FanHouse Quentinrichardson

The NBA season is a mere two days old, but the dunk I'm about to show you that Carmelo Anthony threw down over Paul Millsap on Wednesday is in fact, the dunk of the year.

'Melo said after the game, "Once I got the steal, I knew it was just me and him,'' Anthony said. "I wasn't going to lay the ball up. I was going to try to dunk it. If he'd have blocked it, he'd have blocked it. It went the opposite way."

But don't take my word for it: after watching the video, you can read what Dwight Howard and Quentin Richardson had to say about it, via updates they made to their respective Twitter pages after seeing the sensational highlight.

In my beloved state of California, the government is broke. Back in July, out of cash, the state began paying its bills with IOUs: here's a certificate saying we owe you X dollars plus X% interest. But the vendors and whatnot didn't just hang on to the IOUs -- they needed cash! Yet national interest rates are so low that the IOUs actually became a decent investment vehicle, so some parties in California actually sought out the IOUs, and many banks, credit unions and even businesses accept them as readily as they would dollar bills. In a way, the IOUs have become a new form of currency.

Quentin Richardson has now been traded four times in seven weeks, the latest to Miami in exchange for Mark Blount. We definitely have a handle on Q's value -- no player has ever had their worth marked so finely. If you wanted to, you could figure out just how many DeSagana Diops or Etan Thomases you could for your Q. In a way, Quentin Richardson has become a new form of currency.

There was a lot of activity in the NBA this week, and we're not just talking about the draft. Some of the NBA's big names and better teams were in on it.

Here's a quick look at the trades that went down and what they mean:

The Deal: Phoenix sends Shaquille O'Neal to Cleveland for Sasha Pavlovic, Ben Wallace, a second-round pick in 2010 and cash.

The Thinking: The Cavaliers get an aging O'Neal, with the hope that he can have a productive year playing alongside LeBron James. The only way this trade is a success is if the Cavaliers are the 2009-10 NBA champions. For the Suns, trading O'Neal means that they are beyond tinkering and are leaning toward turning over the personnel of a team that missed the playoffs last season.

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A potential trade sending Darko Milicic to New York in exchange for Quentin Richardson has been rumored for a couple days now. Adam Silver announced it has been consummated. The Darko Knicks jersey immediately becomes the greatest shirt in the history of synthetic garmentry.

One big takeaway from this deal is that Memphis will apparently take back $2 million in extra salary, unless New York is forking over some dough not yet reported. Darko's flight opens up the frontcourt for Hasheem Thabeet, who (I assume) will turn Marc Gasol into a power forward. We'll see how that works out -- Gasol isn't exactly fleet, and 7-foot-3 centers typically lack lane agility. Luckily, Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo are fantastic defenders on the perimeter. Oh, wait ...

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- For the second year in a row, the Pistons conducted a charity telethon during a home game. After raising more than $412,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2008, this year's event raised more than $440,000 for Feed The Children, which will use the money to help Michigan family in need.

Fans in the arena were urged to give at every break in the game's action -- and from his spot on the visiting team's bench, Quentin Richardson got the message. Despite the fact that his team was in the middle of a game, Richardson had a team employee fetch a donation form so he could cut a check for a cool grand at halftime.

The Stephon Marbury business is almost over, promise. (Well ... ) In today's New York Post, Marc Berman talks with world's greatest point guard about the role his Knicks teammates played in the bitter fight between Marbury and coach Mike D'Antoni.

"When things got bad and then worse, guys like Quentin Richardson say, 'I don't consider him a teammate. He let his teammates out to dry.' He didn't care I was his teammate when I was banished. They left me out for dead. It's like we're in a foxhole and I'm facing the other way. If I got shot in the head, at least you want to get shot by the enemy. I got shot in the head by my own guys in my foxhole. And they didn't even give me an honorable death."

For clarity, Q said he didn't consider Starbury a teammate after Starbury reportedly declined D'Antoni's request to play when the Knicks were down to seven healthy players -- and only two healthy guards -- on Friday. Perhaps Marbury has a point about the earlier stages of the tiff -- perhaps teammates should have stuck their necks out a bit more. Surely the team is better with Marbury available for action. He's not a complete basketball disaster.

But at this point, Richardson can't be blamed for his stance. The situation has gotten the team into its current mess (short-handed and pissed off), but Marbury has been the biggest culprit in making it worse. He has a right to defend himself in the court of public opinion, but we have a right to think he's full of it when he compares himself to a soldier killed by his countrymen.

FanHouse was all credentialed up for Saturday night's Wizards-Knicks game in New York. Here's a report from Madison Square Garden.

They dressed eight players, but only played seven. Their five starters put in more than 40 minutes of work apiece, while their $20 million man declined an offer to suit up and play for his team. At times they looked gassed, and they nearly squandered a sizeable lead late in the game.

Yet the scrappy New York Knicks still somehow managed to pull off a very surprising -- and very inspiring -- 122-117 home win against the Washington Wizards Saturday night.

In fact, the only unsurprising thing about the Knicks' triumph was the fact that, despite a selfless and energized team effort, the talk in the locker room after the game was ultimately about New York's next game: a visit from the King of 2010, LeBron James, next Tuesday.

Besides being known as the reigning World Champions (apologies, Pop), this incarnation of the Boston Celtics is recognized as being a team that likes to talk a lot of trash to their opponents. Kevin Garnett is the biggest culprit, although he arguably spends just as much time screaming things to no one in particular. So we'll set the most recent example of his antics aside and let him slide for now.

The problem isn't so much with the team's stars that can, you know, actually back up what they're saying with their performance on the court. It's that the lesser known players on the team (I'm looking at you, Kendrick Perkins) can't resist joining in the fun, and that's what has players on opposing teams and the Celtics' own head coach upset.

After Boston's win over the Knicks, Quentin Richardson was less than thrilled with what he was hearing from some of the Celtics, and seemed like he wanted to step outside with a few of them to further discuss what they had to say.

"I'll just be real curious to see what a lot of those guys would say if we weren't in a basketball arena where there ain't no referees and the NBA officials are going to stop certain things," he said. "I mean, it wouldn't be the same story. They are the world champions and rah-rah-rah. But I mean, the tough talk, I don't buy."

Doc Rivers would also like to see less trash talk from his team. Not so much from Garnett, because that's who he is, and who he's been his entire career. But definitely from a role player like Perkins.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. Memphis Commercial-Appeal. During practice, Memphis GM Chris Wallace gives Hamed Haddadi a thumbs up, the Iranian equivalent of the middle finger. Eek.

2. Cleveland Scene, via everywhere. Mo Williams will bring his 60-second Q&A show and a love for meat sandwiches to Cleveland.

3. Associated Press. Gerald Wallace is pretty cavalier when it comes to trade rumors: "I said, 'Well, I'm in Alabama with my kids. Call me if I've got to move.' That was it."

4. The Sporting News. The coming revolution in NYC.

5. Newsday. Quentin Richardson is tired of being looked down upon by other players because he's a Knick.

6. Simon on Sports. The season's a month away, but Nets tickets are already half-price.

Black Jesus Disciples (via TrueHoop) has a slice of early news out of Phoenix. Attendance at Phoenix Suns Fantasy Camp (you do fun drills and meet cool people, just like real NBA players do) means hearing from new team president Rick Welts, which, in this case, means you get a scoop. Welts told the crowd that cheap acquisition Matt Barnes will be starting in front of Grant Hill.

Brilliant or another sign of the impending apocalypse? I'd skew toward the former. No one knows which direction the team is really headed, nor whether the Shaq/Amare will be as powerful in the spits of November as the playoff run. O'Neal is still rated highly as a rebounder, and Stoudemire is better than acceptable at the four. One category in which Barnes exceeds Hill is rebounding: Matty is very good for a three, and Hill is acceptable. Does Phoenix -- with Shaq/Amare -- need help on the boards? Can a Suns team actually clear the glass regularly?

The other area of focus: three-point shooting. Hill famously shot more treys than ever before last season, and he didn't do it particularly well. His mid-range game seemed oddly equipped for Phoenix's motion offense. Barnes had an atrocious shooting campaign last year in Golden State, but hit a good clip in '06-07. He also, unlike Hill, has no shyness pulling the trigger. Hill's wing play seemed uncomfortable and almost coerced when rolling with Nash and Marion. Speed kills, you know? Barnes will have no problem hanging back on the break and blasting off a threeball.

If Mike D'Antoni were still in charge, I'd call this Quentin Richardson 2.0. (My favorite statistic of maybe ever: six of every 10 shots Q took in his lone Phoenix season was a three. ! That kind of endorsed gunnerism is where babies come from.) Without knowing Terry Porter's (or, ahem, Steve Kerr's) intentions, the impetus or impact of an apparent Barnes ascension remains unknown.

UPDATE: Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic followed up with Welts, who says he did not mean that Barnes would necessarily start right away, and that Porter will make the decision in camp.