Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph, Mike Conley and company are struggling. (D. Clarke Evans/NBA/Getty Images)

A look around the league and the Web that covers it. It's also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren't always listed in order of importance. That's for you, dear reader, to figure out.

C: Straight Outta Vancouver. After a 21-point thumping at the hands of the division rival San Antonio Spurs, which came on the heels of 20-plus-point losses to both the Mavericks and the Chris Paul-less Clippers, Kevin Lipe goes through a very thorough search for an answer to just what the hell is going on with the Memphis Grizzlies, a "team that started 12–2 and has been .500 ever since, and which appears to be flaming out before our very eyes."

PF: CBSSports.com. Nestled beneath a detail-rich report on the independent analysis of the NBPA that must have Billy Hunter feeling tight around the collar right about now, Ken Berger updates recent reports that former No. 1 overall pick Greg Oden is planning on making a comeback next season with news that the Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers are among the teams monitoring Oden's progress. Could Oden wind up inking a deal before the end of this season?

SF: RealGM. Jonathan Tjarks runs through the history of Mike D'Antoni's one-in, four-out spread pick-and-roll offense, considering what's made it successful over time, what can make it successful with the Los Angeles Lakers, why Earl Clark's more valuable now than he's ever been before and why Pau Gasol can probably expect to keep hearing his name in trade talks.

Los Angeles Lakers icon Kobe Bryant has been a part of the NBA for 17 seasons. During that time, he's seen several different eras, from the end of Michael Jordan's dominance to the recent ascendance of LeBron James and Kevin Durant. The only constant, really, has been Kobe. He's been so good and so relevant for so long that a certain kind of fan — anyone younger than 30, basically — may have a hard time conceiving of the NBA without him.

In other words, he's a constant. It's exactly that idea that gives the new Kobe-centric Nike ad it's power. In the spot, a British woman narrates Kobe's daily routine and performances as a part of the natural cycle of the world, a sure thing much like the sun shining, rain falling, and grass growing. He's a fixed part of our lives.

Opinions on Kobe change, of course, and it's not as if he's the exact same player or personality every season. But this commercial nevertheless nails the Kobe experience very, very well. He really is an essential part of the sports landscape, a defining figure in NBA history.

As if to hammer home his unique importance, Bryant also happened to give an instant-classic interview with Chris Palmer for ESPN.com. The conversation touches on many aspects of Kobe's life, including his belief that he's the greatest one-on-one player ever, his similarities to the common man, and his lifelong crusade against dog poop. Check out some highlights after the jump.

Kevin Durant daydreams about dinosaurs. (Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

Every team in the league would love to have Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant on their roster. But as a young NBA fan growing up in Washington, D.C., which roster did Durant himself wish he could join? Surprisingly, the answer wasn't his hometown Washington Bullets/Wizards; as a matter of fact, as the 24-year-old three-time scoring champ said during an appearance on Thursday's episode of "The Dan Patrick Show," it wasn't even a team in the United States.

From that interview, by way of Mike Johnston of Sportsnet.ca:

"Believe it or not, I wanted to play for the Toronto Raptors, that was my favorite team. [...] They were a new team when I was growing up, so I wanted to be a part of that," Durant said.

Another reason Durant cheered for the Raptors was because he was a big fan of Vince Carter, Toronto's former franchise player.

"His enthusiasm he showed, just his athleticism, and how he brought Toronto from being one of the newer teams in the league to almost going to the finals. He changed the culture there in Toronto."

Rick Carlisle regards O.J. Mayo's work (Getty Images)

Between Dec. 20th and Jan. 10th, Dallas Mavericks guard O.J. Mayo took 64 three-pointers and made 14 of them. This terrible 21.9 percent mark was spread out over 12 games, which is problematic in several areas. This means he was taking over five bombs per game despite the swoon. This means he was making these shots at a half-cut rate from the typical “you’re allowed to take over five per game”-type of shooting guard. This means he was flinging, instead of doing what he did throughout October and November: Squaring shoulders, releasing at the top of his arc, and following through. In October and November, you might recall, Mayo shot over 51 percent from behind the arc.

O.J. rebounded, though, in two games following that three-week dip – hitting five of six threes and scoring 31 points on just 18 shots. On top of that, he was in the midst of what Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle called a “radical improvement in his ball-handling and his decision-making and his passing over the last two weeks.”

He also missed six of nine shots in the first half of Wednesday’s win over Houston, though. And during the halftime break, Carlisle thought it proper to lay into the first-year Maverick about what he deemed to be poorly-conceived attempts at scoring. From the Dallas Morning News (via PBT):

“It’ll be a bigger sign when I don’t have to scream at him at halftime about it,” Carlisle said.

Brian Scalabrine shoots during the 2008-09 Eastern Conference Semifinals. (Fernando Medina/NBA/Getty)Pau Gasol will return to the Los Angeles Lakers' lineup for the team's nationally televised Thursday game against the defending NBA champion Miami Heat after missing five games with a concussion brought on by an inadvertent elbow from Denver Nuggets center JaVale McGee on Jan. 6. He'll play because he passed a series of physical tests without signs of post-concussion symptoms returning and was cleared by a neurologist to resume game activity, as laid out by the concussion protocol the league rolled out in December 2011. We feel good about him coming back, because we take that comeback as an indication that, after 11 days without a game, his symptoms have disappeared and a medical professional has judged him healthy, capable and ready.

That protocol wasn't in place during the summer of 2009, though, which might be why former NBA player Brian Scalabrine was allowed to return to the floor for the Boston Celtics during the 2008-09 playoffs despite having suffered multiple concussions in less than a month and being shut down for the season by team doctors. Then again, as Scalabrine told ESPN.com's Beckley Mason in the latest installment in TrueHoop's "Working Bodies" series, he got cleared by a neurologist, too, and getting cleared wasn't too hard:

The symptoms were this: I couldn’t sleep longer than three-and-a-half hours. So every three-and-a-half hours I would wake up for two hours then try to go back to sleep for three hours, then I’d wake up again.

Another symptom was that I couldn't handle light, at all, so I’d wear dark, dark sunglasses all the time. And every time I tried to exercise I would get really lightheaded. So for me to be cleared I had to be cool on all three.

Well, I just lied. [...]

Robert Horry points Kobe Bryant to the other side of the court (Getty Images)

Kobe Bryant made the All-Defensive second team last season.

Let that sink in a bit. The guy who has been dragging his leg around for three years, the man who had to have his knee drained several times a season, was selected by coaches as one of the four best defensive guards in the NBA. Coaches that are paid to know more about the NBA than you, but don’t appear to be watching the same game as you, voted him ahead of dozens of better perimeter defenders. A year before that, when he was hauling around a bum knee that even needed to be drained before playoff games, they voted him to the first team.

He’s not first team-anything on that end, and for good reason. For years the Lakers have needed Bryant to initiate their offense, whether he was working through the constraints of the triangle offense or without a helpful big man. The Lakers asked that he give, as coach Tex Winter once put it, “a lick and a promise” to the defensive end; because they so badly needed him to be the Hall of Fame giant he is on the offensive end.

This season is no different, at least on the offensive side of the ball. The Lakers have needed Bryant to carry the team, and in what might be the most impressive story of the NBA season he’s come through with possibly his finest and most efficient offensive season at age 34. He’s also bloody terrible at defense. The guy looks like Eddie Robinson out there at times while off the ball, and we mean both this guy and this guy. Over the last two games, though, Bryant has been charged with guarding point guards. Which means he’s forced to be on the ball for most of the possession, because point guards have the ball for most of a possession. And he’s done fantastic work; so much so that Laker studio analyst and former Bryant teammate Robert Horry didn’t mind giving Kobe a shot while at a Lakers function at the Staples Center on Wednesday. From Eric Pincus at the Los Angeles Times:

"[When] Kobe is on the weak side, he needs to start paying attention to where the ball is and not be flying around, thinking he's some stealth bomber where he can get steals nonstop," said Horry.

Amar'e Stoudemire and the Tower Bridge. Neither is falling down (Getty Images)

On Thursday afternoon, stateside time, the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks will play a regulation game in London’s O2 Arena. In anticipation of the event, Knicks website maestro Jonah Ballow put together an interview collection featuring various Knickerbockers attempting to discern various Anglo-isms. Steve Novak, Chris Copeland, Kurt Thomas and Rasheed Wallace were all game participants as they attempted to make their way through various English terms that somehow failed to cross the Atlantic.

Watch:

Because England and America are separated by a common language, and because I am the NBA blogosphere’s resident Anglophile, I figured it was time to lend a hand in order to help those that might be left gobsmacked as they attempt to follow Thursday’s back and forth from London. What follows is a list, one you should probably print out, that can help you make it through the telecast.

Cheers.

We know that things haven't gone super great for Antoine Walker since he last set foot on an NBA court in 2008. This time last year, the former three-time All-Star was slogging through a D-League stint that he hoped would result in an NBA return; by mid-April, the overweight, shot-happy comeback effort had ended and Walker had retired from professional basketball. Several weeks prior, the former Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat forward was forced to sell the 2006 NBA championship ring he won as a member of the Heat for just $21,500 to help chip away at the mountain of debt he'd accrued by blowing through more than $110 million in salary (plus plenty more in endorsements) earned over a 12-year NBA career en route to going broke and filing for personal bankruptcy in 2010.

And now, athletes of the world, he wants to give you financial advice:

On one hand, yes, it does seem pretty odd for someone who's gone deeper into debt than most humans could even possibly fathom to say, "Let me tell you how you should spend your money." On the other, though, there's a certain level of white-hat logic to letting a safe-cracker take a whack at your strongbox to let you know where you're most vulnerable. Although, in this case, I guess Walker is less the safe-cracker than a dude whose safe has been cracked repeatedly by many different kinds of safe-crackers over the years, and can use that experience to say, "Hey, seriously, definitely don't let your safe get cracked," which isn't quite the same thing. So, "a certain level of logic," but certainly not an iron-clad and impenetrable level.