not a close follower of the NBA, then just six games or so into the season, we can't necessarily hold it against you if the name Tyreke Evans doesn't ring a bell. Besides being a rookie, Evans plays for the Sacramento Kings, a team that won just 17 games a season ago, and figured to be about as bad this year with stud scorer Kevin Martin sidelined indefinitely with an injury.
But after what Evans did to Deron Williams in leading his undermanned team to a road win in Utah on Saturday, he won't remain anonymous to basketball fans for much longer.
Denver's previous coach wasn't bashful about title talk.
"To win a championship, you've got to talk championship,'' Michael Cooper said on several occasions as members of the media attempted to keep from snickering.
Let's just say Cooper, who compiled a 4-10 interim coaching stint before being silenced in January 2005, didn't do much more than talk championship.
Now, the guy who replaced Cooper is doing a lot of such spouting. But nobody is snickering.
"I believe this team can win a championship,'' said George Karl, who has led the Nuggets to five straight playoff berths since taking over.
During last season's playoff series between the Nuggets and the Mavericks, things got a little crazy between Kenyon Martin and Mark Cuban. After Game 3, Cuban said a fan yelled out that the Nuggets "were thugs," and he couldn't resist yelling over to Martin's mother, who was in the stands at the time, "That included your son."
Things got uglier after that, with Mavs' fans harassing some of the Nuggets' players' family members in the stands, and culminated with Martin yelling some obscenities in Cuban's direction, before the Mavs' owner attempted to end all of this by posting a late night apology on his blog.
It would probably have been best for everyone involved to leave this incident in the past, but Kenyon Martin, in an interview with Yahoo! Sports, couldn't resist getting in one more shot at Cuban.
The term "revisit" might be a little inaccurate for this one. Re-miserating -- if that's a word -- may be more appropriate. The 2000 NBA Draft is perhaps the worst of all time. Of the 13 players picked in the lottery, only one has made an All-Star Team, Kenyon Martin in 2004. Nine years after the draft, four of the 13 lottery picks are out of the NBA, four averaged double figures in points and none has won an NBA title.
It's not as if a number of gems were passed up -- this was just a poor crop players coming out, filled with collegians who made putrid mistakes in leaving school early such as Erick Barkley, Donnell Harvey, Jerome Moiso and Khalid El-Amin.
If that wasn't enough evidence that this was a forgettable draft, the best player in this group was drafted 43rd, Milwaukee's Michael Redd, perhaps the biggest oversight in recent draft history.
The Nuggets far exceeded expectations this season. The team ranked not as the squad most likely to scare the snot out of the Lakers, but as the old guard least likely to return to the postseason in the New World.
Chauncey Billups, Nene, Kenyon Martin, Carmelo Anthony, George Karl, Chris Andersen, J.R. Smith and Joe Dumars changed that. The opening week trade for Mr. Big Shot completely transformed the spirit of the team, as did Karl's summer decision to focus on defense, even at the expense of his stars' allegiance. Everything else went right, for the most part.
But the franchise sit has payroll cuts to consummate, and little in the way of burgeoning youth to fill the holes. By trading the promise of cap space (in the convenient form of Allen Iverson) for Billups, the Nuggets trade a minor rebuild for contention. It worked -- the Nuggets were legit contenders. But what now? How can they possibly get better?
There's a good chance that at some point during the NBA Finals -- or likely before they even start -- there will be talk of whether or not the Lakers are tough enough to win a championship.
And there should be that kind of talk. But it wasn't even an issue against the Denver Nuggets.
The Lakers are going to their second consecutive NBA Finals because their big players were more skilled and more talented than the Nuggets' big players were tough and physical.
There's no other way to say it, really: the way that Dahntay Jones has chosen to play against Kobe Bryant in the last two games of the Conference Finals has been dirty. The first play in that video clip is the intentional trip from Game 4; the second is a two-handed push in the back from Game 3. The former wasn't even ruled a personal foul at the time, but the latter was upgraded to a flagrant-one a day later.
Bryant took the high road when asked about it post-game, while Kenyon Martin proudly (but not surprisingly) welcomed Jones to the "dirty player" club.
In both of the Lakers' Western Conference finals victories over the Nuggets, Trevor Ariza stole an inbounds pass late in the game that effectively sealed things for L.A. Since there were different players involved on the Denver side of things each time -- Anthony Carter was throwing to Chauncey Billups in Game 1; in Game 2 it was Kenyon Martin trying to get it to Carmelo Anthony -- maybe you just look at the one constant, which was Ariza, to figure out the reason why.
Or maybe, you look at something else -- like history. Because the fact is, before the arrival of Billups, George Karl and the Nuggets didn't believe in running plays to get the ball inbounds.
It seems apparent the Denver Nuggets are in the Western Conference finals for the long haul. But whether or not they can beat the Lakers and advance to the NBA Finals may hinge on a few players who haven't done much yet.
The Nuggets have every right to feel pretty good about Thursday night's 106-103 win that evened the series at one game apiece. But the Nuggets will be long shots if Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups have to keep carrying a disproportionate part of the load.
Specifically, the Nuggets are going to need more out of their front line: Kenyon Martin, Nene and Chris Andersen.
These athletically gifted and suddenly relentless Rocky Mountain folks are standing in the way of everybody's dream -- the one featuring Kobe versus LeBron during the Mother of All NBA Finals. Just like their heartless counterparts from Orlando, the Nuggets couldn't care less.
Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.
FanHouse 
During last season's playoff series between the 
The term "revisit" might be a little inaccurate for this one. Re-miserating -- if that's a word -- may be more appropriate. The 2000 
The Nuggets far exceeded expectations this season. The team ranked not as the squad most likely to scare the snot out of the Lakers, but as the old guard least likely to return to the postseason in the New World.
There's a good chance that at some point during the NBA Finals -- or likely before they even start -- there will be talk of whether or not the Lakers are tough enough to win a championship.
In both of the Lakers' Western Conference finals victories over the Nuggets, 
It seems apparent the Denver Nuggets are in the Western Conference finals for the long haul. But whether or not they can beat the Lakers and advance to the NBA Finals may hinge on a few players who haven't done much yet.
LOS ANGELES -- The 
