The Dev Report: Week Five

The creatures known as human beings, history tells us, haven’t changed a whole lot over time.

We may look different. We may go with salads over mammoth meat, and wear jeans instead of, say, loin cloths and limited-edition leaves. And sure, the modern man spends half the day poking at his own reflection in an iPhone, but it doesn’t take much science or imagination to assume that if two prehistoric hunters went out looking for dinner, texting would have come in pretty handy.

In other words, the core impulses remain.

The stuff that changes -- the things that give rise to the differences between eras -- are the structures in place. Things like technology. Laws. Et cetera. Without those advancements, politicians would still settle things with duels and you'd have a good excuse for why you can't fly home for a distant cousin's wedding.

Namely, that planes aren't things.

So when it comes to explaining just how -- nine days into the regular season and less than a month since the start of training camps -- the NBA Development League already has more than 50 percent of the NBA Assignments it had all of last year, it helps to examine the changes that made it all possible.

Just 29 days since training camps tipped off, 25 players have already made their way from the NBA to the NBA D-League a total of 34 times (players like Darius Johnson-Odom, Fab Melo and Scott Machado have had multiple assignments). Last year, the final number came to rest at 67 total and 44 individual players.

So, to help us explain why it took 11 years for the NBA D-League to reach 67 assigned players in a season and why that might happen again before January, let’s talk structures.

When the owners and players union signed off on the new CBA last winter, the provisions around the NBA D-League looked like throw-ins. You buy the steak and a bottle of wine, you get a free house salad. It was easy to overlook them, given that when the CBA was ratfied it meant that the NBA was finally coming back.

But it ain’t so easy now.

As a refresher, these were the parts that fundamentally altered the prospect landscape:

• Teams can now assign players with three or fewer years of NBA experience an unlimited number of times across a season. Before, those players could only go to the NBA D-League a maximum of three times a year.
• Veterans (players with more than three years of NBA experience) can now go to the NBA D-League with their consent.

The veterans haven’t come down yet, but expect to see a few this year, as teams look to coax stars back into health by letting them chip off some rust in the NBA D-League. We’re not saying this is gonna happen, but picture Dirk -- playing for an organization that became the first one under the NBA umbrella to hire a female coach (Nancy Lieberman), a Mexican-born one (Eduardo Najera, the current Legends coach) and assign a veteran to the NBA D-League (Yi Jianlian, last year) -- yakking it up in Frisco and getting back into basketball shape with his old teammate, Eddie Najera.

All in all, the new CBA just gives teams flexibility. It means that, as the NBA D-League continues to grow, comparing total numbers of assignments won’t make a whole lot of sense -- sort of like comparing scoring numbers pre- and post-shot-clock. The league and its proponents will have to use individual players assigned -- not to mention their Draft position -- as the barometer of succcess.

Finally, there’s one other provision to note. Plucked directly from last year’s post-CBA release …

• The NBA and NBPA have agreed to form a committee to discuss issues related to the NBA Draft and NBA D-League, including Draft eligibility rules, the Draft combine, the number of rounds in the Draft and rules related to the assignment of NBA players to the D-League.

A record 11 NBA D-League teams came into the 2012-13 with a one-on-one partnership with an NBA club. Those partnerships come in three flavors:

• Total ownership: The NBA team owns and operates all parts of the NBA D-League affiliate, from the product on the court to the pretzels sold off of it. The Warriors, Lakers, Cavaliers, Thunder and Spurs use this model.
• Hybrid Affiliation: The most popular model for new clubs over the past few years, the hybrid model means that the NBA team runs the basketball operations side of the NBA D-League affiliate, but leaves the business, marketing and gameday ops stuff to the NBA D-League team. The Rockets, Nets, Knicks, Blazers and Celtics do things this way.
• One-to-One Affiliation: A special case for the Dallas Mavericks (at the moment, at least), where Mavs GM Donnie Nelson owns the Texas Legends as a private citizen, not, technically, as the GM of the Mavs. But because he is the Mavericks GM, the Legends were basically spoken for.

And the perks are many.

• Single-affiliates implement their coaching staffs and offensive/defensive systems on the NBA D-League level, so players run the same exact thing in the D-League as they do in the NBA.
• Assignments often go down with teammates, easing the adjustment process. Kris Joseph and Fab Melo have done so together. Same with Daniel Orton and DeAndre Liggins in Oklahoma City/Tulsa. Nando de Colo and Cory Joseph were both in Austin over the weekend.
• Not only do single-affiliates get to run their system with their affiliates’ players, they also get constant feedback from their basketball ops staff on the minor league level, with information flowing.

We wrote about this whole bit once before, when the Warriors announced they’d be moving their affiliate from Dakota to Santa Cruz. But it’s wroth re-mentioning.

The Maine Red Claws play in Portland, Maine, about 90 minutes north of their NBA affiliate in Boston. Springfield, Mass -- home of the NBA D-League’s Armor, the Nets’ affiliate -- sits on a few hours away from Brooklyn. San Antonio’s just about 17 oil refineries away from Austin. Frisco, where the Legends play, hangs out in the Dallas suburbs. Tulsa to Oklahoma City takes about an hour and a half, no matter how long it seems.

Even Fort Wayne (a multiple-affiliate with four teams) is a manageable commute for the Bobcats, Pistons, Pacers and Bucks . And though Rio Grande Valley and Houston aren’t exactly roommates, the 350 miles separating them rivals the distance from Philly to Boston.

But nobody’s closer than the Lakers and D-Fenders, which both call the Toyota Center in L.A.’s El Segundo neighborhood -- a part of town you’ve heard of because it’s where LAX is and because Cake used its name in one of their many songs about nothing -- home.

Last year, the NBA D-League rolled out a general level of talent far above where it had ever been. Scouts, GMs, coaches and anybody who’d spent time around the league raved about how many NBA-ready players played every night, and how much that level dwarfed anything prior.

And the talent’s even better this year.

From people like former Laker Andrew Goudelock -- nicknamed ‘The Mini Mamba’ by Kobe Bryant himself -- to JaJuan Johnson to Jarvis Varnado -- the reigning NBA D-League Performer of the Week and the all-time blocks leader in NCAA history -- the level of competition’s only a small drop from the NBA. Which is why, when assignments come down, the days of them going off for 50 points just to prove they can are largely over.

So when NBA teams send players to the NBA D-League to work on their skills -- a much more common trend than in the past, when teams would send players down without much guidance, Reno coach Paul Mokeski said -- they do so with the confidence that the players won’t have the luxury of cheating on his own development, because he’ll be going up against people who not only want -- but are capable of taking -- his spot.

“I think it's good as a competition level,” Johnson-Odom said. “It’s good to finally get some playing time, because I get to play against guys who've been in and out of the NBA who have talent, so it’s been a good transition.”

Ok so maybe the one game Jeremy Lin played with the Erie BayHawks before briefly taking over the world last year didn’t fully pave the way for Linsanity. But the 20 games in Reno the year before probably helped.

The NBA now features more than 100 players with NBA D-League experience, including the 22 players assigned this year who hadn’t spent time in the NBA D-League before. And among them are names like these:

• Larry Sanders, the Bucks big who just got a triple-double in points, rebounds and BLOCKS.
• Gerald Green, the insert-coin-here dunk machine who got washed out of the NBA his first time around, and then worked his way back with the L.A. D-Fenders
• Marcin Gortat, the Suns’ walking double-double.
• JJ Barea, the T-Wolves point guard who spent time in now-defunct Fort Worth proving to everybody that size wouldn’t stop him -- and then guarded LeBron in the 2011 Finals.

All of those names and more served to prove that a player can both prove himself and, just as importantly, develop in the NBA’s feeder league.

Some players just don’t fit on an NBA squad. But there’s not really a way to build up a player’s trade value if he’s sitting on the bench, unless a team’s looking for somebody with good taste in suits.

And because of the new CBA, it’s harder for teams to go out and shower a free agent in cash. So, existing assets matter.

To that end, the NBA D-League also provides teams the opportunity to show off their assets as a way of establishing their value for another club. If an assignment beats up on the NBA D-League and doesn’t really have an avenue for more playing time with his NBA club in the long-term, look for him to end up somewhere else, in exchange for an immediate need -- especially if he’s on a contender.

With 14 games over the weekend, big performances weren’t hard to find. These are the 10 best of ‘em, as far as NBA Prospects are concerned.

And for the very best from the NBA players down on assignment, CLICK HERE!

New L.A. D-Fenders center Robert Sacre has picked up fans wherever he’s played, from high school in Canada to college hoops at Gonzaga. A personality big enough for his body, Sacre’s also, it turns out, quite the dancer. So even though he played just 19 minutes across eight games with the LA Lakers, he spent just as much quality time on the bench, turning into a YouTube star last week when a Believe The Hype compiliation video fo Sacre’s best moves blew around the internet.

>> CHECK OUT HIS THOUGHTS ON HIS NEWFOUND FAME HERE

And keep on reading for some actual thoughts on his basketball career.

Kevin Scheitrum, NBADLeague.com: How’s the adjustment been to playing for the D-Fenders after opening up with the Lakers?

It’s basketball. At the end of the day, we’re all just playing basketball. You can only enjoy that. The style of play [in the NBA D-League] is very fast and high-scoring, but I have no problem with it.

Do you think that’ll help you with the transition back to the NBA in coach D’Antoni’s system?

It’s a great transition for me, just for the fact that D’Antoni has a very high-paced offense. The type of play, it’s all transition.

How’s the level of competition been so far?

It was good. It was a good game for me. I felt the competition was good, and everybody was competing, and trying to win. That’s all that matters.

Was it nice to go up against somebody not named Pau or Dwight for a change?

No question. I thought in the first half, I was getting all the cobwebs off, and the rust, but everything felt good in the second half.

How tough is it, going from being a featured player at pretty much all other times in your life to sitting on the end of the bench?

That’s part of the business. I gotta be professional and understand that this is a job, and even though I’m not playing, I gotta make sure I’m ready and always able to play.

What do you tell yourself to keep yourself ready to go in at a moment’s notice?

Any minute could be my chance. That’s always in the back of my mind. You always gotta be focused during the game. Take it one minute and one game at a time, really.

What are you trying to work on in the D-League?

I really am just trying to focus on just playing; just getting all the cobwebs out of my game because I really haven’t played in an actual game with significant minutes. I’m looking at just trying to play, not really think about it too much, run our offense and do what I do best.

What is it that you do best?

Just be active. Energetic. Play defense. And just play hard.

If you watch just one of these -- and we're not saying you should, because one of the perks of the up-and-down style of transition ball in the NBA D-League is that every game comes packed with highlights -- just check out the one in the top-left, with Maine taking on LA in Celtics and Lakers jerseys and showstoppers galore. GALORE.