NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. TrueHoop. Spending a day with NBA referees. Tons of great notes in here.

2. Palm Beach Post. Michael Beasley comes ... err, clean: "And when asked if he was hiding in the hotel room when security first entered Beasley answered, 'Honestly, I don't know.' I'm not sure our young protagonist understands what that word means.

3. Ball in Europe. Highlights from Josh Childress' first preseason game in Greece.

4. OregonLive. Nate McMillan wants to dampen the high expectations facing the Blazers. Good luck.

5. Washington Post, via Bullets Forever. The Brendan Haywood-Etan Thomas war is over!

6. Sactown Royalty. (Self-link alert!) Investigating the causes of Sacramento's bloated salary.

Brandon Jennings bucked tradition when he decided to skip a season of indentured servitude in the NCAA in favor of Europe, and he did it again when it came time to sign a shoe contract. Instead of going the traditional route and choosing between Nike, adidas or Reebok, Jennings went with Under Armour, which plans to make him the centerpiece of their emerging basketball division. From CNBC's Darren Rovell:

Jennings is the first basketball shoe endorser for the brand, which has signed him to a multi-year contract that is incentive based. Although Jennings has a three-year deal with the Italian team, it is well known that he has an out after each year.

"The endgame is for Brandon to make it the NBA and be the impact player that everyone is predicting that he'll be," said Steve Battista, Under Armour's senior vice president of brand.

Under Armour has been making basketball apparel for two years, but Jennings' signature kicks will be the first shoe they've actually released. I don't know any more details about the incentives, but I imagine a chunk of change hinges on which pick he ends up being selected with once he enters the NBA draft, which will presumably happen next spring.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded NBA Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

He's a handyman and an expert marskman. He's got a degree in computer programming, and he's worked as a dishwasher. He still respects his inner-city roots -- "Because of where I'm from, people expect me to get a little money in my pocket and go crazy ... Nope." -- and ultimately he's one of the most interesting young interviews in the NBA. He's new Mavericks forward James Singleton, and he's fresh off of two European championships in Italy and Spain. In this video we chill at his house and talk to Singleton about ... well, everything.

Check out the video after the jump.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. Esquire. A well-written, artful piece by Lisa Taddeo looking at -- and talking to -- LeBron's Four Horsemen. (Watch out for falling F-bombs, young readers.)

2. FreeDarko. If a cadre of current and former major party nominees for the office of President of the United States, what would happen?

3. HoopsHype. Tex Winter discusses the personalities of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

4. Ball Don't Lie. Ladies of France: Rod Benson probably cannot hook you up with Tony Parker. Sorry.

5. TrueHoop. Henry Abbott has three stories he'd love to see more sunshine hit.

6. Ridiculous Upside. If you do 2001 all over again ...

Ryan McNeill of Hoops Addict has a great little post on Andrea Bargnani's pro struggles as seen through the eyes of Sam Mitchell. There's talk about the struggles Dirk Nowitzki and Rik Smits faced in adapting to the NBA style early in their careers, but the best snip is when Mitchell talks about Bargnani jumping off the wrong foot.

"It's a lot of technical things with Andrea. It's the weirdest thing, someone told me they teach players to jump off the wrong foot when they drive to the basket in Europe. I'm right-handed and I'm trying to jump off my left leg, every time. Andrea's right-handed and a lot of times he plants with his right leg. Jay Triano was telling me they teach them that over in Europe because a lot of times if they take that extra step they call them for traveling. So we've been trying to break Andrea of something he's been doing for how many years? We're trying to get him comfortable jumping off the left leg when he shoots with the right hand. The right leg when he shoots with the left. Now I know it sounds simple, but if you haven't done it... you watch him. Most of the time when he gets stuck going to the basket he's thinking 'I need to be jumping off the other leg' and he gets caught jumping off the wrong leg."

So the difference -- the gulf, if you ask Juan Carlos Navarro -- between the way European and American referees call traveling is to blame? I'll buy it. Bargnani's top characteristic, for an observer, is awkwardness. He seems clumsy, mechanical on the court. You assume it wasn't that way on Treviso.

However, plenty of Europeans have been able to adapt quickly. Which camp will Danilo Gallinari fall into to? (Don't answer that, there are Knicks fans present.)

Ben Gordon never officially commented on the rumors that CSKA Moscow was interested in signing him. Well, he no longer has to, because CSKA's GM Andrei Vatutin commented for him. From the Russian newspaper Soviet Sport, as translated by The Hoop:

"This whole thing is a dirty trick of the newspapers, we are NOT in negotiations with Ben Gordon. At the moment all of our staff are currently on holiday. I'm personally on holidays in France and I haven't heard anything about Ben Gordon."

It may have been a dirty trick, but maybe the newspapers aren't to blame. Soviet Sport dug deeper by tracking down the original source of the rumor, Greek reporter Nikos Zabaras, who revealed his source:

Nikos Zabaras said that the agent of Ben Gordon wanted the article published on contra.gr in order to increase the projected salary of his client.

Zing! It's possible that Zabaras is lying to save face, but it's just as likely that Zabaras felt justified giving up his source after realizing he was completely played. Had Gordon's agent (Raymond Brothers, assuming he has the same representation as a month ago) been a little more vauge he probably would have gotten away with it -- it would have been virtually impossible to verify a report saying Gordon was entertaining an offer from an unnamed European team.

Perhaps attaching an actual team to the rumor was an attempt to make it sound more legitimate, and perhaps Brothers thought John Paxson would blink before he simply picked up the phone and verified it himself. Who knows? All we know for certain is that the Bulls now have absolutely no reason to take Brothers seriously at the negotiating table. Gordon may not like it, but the Bulls are holding all of the chips in this stand-off.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. The Painted Area. Basketball is still alive in Seattle.

2. The Starting Five. The philosophy of post-dunk celebration.

3. Deuce of Davenport, via ShareBro KOGOD. Watching sports improves your brain function. Remember this when preseason basketball starts in four weeks.

4. Upside and Motor. Even with Pops Mensah-Bonsu on board, Great Britain will have a frightful team in London 2012.

5. Ball Don't Lie. Rod Benson starts his French career off the right way.

6. Detroit Bad Boys. Dave Bing, mayor of Detroit?

Note to NBA players thinking of signing overseas: be sure to negotiate your salary in U.S. dollars. The strength of the euro is the biggest reason why European owners are able to throw lucrative contracts at NBA players, but when the economy shifts and the dollar regains strength, that salary isn't quite as attractive as it once was. As Ross Siler of the Salt Lake Tribune notes, that's already started to happen:

Take [Josh] Childress, for example. His contract with the Greek club Olympiacos was reported as a three-year deal worth $20 million after taxes. That averages out to $6.7 million dollars a season or about 4.25 million euros, according to exchange rate July 23.

On the day Childress signed his headline-making deal, 1 dollar was worth 0.6366 euros, according to www.x-rates.com. As of Wednesday, the dollar had strengthened such that it now is worth 0.6821 euros.

That might not seem like much, unless you're owed millions of euros like Childress or the other American players. Those 4.25 million euros that Childress will make this season (if he's not guaranteed U.S. dollars) are now worth more like $6.23 million.

This morning, Ball Don't Lie published a really smart, self-aware dispatch from D-League All-Star Rod Benson. Benson's one of our favorite baller-bloggers, a real funny, energetic chap who also happens to be a good player. In this morning's post, Rod wondered whether his notable blogging career -- filled with insider humor about NBA players and organizations -- serve as an impediment to his dream of making an NBA roster. Benson has yet to get his big NBA break, and late last season discussed the possibility of "giving up" on the Bigs for now to make his money in Europe.

That post last season made it seem Benson was near his breaking point. But this morning's effort didn't really get at that -- Rod seemed more genuinely curious about the quandary than resigned to giving up either the NBA or the blog. It's especially odd considering Benson has reportedly signed with a French club, according to I Love Basket via Ball in Europe.

The report from ILB (a French language blog) says SLUC Nancy, a team based in Nancy in the northeastern region of Lorraine, has signed Benson. Nancy, the reigning French league champion, will compete in Euroleague's Group B (also featuring Panathinaikos, one of the top European contenders this season -- stacked with Vassilis Spanoulis, Dimitris Diamantidis and Sarunas Jasikevicius) as well as the regular French league.

Congratulations to Benson, if this has in fact happened. (There's no mention on the SLUC Nancy site nor Benson's official site.) Benson would surely have been a better producer than a handful of big men drawing NBA paychecks ... but a man has to squelch his pride at some point and get those dollars. And hey, if it's good enough for Josh Childress and SHAWN KEMP, it'll be just fine for the Boom Tho Movement.

A lot has been made this summer about players turning down NBA contracts to play in Europe. A bit too much, if you ask Charles Barkley. Despite stars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James admitting they'd seriously consider an overseas offer, Barkley doesn't think anything will come of it. From USA Today:

"I'm reading all this B.S. that there's going to be an exodus - the NBA's not going to lose any great players," said TNT analyst Charles Barkley.

[...] "First of all, I think Kobe and LeBron have too much time on their hands," Barkley said. "These guys want to be the best players in the world. I've been on TNT for years and no one's ever asked me, 'Who won the championship in Greece last year?' "

Maybe not, but you better believe people will start asking the moment a player of Kobe or LeBron's caliber jumps ship. I know what some people are thinking: isn't it impossible to see a Euroleague game on TV? The Knicks won't make a single appearance on national TV, either -- you don't think that'll change once they land a superstar? The moment a bona fide star makes the jump to Europe is the moment that executives from ESPN and Fox Sports start bidding for the rights to televise those games.