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Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

J.J. Barea isn't your average NBA player -- not quite six-foot, he laughs about "blending in with the crowd" and being mistaken for a ball boy. But just because he's small doesn't mean he doesn't have big game -- the "Puerto Rican Allen Iverson" is one of the Dallas' top reserves. After the jump, listen to his story, and see which one of his teammates is the funniest player on the Mavs.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

Many people across the globe will be ringing in 2009 in style, and naturally that includes NBA players. In this video we talk to Marcus Camby, Al Thornton, Eric Gordon, Paul Davis and more about what they have planned for the new year. But most importantly, find out which player's plans for 2009 include some salty fish, a shot of Jack, and starting a new clothing line.

Check out the video after the jump.

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted Chris Vernon of Fox Sports Radio 730 AM in Memphis and Verno's Blog to break down the Memphis Tigers.

The way the season ended for the Memphis Tigers last year was totally devastating. Memphis ended the season 38-2 and many in Memphis still have a hard time thinking about the 38 wins. Rarely has there been such an amazing season that brought upon such intense disappointment.

Now that Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas Roberts, and Joey Dorsey have NBA contracts and Memphis looks to who will replace much of what made the team such a success in the previous few seasons. While Rose was only in Memphis for one year, CDR and Dorsey were key components of a team that went to the Elite 8 twice, and the Final Four (and championship game) once. With Dorsey in the middle, and Douglas Roberts on the wing, Memphis went 104-10 over the last three seasons.

Larry Bird has been frank with his concern about the Pacers' image problem, telling the Indy Star last month, "All the off-the-court problems have been a disaster for us. ... It's something we said we were going to clean up and we're doing that."

He started a couple of years ago by dealing Stephen Jackson (guns!) and Al Harrington for a couple of overpriced stiffs and continued this summer by letting David Harrison (weed!) walk and exploring ways to move Jamaal Tinsley (target! Wait, how is that his fault? Okay, how about: bar fight! Better than nothing).

Today, Bird took one more step toward making his roster squeaky clean: Mike Wells of the Indy Star reports the Pacers have traded Shawne Williams (who has a tendency to be pulled over by police in cars containing weed and loaning cars to friends wanted for murder) to the Mavericks in exchange for Eddie Jones, two second-round picks and $1.8 million in cash.

Jones is about as professional as they come and would be a great influence on Indy's roster, but HoopsHype cites a source claiming Jones will be waived immediately, which would explain why cash was included. Williams will be reunited in Dallas with Rick Carlisle, who coached Williams his rookie year. I'm not entirely sure how he fits in with the Mavs or whether his prospects for playing time will be increased, but a fresh start will probably do him as much good as it will the Pacers.

While summer's an uncertain time for just about any old NBA player, some folks on the lower rungs of the league find themselves on land less stable than T.J. Ford's neck. Two of those fellows this year: Shawne Williams and Marcus Williams.

Shawne, already on Larry Bird's DO NOT WANT list, met trouble one more time over the weekend. Williams was stopped by police for illegally tinted windows and not wearing his belt. His passenger, though, got pinched for marijuana possession. This is not the first time Williams has been with a buddy who ended up in cuffs (and Shawne himself has been in a bit of a tight situation before).

In New Jersey, the fuzz hasn't lead to Marcus Williams' eminent dismissal -- Keyon Dooling has. The Nets landed Dooling in a sign-and-trade this morning. Orlando will receive a $3.3 million trade exception. Williams will receive lots of ink on HoopsHype over the next few days (or weeks). With Devin Harris installed as default starter and Dooling as a plus-sub, there's just no room for the alleged thief steal of the 2006 draft.

The Indiana Pacers have gone through a lot of PR issues since 2004... and the team hasn't been successful enough to mute concerns. If it feels like the dead and buried "Portland Jailblazers" all over again, it should. The problems are similar.

The Pacers have been blowin' it up since last January, when they took on two tough contracts just to rid the team of Stephen Jackson. Have they gone far enough? Judging by the blotter, no. And owner Herb Simon suggests to Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Star a clean slate might be the only way to fix things.

"We're talking about restructuring, re-thinking, all the things you do when your team is in crisis," he said. "We're going to be having a series of meetings and we're going to make changes, yes."

When asked what areas he plans on addressing, Simon said, "Everything but the owner right now."

Chalk this up as another horribly awkward (that may be an understatement) and ill-timed public relations debacle for the Indiana Pacers; a friend of Pacers forward Shawne Williams was arrested on Wednesday night while leaving his house and while driving a car registered to Williams. The big kicker of course, is that he was presumably spending considerable time with Williams in Indianapolis despite having an outstanding murder warrant in Tennessee.

Police say they observed 20-year-old Gary "Little Bud" Bohannon leaving William's home in the 4700 block of River Ridge Road on the north side about 6:00 p.m. Wednesday night. According to police, Bohannon got in and drove a Dodge truck that was registered to Williams and was stopped a short time later and taken in to custody without incident.

Bohannon was wanted out of Tennessee on a murder charge.

Police say Bohannon was arrested under the alias, "Roosevelt Rollins" on September 11, 2007 while riding in a vehicle with Williams in Indianapolis. He was arrested then on gun and drug charges.

Williams apparently left tonight's game for "personal reasons", which certainly doesn't bode well for the type of punishment he could face (from the team, presumably). And I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but if Williams was continuing to hang out with an associate who had drugs and guns in his car only a few months ago, it's pretty conceivable that Bohannon could have been staying at Williams' house. It also begs the question of how old this murder warrant was/is, if he wasn't flagged for it in September.

The biggest though, from strictly a basketball perspective, is wondering when this type of thing will stop happening to the Pacers, who have been doing their best to try and seeshed the nasty player-personnel image that has seemingly been following them since "The Brawl" a few years ago. It's to the point that even when someone doesn't accuse Marquis Daniels of rape, the headlines make Larry Bird and Co. cringe. And this one probably won't help either.

Indiana's Shawne Williams got busted a month ago for pot and driving without a license. The marijuana charges were dropped, and Williams agreed to plead guilty to the (minor) driving charges. That plea was supposed to come this morning. The Pacer had a date; his lawyer showed up and everything. But Shawne didn't.

Via TrueHoop, everyone's mystified and angry according to the Indianapolis Star's Jon Murray. In fact, no one had been able to get ahold of Shawne by the story's publication time. Larry Bird, who made a pretty awful trade last season just to get rid of some bad apples, almost seems resigned to a continuing career in babysitting.

"I don't know where Shawne is at. I called him and couldn't get hold of him. I understand that he didn't show up. We'll handle it internally and it's just another thing that's put on my plate and I have to do something," Bird said.

You know, if Shawne had just shown up, this entire story might have blown over completely. I have a feeling that's not going to be the case, no matter how pedestrian the charges are. Who knows if the plea deal will still be on the table come Monday morning, let alone whether Bird will see fit to punish this behavior. Way to kick off training camp, huh?