The NBA has featured a fair number of contemporaneous brother players over its history, in large part because these young men have similar genetic codes and grew up in environments that caused them to take basketball and competition very seriously. As a recent ad campaign has taught us, it sometimes takes a separated-at-birth scenario to turn a great athlete's kin away from basketball and toward the high-flying world of insurance.
Given the roughly random dispersal of players via the NBA draft, it figures that brothers would not end up on the same team, and that's mostly been true. Yet one team, the Phoenix Suns, has employed many players with a brother somewhere else in the league. On top of that, they typically get the brother considered less valuable by the majority of scouts.
How does this happen over and over again? In Jeré Longman's New York Times profile of twins Markieff and Marcus Morris , now playing together on the Suns, former general manager Steve Kerr explained the phenomenon (via TBJ ):
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 : CelticsHub . As it stands, five games separates the Atlantic Division-leading New York Knicks and the third-place Boston Celtics, with the trick-or-treat Brooklyn Nets nestled snugly in the middle at 2 1/2 games out of the top spot. With 19 games remaining for the Nets, 20 left for the Celtics and 22 left for the Knicks, there's not much time for the trailers to close the gap, but with the New York teams facing road-heavy schedules (including an especially daunting one for the Knicks, who now feature a stiff-kneed star in Carmelo Anthony and will be without Amar'e Stoudemire for the next six to eight weeks ), is there a chance the Celtics could leapfrog their way to the Atlantic lead? Brian Robb takes a look at the remaining slates.
PF : The Dream Shake . OK, so we agree that the Houston Rockets "won," as these things go, the Feb. 20 trade that imported 2012 No. 5 overall pick Thomas Robinson from the Sacramento Kings. In the process, though, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey shipped out two power forwards — Patrick Patterson and Marcus Morris — who'd played nearly 2,400 minutes for coach Kevin McHale, forcing a major shakeup in the Rockets' big rotation. Matt Stephens takes a look at how that shakeup has shaken out for a Houston squad that's gone 5-4 since the deal and needs to get its house in order to stay afloat in the Western playoff race.
SF : ProBasketballTalk . After the Los Angeles Lakers' convincing 90-81 win over the Chicago Bulls on Sunday, much of the praise for L.A. centered on the defensive effort put forward by the Lakers as led by Dwight Howard (14 defensive rebounds, four blocks, a steal, plenty of activity and menace). But as Darius Soriano points out and breaks down, another big story was the way Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and company exploited Carlos Boozer's pick-and-roll defense.
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