FanHouse OjMayo

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.

It's not every day that we get to see a player hit for 40 points or more in an NBA game. So on Sunday, when we had three different players meet or surpass the mark, it's definitely something worth discussing.

Especially when two of them did it in the same game.

FanHouse previews a player to watch from each NBA team in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Marc Gasol is svelt. No lie. Gasol spent the summer running up mountains in Spain. I've never run up a mountain anywhere, much less mountains in Spain. You always hear stories about players losing weight coming into camp, but Gasol's slimming is evident. He doesn't look like the same player. The big knock on him last season was that he lacked explosiveness. So Gasol shed 25-30 pounds to improve his speed and agility. It was a wise move by Gasol, who will fight for playing time with Zach Randolph and Hasheem Thabeet. But when you get down to it, if the Grizzlies are going to make significant progress this season, Gasol will have to be a large part of that journey.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Grizzlies are not a joke. They are the punchline. That's where they've fallen to. They aren't even the setup for the joke. They're just mentioned as the end point.

A little under two years ago, Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace (and by that, we mean owner Michael Heisley) traded Pau Gasol for cap room and some loose junk. The only valuable component they got out of the deal was Marc Gasol. The move elicited everything from mockery to outrage from pundits and even league personnel. Things have not improved considerably since.

I don't aim to defend the practice of cheating on your SAT, as Bulls star Derrick Rose is alleged to have done prior to enrolling at the University of Memphis in 2007. Even at age 17, Rose should know better. His brother Reggie Rose should have known better. Any other advisers potentially involved in the alleged fake-out should have known better. No excuse erases that.

But humor me for a second. We're told by David Stern that the NBA age minimum is a business decision, that the league's owners benefit from being able to see these bucks play for a year elsewhere (college, Europe, D-League). That the league benefits from being able to remove its scouts from high school gyms and AAU tournaments. That, in the end, the players benefit from the softer transition from amateur to pro.

Rose, one of the league's brightest young stars, saw his reputation take a massive hit Wednesday, all for a violation that never would have occurred if he didn't have to wait a year to join the league. The age minimum rule essentially paved the way for the criminalization of Rose's image. And Rose isn't the only one.

Maybe we're being a little too old school here, but it's hard to fathom Joe Dumars or Karl Malone or Bill Laimbeer getting into trouble because they forgot to pay for the diamond necklace they ordered.

O.J. Mayo needs to man up.

If you're a professional athlete and going to get in trouble, at least make it something like Reggie Miller chasing another man's fianceé, or Jamaal Tinsley getting into a bar fight or Stephen Jackson waving a gun, or even Charles Barkley, 15 years ago, throwing another drunk through a plate-glass window in Orlando.

At least those are macho mistakes.

Josh Childress started for an NBA team. Von Wafer played significant minutes on an NBA playoff team. Linas Kleiza once scored 41 points in an NBA regular season game (this ain't no summer league, man!) And they're all members of Olympiakos B.C.

Now since Childress decided to taste the awesome flavor of Dolmades, there has been no great exodus. However, that's now three NBA-quality players that aren't even the huge stars on OBC. Which begs a question. We know the NBA elite boast teams that could defeat them pretty handily, but how would Olympiakos do against the low of the NBA?

Allen Iverson needs to lay low for a while.

After establishing himself as a potential Hall of Fame guard, with offensive skills never before seen in the league and establishing himself as a perennial winner who's only flaw was that he was surrounded by insufficient backup, the last year has done a lot to tarnish that reputation. After being traded to Detroit he was an outright disaster, unable to find his place in the offense or in the locker room. Meanwhile the guard he was traded for, Chauncey Billups, lead his team to the Conference Finals.

As a free agent this summer, Iverson needs to go somewhere quietly and rebuild his image, much the same way that his old coach Larry Brown has in Charlotte. But it might be another small market team Iverson ends up with. One that now features an... eclectic makeup of personalities.

Iverson might be headed South for the Winter.

It has not been a stellar year of headlines for Calvin Andrews of BDA. Earlier this year, after the O.J. Mayo-USC-Ronald Guillory story blew up, Andrews -- who allegedly paid Guillory to deliver Mayo to his client list -- was dropped by the Memphis guard and then suspended from agenting activities for a year by the NBA Players Association. This suspension is more of public slap on the wrist than anything -- rumors abound that Andrews is the real agent for top prospects including Hasheem Thabeet, who is listed as a BDA client. (The policing of the agents is a complete joke, in other words.)

But here's a karmic punishment that works: Carmelo Anthony, Andrews' top client by far, has reportedly dropped BDA to move over to CAA, the agency led by Leon Rose and attached to William Wesley.

On behalf of David Feherty, I'd like to apologize for the following column. It again takes shots at House Mis-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, not to mention her fellow victims of CIA subterfuge, Roger Clemens, Tim Floyd and Mine That Bird.

Who knew the CIA was plotting to overthrow the Preakness? You will after reading the latest installment of Week in Review.

Surprising no one, University of Memphis star Tyreke Evans will enter the NBA draft after one college season. Evans went into college looking for a rental, and Memphis -- under John Calipari -- served as a proper NBA training ground, featuring a pro-style offense and no expectations for top prospects to stay longer than a season. Ex-Memphis guard Derrick Rose certainly adjusted to NBA defenses rather well after a year with Calipari.

But while Rose definitely came to the Bulls as a pure point guard, Evans is a bit of a question mark: can he be a legitimate NBA point guard? With the league infatuated with purity in the backcourt, Evans will need to make his case during workout season that he can run a pro team against pro defenses.