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

Even though NBA All-Star Chris Paul is only 6'0", the Hornets point guard is considered by many to be a gigantic NBA talent, if not one of the best players in the game. In this video CP3 talks about what it's like to go from pumping gas as a youngster to being one of the NBA's biggest stars now. We also get Hornets forward David West to dish on Paul, cool T-shirts and the 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'.

Check out our talk with these two Hornets stars after the jump.

The Knights of the FanHouse Roundtable have assembled to consider the NBA in '08-09. In this dispatch, we discuss the contenders of the Western Conference. Be sure to also check out the hub of our NBA Preview activity.

Ziller: Can anyone top the Lakers?

Matt Moore: The smart money is on the Lakers. There's no question. If you're talking percentages, I'll give the Lakers a 68% chance to win the West. There are question marks. And their route to the Finals was deceptively easy last year (I'm becoming a full fledged Jazz hater, which is bizarre given my small market affection). But come on. Even I'm not crazy enough to say anyone else can be the favorite versus a team with Kobe Bryant who's actually somehow gotten better, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum. It's just sick.

But there are reasons to think that if the Hornets had been able to withstand the Spurs' attrition-war last year, they would have pushed that team harder than anyone had before and harder than the Spurs, who had nothing left at that point, did. The biggest difference when I talk about the Lakers versus the Hornets is that the Hornets to me were a more consistent team. The Lakers were either on long winning streaks or looking vulnerable like they did in that nasty stretch against the Bobcats and a near-loss to the Wizards at home. When the Lakers are on, they're nearly unstoppable. But the Hornets are the quiet assassin.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. Hoops Addict. Blogger tries out for D-League team. Blogger gets injured within 30 minutes. Blogger still gets a good story with great video out of it.

2. ESPN.com, via FD. Bill Simmons puts together a great Elgin Baylor column.

3. Rumors and Rants, via BDL. David West vs. a heckler at an Obama rally.

4. Nothing But Net. Our first "I should have stayed retired" joke from Larry Brown is in the books.

5. True Hoop. Abbott wonders, "If there were another Tim Donaghy, would the NBA catch him?" Terrific analys

6. SLAM. That epic Gilbert Arenas interview you've heard about.

Check out FanHouse's NBA Preview.

To say the road goes through the Southwest Division would imply that the top team is likely to be there at the end. But that ignores the other three teams in contention for a title at season's end, most likely. With all due respect to the Pacific and Northwest Divisions, the Southwest is where the big guns lay. While the Pacific may boast the best team in the West, there is no question that the Southwest Division has the hardest road to the title and any team that comes out of it on top has to considered a title contender. But there are questions here just like every team. So the fans of these teams must be timid, right?

FanHouse's Tom Ziller argues his ranking of the top 50 players in the NBA.

He may have a surprise All-Star berth to his name, but David West doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves for the stunning rise of New Orleans. The reasons are plenty: the Hornets still play under a veil of anonymity, despite holding some of the most electric ballers alive; we love round numbers -- 20 and 10 -- from our power forwards; charity line jumpers don't sell tickets; and, finally, New Orleans plays at a slow pace, which deflates West's numbers. (Hey, it deflates Chris Paul's numbers too. How frightening is that.)

Just to clean the palette, let's infer what would happen if New Orleans played at the same pace as, say, Denver. N.O. has an average of 90 possessions per game currently, Denver 100. West uses more than 25% of the Hornets' possessions, so you figure he'd use an average of 2.5 extra possessions a game. At his scoring rate, that'd boost his output 2.7 points. And that'd put him as a better per-minute scorer than Allen Iverson, just adjusting for pace. You plop this guy on a faster team, and he's a 23 ppg scorer.

But you didn't even need to crunch numbers to see why West is so valuable to N.O.

Without question, the biggest NBA free agent debacle of this decade was Bonzi Wells' decision to reject a $37 million, five-year offer from Sacramento two summers ago. The Kings moved on, signing John Salmons to a cheaper contract. Wells moved on ... eventually. He took a two-year, $4.5 million deal with Houston. He played rarely, and was mercifully traded to New Orleans this February. He is currently chillin' on the vine, waiting for some nominal contract.

During that uncomfortable three-month interlude in 2006, Bonzi canned his agent, William Phillips. Phillips apparently no longer has any NBA clients. (Go figure.) But ... he is still in the representation business. And he's still turning everything he touches to gold, as the Sacramento Bee's Sam Amick points out:

[H]e has lost yet another high-profile client. This time, however, it wasn't his own doing. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who has used Phillips as his representation for quite a few years, resigned today amid a cloud of controversy that just wouldn't go away.

Not a good batting average there, Mr. Phillips.

FanHouse's Tom Ziller argues his ranking of the top 50 players in the NBA.

Defense is a hard potato to weigh. At the team level, it's simple: you can slice how teams fare in shot defense, in turnover creation, in fouling, in rebounding. At a player level ... well, you can measure steals and blocks and fouls and boards. But without shot defense, you're missing the meat. You have something to work with, but it's not all that you need to make a perfect assessment.

Tyson Chandler is, by anecdote, one of the great defenders in the NBA. But by what measurement we are able to capture, he's also damn fine. A perennial top five finisher in rebound rate (the percentage of available rebounds a player captures), a decent shotblocker, the anchor of one of the league's best defenses.

This last part, to that I lend some credence. And it lets us peak into what impact Chandler might have but of which we cannot measure.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. Hornets Hype. A rather poignant explanation of why impersonal rumors of relocation pain Hornets fans so much.

2. Ball Don't Lie. We're all winners in BDL's "Eddy Curry as a gymnast" Photoshop contest.

3. Free Darko. LeBron + Wade (or Amare or Bosh) in Cleveland 2010, anybody?

4. Posting and Toasting. "The Z-Bo Sweepstakes." Yes, the world is in a'shambles.

5. MOUTHPIECE Sports. Craig Sager is America's storyteller. This week: Ted Turner and Jane Fonda get it on.

6. SonicsCentral, via TrueHoop. The blogger who raised awareness of the shady dealing of the Sonics ownership group gets subpoenaed in Clay Bennett's case against Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

Via Sports Biz Blog by way of BallHype, the Sports Business Journal reports the NBA is working on plans to stream live NBA games online for local fans. No word on the associated fees ... though we all know nothing in life is free. In what will surely be good news for Magic fans in central Florida and Hornets fans in some sections of southern Louisiana, the league plans to have this in place by the start of the season.

The plan would allow viewers to watch live games online within their local market for the first time. That could mean Chicago Bulls fans could watch live action on Bulls.com or on the team's local RSN Web site, in this case, Chicago.ComcastSportsNet.com. Whether the online offering is free or not is still to be determined.

The NBA will use geo-blocking technology to ensure that people outside of a team's territory will not be able to access its games online to comply with the league's local marketing rules.

So while it won't be a League Pass replacement, one can only imagine the underground peer-to-peer streaming games will get easier for the technologically advanced. The biggest deal, again, is for those fans who otherwise can't watch their local team. Rights battles between two cable networks in Florida kept certain Magic fans from witnessing the team's best season in a decade. Hornets fans from the North Shore in New Orleans went without cable access to the games for most of what was the best N.O. season ever.

This would fix that ... for fans who have broadband. There's also the question of defining a market -- will exurb fans get to watch? Will Seattle get to dial up Blazer games online? Will everyone in NYC get the watch both the Nets and Knicks online, or will the burroughs get split? (Dibs on Queens, calls Dolan!)

We've got a NBA Overseas Defection Watch List Update for you, and we swear, we're running out of them. Former Hornets guard Jannero Pargo is headed to Moscow Dynamo, according to Woj over at Yahoo!. He'll be joining Bostjan Nachbar on the club.

Pargo is pretty much the epitome of feast or famine. He shot 39% last year, with a PER of 11.9. He also scored 30 points in a Western Conference playoff game against the Mavericks, and went down with his guns drawn versus the Spurs.

Pargo's a competent backup guard that was in a league that is short on competent backup guards. On one hand, for no team to have convinced him to stick around is kind of ridiculous. On the other, the fact that he's going to be pulling in $4 million in Russia guaranteed for a year is also kind of ridiculous. Pargo's likely to be back in the league next season, but he might want to learn some reservation. Maybe Moscow's a good place to pick that up.