Houston Rockets

Aaron Jamal Brooks is an American basketball player who is currently the starting point guard for the Houston Rockets. He was selected 26th overall in the 2007 NBA Draft.. He won the NBA Most Improved Player Award for the 2009-2010 season. Brooks, a high profile recruit out of Franklin High School... in Seattle, "earned just about every honor possible" while leading his team to the Washington 4A State Championship as a senior. As a high school senior he averaged 24.3 points, 7.0 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 2.3 steals per game. In that championship game, Brooks went head-to-head with future Gonzaga Bulldog and NBA player Adam Morrison. Brooks finished with 38 points in the 67-55 win. Morrison finished with 37 in the loss but was still named Tournament MVP after matching the then four-game scoring total. Brooks finished his college career at the University of Oregon in 2007. He was a four-year starter for the Ducks, and finished his career with 13.1 points, 3.5 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. In his first year at Oregon, Brooks took over the starting point guard role previously occupied by current NBA guard Luke Ridnour.
more

Brad Newley is an Australian professional basketball player. He is a 6 ft 7 in tall small forward that can also play at the shooting guard position. Notably, a member of the junior Australian national team, that won the 2003 FIBA Under-19 World Championship in Greece, where he scored 16 points... against Lithuania in the final. He was also selected in the second round of the 2007 NBA Draft, 54th overall, by the Houston Rockets. Brad Newley played professionally with the Townsville Crocodiles of the Australian National Basketball League in the 2004-05 NBL Season. His efforts, in this breakout season, earned him the NBL Rookie of the Year award as well as the NBL Best Sixth Man award. In addition, he was named in the NBL's domestic All-Star team. Playing in this exhibition NBL Australian League All-Star Game he was selected as MVP. His style of game is extremely skilled, he is an excellent jump shooter and defender and has a trademark two handed dunk. After another impressive season in the NBL, Brad choose to enter the 2006 NBA Draft.
more

Rudy Carlton Gay, Jr. is an American professional basketball player who is currently playing for the Memphis Grizzlies. He played collegiately at the University of Connecticut before turning pro. Gay began playing competitive recreational basketball at 12 years old in the Turner Station community... of Baltimore County, Maryland in one of the toughest youth basketball leagues in the area. Early exposure to Baltimore AAU basketball and summer league games in the Tom Jones Youth Summer League in Washington, D.C., showcased his abilities against top competition. At the age of 14, Gay began playing for the nationally-known Cecil-Kirk AAU program under Coach Anthony Lewis with other blue-chip players such as Josh Boone , Paris Carter , and Chester Frazier . During the spring of his 8th grade year, Gay and teammate Scott Dozier were highly sought after by several private schools. Gay attended Eastern Technical High School in Baltimore County, while Dozier enrolled at the St. Paul's School. Rudy transferred to Archbishop Spalding High School of the Baltimore Catholic League after his sophomore year at Eastern Tech.
more

The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio, Texas. They are part of the Southwest Division of the... Western Conference in the National Basketball Association . The Spurs are one of four former American Basketball Association teams to remain intact in the NBA after the 1976 ABA-NBA merger and is the only former ABA team to have won an NBA championship. The Spurs have won four NBA championships, more than any NBA franchise except the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, and Chicago Bulls. The Spurs' perfect record in NBA Finals series is surpassed only by the Chicago Bulls, who have won six without a loss; the Bulls and Spurs are the only two teams to maintain perfect records through multiple Finals series. As of July 2009, the Spurs rank third among active franchises for the highest winning percentage in NBA history; they have only missed the playoffs 4 times as an NBA franchise. In their 33 NBA seasons, since 1976–1977, the Spurs have captured 17 division titles, which gives the Spurs the most division titles in the NBA during that 33-year span .
more

The Los Angeles Lakers are a National Basketball Association team based in Los Angeles, California. The Lakers play their home games at Staples... Center, which they share with their fellow NBA rival, the Los Angeles Clippers, and their sister team, the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA. The Lakers are the reigning NBA champions after defeating the Boston Celtics in the Finals four games to three, capturing the franchise's 16th NBA championship on the 50th anniversary of its relocation to Los Angeles. As of 2009, the Lakers are the most valuable NBA franchise. In June 2010, basketball analyst and writer John Hollinger ranked the Lakers as the greatest NBA franchise of all time. The Lakers franchise was founded in 1946 in Detroit, Michigan before moving to Minneapolis, where the team got its official title from the state's nickname, "Land of 10,000 Lakes." The Lakers won five championships before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1960–61 season. The Lakers lost all of their eight appearances in the NBA Finals in the 1960s, despite having help from Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. In 1972, the Lakers won their sixth title, first in Los Angeles, under coach Bill Sharman.
more

The Utah Jazz are a professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City, Utah. They are currently a part of the Northwest Division of the Western... Conference in the National Basketball Association . The franchise began in 1974 as the New Orleans Jazz, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, but the team moved to Utah in 1979 after just five seasons. The Jazz were one of the most unsuccessful teams in the league in their early years, and it would be 10 years before they made a playoff appearance . They would not miss the playoffs again until 2004. During the late 1980s, John Stockton and Karl Malone arose as the franchise players for the team, and formed one of the most famed point guard–power forward duos in NBA history. Led by coach Jerry Sloan, who took over for Frank Layden in 1988, they became one of the powerhouse teams of the 1990s, culminating in two NBA Finals appearances in 1997 and 1998, where they lost both times to the Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan. Both Stockton and Malone moved on in 2003. After missing the playoffs for three seasons the Jazz have returned to prominence under the on-court leadership of the franchise point guard Deron Williams.
more

The Phoenix Suns are a professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in... the National Basketball Association and the only team in their division not to be based in California. Their home arena since 1992 has been the US Airways Center, which was formerly known as America West Arena, in downtown Phoenix. The Arena is often referred to as the "Purple Palace" due to its purple seats. The Suns have been a generally successful team since they began play as an expansion team in 1968, owning the NBA's fourth-best all-time winning percentage, winning 56 percent of its games, as of the end of the 2009–2010 season. In forty-two years of play, they have posted nineteen fifty-win seasons, making nine trips to the Western Conference Finals, and advancing to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993. Despite four decades of success, the Suns have never won an NBA Championship. The Suns were one of two franchises to join the NBA at the start of the 1968–69 season, alongside the Milwaukee Bucks.
more