How I Spent My Lockout

With his bantam chest, Barea looks like the yell leader who bazookas T-shirts into the mezzanine during timeouts, not someone who played his way into the Mavs' starting lineup during the Finals. Yet after winning the confidence of coach Rick Carlisle, he supplied 32 points, 10 assists, five three-pointers and two steals during Dallas's final two victories over of the Heat. This after leaving the Lakers so bamboozled that Bynum wasn't even the first one to be suspended for taking a shot at Barea; Ron Artest had that honor in Game 2.

The sheer unlikelihood of Barea's surge during the postseason unraveled the psyches of the Mavericks' opponents and turned Barea into the muse of a thousand bloggers. He was a "Steve Nash B-side" (Grantland) who "made the pick-and-roll look like a series of unanswerable questions from a quantum theory exam" (Both Teams Played Hard). "Like water on pavement and money in elections," Barea found "every crack and crevice" of defenses (Ball Don't Lie). As if to underscore the everyman fantasy that Barea seemed to be living, Busted Coverage worked backward from Rivera's due date to determine that the couple had gotten busy at precisely the time Barea was emerging as the playoffs' unlikeliest alpha male.

Barea sometimes plays the point like an option quarterback, moving east-west if that's what it takes to get north-south. At other times he's like a shortstop who scampers deep into the hole to make a play even when none seems to be there. In Barea you can see Nash's court vision, Allen Iverson's tropism for the rim and Jason Kidd's command of play, as well as flashes of Derrick Rose: teardrop floaters, strength with the ball and a rapidly developing knack for using the glass. "He's not one of those guys who dribbles 18 times in a four-by-four space to beat you," says Ron Everhart, Barea's college coach at Northeastern. "He's intent on getting somewhere with his foot speed."

There's something else, however—something unquantifiable that, since Barea left college in 2006, has mooted his undrafted status and his 5'10" height (that official listing of 6-feet is a fraud). "His heart doesn't fit in his chest," says Art Alvarez, who coached Barea for his lone high school season Stateside, at Miami (Fla.) Christian. "See what he did the possession right after Bynum gave him that shot to the ribs? He went right into the lane."

Indeed, Barea's relationship with Rivera went public last February after she tweeted to him, "I just Need You NoW!!!!!" Barea told her he was going to retweet it. She dared him to. Which of course ensured that he did.

Tempted as Barea might be to send a message to the NBA—"I just Need You NoW!!!!!"—you'd hardly know it. "I'll definitely play somewhere this season," he says. "I've got to play. If not in the NBA, probably in Spain. If I get in one year there, I can get a passport"—his father's grandfather emigrated from Spain—"and then I could play anywhere in Europe.

"You just have to be patient."

Barea has had to wait since the day he was born. One of his lungs was full of amniotic fluid, and he spent the first 10 days of his life in intensive care. "He's a fighter," the obstetrician said upon handing José Juan over to his parents—Jaime Barea, an engineer with General Electric, and Marta Mora, a volleyball and tennis coach at the University of Puerto Rico in the western city of Mayagüez. The youngest of three boys, José would sample baseball, tennis and volleyball, but he took up organized basketball at age five. "He never liked cartoons or playing with toys," his mother says. "He wanted balls."

When José was seven, he and his youth team won the island championship by dealing a power from San Juan its first loss in seven years. José scored 36 of his team's 48 points. "After a game my dad was always, Good job this, good job that," Barea says. "My mom was, Shoulda done this, shoulda done that."

If he had a Great Santini moment, it was finally beating his mother in tennis. "The patience is from my side," Jaime says, "the intensity from his mother."