Obscure NBA Player of the Week: Patty Mills

Each week at Volume Shooters, we highlight an NBA player, past or present, who doesn't spend much time in the spotlight but is nonetheless a valuable cog in his team's quest for the championship. Obscure players tend to be on obscure teams, but with the playoffs going on, we tried to pick somebody out from one of the title contenders. Here's this week's edition:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Sometimes, the NBA playoffs can feel like this famous opening quote to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Some games, like game 2 from the MIA-IND series, are absolutely epic battles pitting two elite players at the height of their powers. Unfortunately, some games, like game 3 from the same series, are clunkers where the outcome isn't in question for most of the 4th quarter. The playoffs are great when teams on both sides submit excellent performances, but when the one game on any given night gets out of hand early on, it's certainly not ideal for the basketball fan. Fortunately, the ratio of good games to bad ones in the conference finals thus far has been about the same as the ratio of good players to bad players - in other words, there aren't very many obscure players left. Lucky for our readers, our panel of authors is big into bench celebrations lately, which drew our attention to this week's player:

Recognize this guy? If not, its probably because you've only seen him this postseason doing this:

That's right, its towel wavin' Spurs guard Patty Mills!! Here's the lowdown on our favorite remaining benchwarmer:

Obscure NBA Player of the Week: Chris Copeland

Each week at Volume Shooters, we highlight an NBA player, past or present, who doesn't spend much time in the spotlight but is nonetheless a valuable cog in his team's quest for the championship. Obscure players tend to be on obscure teams, but with the playoffs upcoming, this week we tried to pick somebody out from one of the title contenders. Here's this week's edition:

With the playoffs starting this weekend, for this week's edition of this post, I (somewhat) eschewed the humorous elements to this post in order to identify a player that might actually be relevant in the title chase. Usually these players only step up due to injuries, so as much as I wanted to point out the recent excellent play of Evan "The French Mamba" Fournier, I decided to go in a bit of a different direction by looking at the injury-riddled team in the Big Apple. My search led me to this week's obscure player:

Sporting the typical rookie gym bag, that's Knicks player Chris Copeland! So what makes him so obscure? Read on...