I love Jeremy Lin. Yes, I know Summer League performance means next to nothing (see: Marco Belinelli), but the guy is playing point guard, blocking shots, getting steals, throwing down in traffic, and generally out-athleticizing everyone but the most elite prospects in Vegas. I can easily see him signing for more than the minimum, because at this point, he has to be regarded as a fabulously rich man's Dontell Jefferson, or, alternatively, the destitute man's Devin Harris.

The Official Father of Rufus on Fire claims that the best high school player he ever saw in person was Leon Powe, but has also said that Lin was insanely impressive, too. And yes, I know that my dad's high school scouting report is no reason to bring a guy in for an NBA tryout, but he's a big point guard who can swing to the off guard, which is a Larry Brown prerequisite for at least one of his guards, and, more important, he's been underestimated since high school (he was Drew Gordon's teammate) (Not true... my bad on misremembering and not checking), which is a background that leads to the kind of character LB -- and I -- like at the end of the rotation and bench: guys who have never felt entitled to anything.

Is there anyone else you've seen in Summer League who has surprised you?

Just to clarify, since I'm reading a couple places where people are making too big a deal about this, the restrictions on trading Erick Dampier are public knowledge, and they're hardly limiting. We went over this when Stephen Jackson came and everyone half thought he would be flipped for magic beans.

The go-to source for all things NBA CBA is Larry Coon's Salary Cap FAQ and the relevant passage is issue 88.

[A team cannot trade a player] for two months after receiving the player in trade or claiming him off waivers, if the player is being traded in combination with other players. However, the team is free to trade the player by himself (not packaged with other players) immediately. This restriction applies only to teams over the salary cap.

The upshot, of course, is that they can make an effective package trade by moving Dampier by himself and the other pieces in a second, separate deal. This means we can't trade Dampier and another player for one other guy. (That guy would have a monster contract, since we're pretty much talking about Dampier's $13 million cap number plus, say, D.J. Augustin's $2.5 million.) But if there's a CBA-matching asset or assets out there (and there are a lot), Dampier can be traded in one deal and then other pieces can come in a separate deal to "even everything out".

This likely would have happened anyway, because of the nature of NBA contracts' value, and it just ends up being so much paper shuffling. So, for instance, if  the San Antonio Spurs wanted to trade us Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, we would do Dampier for Parker and then, separately, trade Nazr Mohammed and Boris Diaw for Duncan.