It could be a make-or-break year for Rudy Gay in Memphis. (Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images)

The offseason and trade deadline are good times to find players who are newly on notice — ones thrust into larger roles or facing increased pressure because of contract realities or a new roster context. Below is a look at players who fit the bill now. I’ve tried my best to de-emphasize guys entering the fourth years of their rookie contracts because they are the most obvious candidates, striving for extensions or fat new contracts in free agency. Also, I’ve already taken detailed looks at four such players — Tyreke Evans, Brandon Jennings, DeMar DeRozan and Stephen Curry – so there’s little need to repeat what has been said. In a broader sense, young players are always  “on notice” to show the expected refinements that come with age. The goal here is to spotlight some cases that are more interesting, for whatever reason.

Already Got Paid

• Rudy Gay, Memphis Grizzlies. The notion that Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay don’t mix well is a myth; Memphis played significantly better when the two were on the court together, per NBA.com. But Gay’s development as a defender, passer and pick-and-roll creator flatlined last season as he recovered from shoulder surgery, and his uneven performance against the Clippers in the playoffs was one of many small factors that added up to a seven-game loss for the Grizzlies. In a reloaded Western Conference, the Grizz have jumped over the luxury tax to see if this core, fully healthy, can emerge as a true title contender. If it can’t, the team figures to make a cost-cutting move. That won’t necessarily mean moving Gay and his rapidly increasing contract, but the 26-year-old small forward’s play will be huge determining factor in the path this franchise charts.

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Andre Miller, Ty Lawson were among top PGs in potential assists by shot metric. (Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images)

On Thursday, I wrote about what the Knicks might learn from a fancy multi-camera tracking system installed last season at Madison Square Garden and nine other NBA arenas. The system, called SportVU and run by STATS, LLC, tracks every movement during an NBA game. It can generate an almost infinite amount of data, on everything from how fast a player runs to that player’s shooting percentage from 19 feet away on the left wing after three dribbles to his shooting percentage with a defender less than two feet away.

The subscribing teams — New York, Toronto, Washington, Golden State, Houston, San Antonio, Boston, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Minnesota — can look through the raw data themselves and/or have STATS generate specific reports. The folks at STATS gave SI.com an exclusive first look at three such reports last week, and two of them supplied much of the data for that Knicks post. A few readers requested more statistical nuggets, so I thought I’d dump a bunch of interesting findings in bullet point style below. Enjoy:

• Something really interesting happened in Denver last season. One report tracked every time a player drove the ball from an area 20 feet or more from the basket into an area 10 feet or fewer from the hoop — an event generally considered a healthy thing for an offense. The data excluded fast-break drives, which is important to note, since Denver ended up leading the league in qualifying drives by a wide margin. The Nuggets averaged 24.5 drives per game, miles above the league average of 14.6 and pretty significantly above the No. 2 mark (Cleveland, 18.5). Ty Lawson averaged 9.1 drives per game on his own, the highest mark in the league, and more than the Lakers averaged as a team (7.2, a league-low).

It is here we must note the sample size issues involved. Denver is not one of the 10 teams that subscribe to the system, so STATS only had data for road games in which Denver faced a subscribing team — 10 in total.

Still: It’s interesting, especially since the data excludes transition chances; Denver played at the league’s fastest pace last season, and when I first saw the data, I assumed those fast breaks fueled Denver’s huge lead here. Some delayed transition stuff probably trickles into these numbers, but they are still worth noting, especially in conjunction with a second set of numbers from a different report.

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Courtney Lee (left) and Jason Terry give Boston a new look in the backcourt. (NBAE via Getty Images)

It’s offseason evaluation time, and I’ve already covered the winners and those teams that have me a bit concerned. Here, I look at the seven teams that left me most intrigued with their July work, both because of the sometimes-dramatically different paths between which they had to choose, and because of the varying directions they could still go after those initial moves.

• Boston Celtics

No team outside the Dwight Howard Nexus of Horror had a more interesting offseason than the 17-time champions. Boston had carefully set up its books so that this could be a rebuilding summer, with deals for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen expiring and the potential for more than $20 million in cap room. But then something funny happened: Garnett, 36, hung on as the team’s top all-around player and one of the league’s three best defenders, and the Celtics came within one victory of a third NBA Finals trip in five seasons.

Even that success brought questions. Was it the lucky result of injuries to Derrick Rose and Chris Bosh? Or was it a signal of Boston’s strength, winning with a hobbled Allen, a crippled bench and without Avery Bradley, the menacing second-year guard whose midseason insertion into the starting lineup transformed the Celtics?

The starting lineup with Bradley in Allen’s place outscored opponents by an unthinkable 20 points per 100 possessions and scored at a rate that would have edged the Spurs for the league lead. Such success might suggest that the way Bradley’s cutting fits within Boston’s spacing could solve the team’s long-term scoring decline and save another offense-first player (Jason Terry, now) to prop up bench units. But that lineup played fewer than 350 minutes together all season, meaning we know very little about it in the big picture.

Meanwhile, Boston got a first-hand look at Miami’s frightening emergence as a small-ball team with an emboldened and post-savvy LeBron James, a trend that firmed up in the Heat’s Finals win over the Thunder.

Add all of it together, and the Celtics faced an enormously complex set of questions this offseason. Were they contenders? How serious of one? And if they were, could they spend in such a way as to improve prospects for a ring in 2012-13 while remaining relatively flexible and finding a young asset or two?

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Dirk Nowitzki (right) will have a much different supporting cast next season in Dallas. (Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images)

Just a couple of weeks ago, Dallas shaped up as a lottery team, Phoenix had lost its franchise player, Houston appeared to be in “Dwight Howard or bottom out” mode and Minnesota was in a stand-off with Portland over Nicolas Batum. Now things have been fleshed out a bit, and if you’ll indulge some premature team projection: Holy cow, the bottom half of the Western Conference playoff race looks exciting already.

Indulge me further and allow for the assumption that the Spurs, Thunder, Lakers, Clippers and Grizzlies retain their status as postseason teams. And let’s assume that New Orleans, Sacramento and Portland are lottery bound.

I’m not 100 percent comfortable with such early assumptions about those eight teams — injuries, trades and surprises happen — but I’m comfortable enough to proceed for the purposes of this summertime exercise. That leaves seven really intriguing teams fighting for three playoff spots. Here’s a very rough and early ranking of those teams:

• Dallas Mavericks: The 2011 champs, who finished seventh in the conference last season, get the slight nod here, based on the presence of Dirk Nowitzki and perhaps the most creative coaching staff in the league. The Mavs’ defense held strong last season despite the departures of center Tyson Chandler and assistant coach Dwane Casey, but the vaunted offense collapsed. An infusion of scoring depth on the inside (center Chris Kaman), the wing (shooting guard O.J. Mayo) and off-the-dribble from the perimeter (point guard Darren Collison) should elevate Dallas’ offense from bottom-10 status to at least league average and probably better. The lockout season also messed with Nowitzki’s conditioning and health, and though he still performed like a star, the 34-year-old probably still has one more year left at an even higher level.

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The Jazz built some late-season buzz by winning their last five games and experimenting (again) with ultra-big lineups. Those lineups, featuring center Al Jefferson and power forwards Derrick Favors and Paul Millsap, outscored opponents by the equivalent of nearly 40 points per game in just shy of 115 minutes together. With Utah facing San Antonio in the first round, the Jazz’s size brought back memories of Memphis torturing the Spurs on the interior in last season’s playoffs.

But in the first two games of San Antonio’s romp, Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin kept the big lineup in reserve until things got beyond desperate. That changed in Game 3, when Corbin went big earlier and for much longer. Now, with Utah facing elimination Monday in Game 4, Corbin is getting all crazy and starting this trio alongside point guard Devin Harris and swingman Gordon Hayward, according to Brian T. Smith of the Salt Lake Tribune.

But guess what? The ultra-big groups haven’t fazed the Spurs much on either end of the floor. The Jefferson/Favors/Millsap trio has logged 28 minutes in this series, stretches in which the Spurs have won by 10 points, per NBA.com. That works out roughly to a 17-point margin over the full 48 minutes — a blowout. Of course, the Spurs have won the first three games by an average of 19 points, so a slightly less devastating rout would constitute progress for a badly overmatched Jazz team. In all seriousness, this lineup is a funky beast that gets all of Utah’s best players on the court together, and it’s absolutely worth a shot in a no-lose situation. The Spurs have paid almost no attention to Utah’s weak-link wing, whether it’s Josh Howard or DeMarre Carroll, sagging off those players to muck up Utah’s spacing. Shuttling Howard to the bench also gives Corbin more options in trying to wring points from a scoring-challenged group.

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Steve Nash and the Suns could lock up the eighth seed in the West with a win tonight. (Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images)

During the regular season we tend to focus on the matchups between elite teams, hoping to perhaps learn something about how Player X performs on the big stage, or how the Spurs deal with the Lakers’ size advantage. But those games aren’t really “big” in the macro sense. Elite teams are going to make the playoffs, generally advance pretty far and eventually have to beat another elite team four times in seven tries.

But tonight’s Suns-Jazz game, in Utah? That’s a big a regular-season game, one that will likely decide the eighth seed in the Western Conference. Let’s review the stakes and preview this bad boy.

THE SITUATION

• Utah enters at 34-30, with a one-game edge on the 33-31 Suns. If the Jazz win, they are in the playoffs. They could in theory move from No. 8 to No. 7 if they sweep their final two games (Tonight and at home against Portland on Thursday) and Denver loses its last two, but that scenario is unlikely.

Phoenix has taken the first two head-to-head games over the Jazz, the last in dramatic fashion three weeks ago in Utah, and thus owns the tiebreaker. The Suns finish Wednesday at home against a San Antonio team that clinched the Western Conference’s top seed Monday night and will likely rest its three star players. If Phoenix wins both games, it is in, regardless of what Utah does on Thursday against the Trail Blazers. Utah could lose tonight against the Suns and still get in, but only if the Spurs beat Phoenix on Wednesday and Utah follows with a (very likely) win over Portland on Thursday.

• This game also has draft implications, beyond the obvious fact that one of these teams will be in the lottery. Utah still owes a first-round pick to Minnesota via the Al Jefferson trade, and it must send its first-round pick in this year’s draft to Wolves if that pick falls outside the lottery. In other words, if Utah wins tonight and makes the playoffs, it’ll lose its first-round pick.

The cynic would argue a first-round pick, even a mid-rounder, is more valuable than a playoff appearance and a likely white-washing against the Spurs. The cynic would have something of a point. The counter would be that Utah already has four lottery picks combined from the last two drafts, and thus could use playoff experience more than another young player. But you never know when that end-of-lottery pick will exceed expectations, and there are few more valuable commodities in the NBA than a productive player on a rookie deal.

Still, all things considered, including some extra playoff home game revenue, both franchises probably benefit more from some time in the postseason hothouse. Read More…

Paul Millsap ranks 12th in the NBA in Player Efficiency Rating. (Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images)

A new team has passed the Mavericks, winners of four straight heading into a brutal stretch of games, as the league’s toughest to pin down: the Utah Jazz.

I keep writing off the Jazz for talent reasons, and they keep proving me wrong. Utah is on its own four-game winning streak, the last two against true heavyweight teams in the Lakers and Western Conference-leading Thunder. The Jazz improved to 24-22 with Tuesday’s victory against Oklahoma City, tied with the eighth-place Rockets in the loss column. They still have a chance to win tiebreakers against all four teams competing right now for the last two playoff spots — Denver, Houston, Phoenix (more on the Suns later) and Minnesota.

Denver’s inclusion mostly has to do with the Nene trade, Danilo Gallinari’s broken left thumb and a road-heavy remaining schedule, as detailed here on Tuesday. You could also make an argument that fifth-place Dallas belongs in this discussion despite its robust 27-20 record. The Mavs have the league’s toughest remaining schedule, with a collective opponents’ winning percentage around .560 and 11 of their final 19 games on the road. Their next eight games are ridiculously tough from start to finish, with the dreaded Miami-Orlando road back-to-back mixed in with a pile of games against West playoff locks or near-locks.

But the Mavs seem to have righted themselves, and they will start getting some of their injured players back soon. This team, so comfortable with its identity and the rhythms of a long NBA season, has earned a degree of trust and respect.

Back to Utah: The Jazz are 23rd in points allowed per possession, a ranking that should on its own nearly disqualify them from the playoffs. The two players that carry Utah’s surprisingly steady offense, Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson, aren’t exactly world-beaters on defense, especially against the pick-and-roll. Ball-handlers working the NBA’s bread-and-butter play have shot 46 percent against Utah, one of highest marks in the league. The Jazz have been worse defensively when most of their starters are on the floor, though no player has had a larger negative impact in this sense than Jefferson. In continuing an annual Jerry Sloan-era tradition, the Jazz send opponents to the foul line more often, per shot attempt, than all but one team (Toronto).

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It’s time to give up trying to figure out the Western Conference and just enjoy the ride, as 11 teams battle for eight playoff spots, and two others — the Suns and Warriors — improbably lurk just one game behind the 11th-place Trail Blazers in the loss column. I can’t remember a season in which it has been so difficult to get a firm grip on a simple question: How good is Team X? This is especially so in a lockout-shortened season, when veteran teams may well be saving something for the playoffs.

We’re nearly 40 games into this thing, and I feel comfortable saying two things about the Western Conference:

The Thunder are clear favorites, but their D needs improvement. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty Images)

1. The Thunder, as we all expected, are the clear favorites. They’re 31-8, rolling to home-court advantage, and even if their scoring margin (plus-6.0 points per game) paints them as a team that really should be something like 27-12 and not all that far ahead of their conference peers, that scoring margin is still nearly two full points ahead of the Spurs’ second-best mark.

That said, the Thunder, as documented here and here, are riding a ridiculous wave of super crunch-time play that has pushed their record above where it probably should be. They remain a so-so defensive team, except in the final minutes of close games, when they turn into the 2008 Celtics. They struggle to find any scoring at all beyond their top three players; Oklahoma City piled up 115 points last night against the Suns, and only five of their players scored any points. Floor-spacing can be an issue, Russell Westbrook remains addicted to pull-up 20-footers in the first five seconds of the shot clock and the three core big men –Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison — are almost total non-threats on the pick-and-roll.

If this team really has another gear on defense, as perhaps evidenced by its crunch-time play, they might be able to waltz through this conference. If they’ve been lucky, they could be had. Read More…

Paul Millsap ranks seventh in the league in PER, at 25.9. (Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images)

There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the Jazz, who sit third in the Western Conference at 8-4 and are throwing an unexpected monkey wrench in the playoff race. Six of their eight wins have come against lottery teams or very borderline playoff contenders, including home victories over Milwaukee without Andrew Bogut, New Orleans without Eric Gordon and a Memphis team in the early stages of adapting to Zach Randolph’s absence, and a road win over a Warriors team missing Stephen Curry.

The Jazz are also doing this with few standout or even unexpectedly good performances. Devin Harris has never played worse, to the point that he’s basically splitting point guard duties with Earl Watson. Gordon Hayward has improved his all-around game with more minutes and is a solid pick-and-roll option, but he’s shooting just 42 percent. C.J. Miles is shooting 33.7 percent and just hasn’t found a way to contribute consistently in the half court. The other young guys — Derrick Favors, Enes Kanter, Alec Burks — have shown flashes, but only Favors logs significant minutes.

Raja Bell has recovered from an awful start to the point that he’s playable. Josh Howard has been a nice surprise, with energetic play on both ends, but it’s hard to envision him contributing more than his league-average Player Efficiency Rating. And Al Jefferson, though playing decent interior defense, is still fundamentally the same player — efficient post game, few free throws, fewer assists, even fewer turnovers.

Everything about the team screams “average.” Utah ranks 14th in points scored and allowed per possession. It has scored and allowed the same number of total points, a number that can actually be read as a positive, since it was minus-42 after two games and has pulled even since. It ranks between seventh and 16th in seven of the eight so-called “four factors” categories on offense and defense, and it ranks terribly in the one category (foul rate on defense) in which it is outside of that middling spectrum. The Jazz  still don’t take or make three-pointers, something that would create fatal spacing issues for most offenses.

Even their schedule sends mixed messages: While they have had a fairly easy slate of wins, they have beaten two quality opponents — Philadelphia and Denver, the latter on Sunday night — and all of their 12 games have come in six separate back-to-back sets. The Jazz had no significant rest advantage or disadvantage overall.

So how is this team 8-4? And is that record a legitimate indicator of how good the Jazz really are? Read More…

Josh Howard has barely played over the last two seasons after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in February 2010. Howard is almost 31, nearly five years removed from his first and only All-Star appearance, when he looked to be on the verge of becoming one of the NBA’s elite, all-around wing players. Fans who weren’t paying attention then might know Howard less for his game than for his comments about smoking marijuana or the controversy over his being filmed disrespecting the national anthem at a charity flag football game.

But Howard is trying to revive his career now after playing only 18 games with the Wizards last season. The Jazz, who agreed to a deal with Howard after watching a private workout, believe he can bolster a shaky wing rotation that includes C.J. Miles, Gordon Hayward, Raja Bell and rookie Alec Burks.

Howard spoke with SI.com on Friday about the free-agency process, his knee and why he chose Utah.

SI.com: When did the Jazz first contact you, and what was your first reaction when you heard from them?

Howard: They first contacted me at the start of last week. My first reaction was that I was thinking that Devin Harris, from back in Dallas, probably said something to them. I didn’t really know what to expect. I was excited for another team to want me and for them to stay in the hunt this long made me feel better. I just had to weigh my options.

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