NBA Essentials: Portland's Sixth Man, Marbury's Science and Yao's Fruitcake

NBA Essentials provides the must-see links, quotes and videos of the day.



* "With 10 seconds left in the half, Portland took a 20-second timeout. A Blazers substitution brought Jerryd Bayless into the game. Greg Oden was supposed to leave the game, but he didn't." -- InsideHoops

* "I once heard it said that experience is not what happens to a man, experience is what a man does with what happens to him. That's real science, so I'll drop that one again. Experience is not what happens to a man, experience is what a man does with what happens to him." -- Stephon Marbury blogging at the New York Post

* "You see where that [expletive] jumped from?" Mark Blount said. Chris Quinn walked to the media center at the front of the room and hit the rewind button to watch the play again. "That is an ath-lete," Joel Anthony said. "That's a tight end in the NFL," Blount said. -- ESPN's Daily Dime

* "This two-pound fruitcake is an opportunity for Yao, Hawk and friends - Ben Roethlisberger, Jimmie Johnson, Nicole Richie and Joel Madden - to give back during the festive season and also in this time of economic distress." -- Ball Don't Lie

* "I'm sure many of you have heard by now that Bonzi Wells has taken his talents to China this year for the princely sum of 80,000 dollars. This is a guy that turned down a 36 million dollar contract 3 years ago." -- At the Hive

* J.R. Rider's "Play of the Decade" versus Kobe's Olympic alley-oop; 12 Lessons learned in 2008; and hoops and tacos.