Brandon Roy

In the past four NBA seasons, there have been 208 occasions on which a player has scored 40 or more points - regular season and playoffs combined. Fifty-seven players have combined for those 208 outbursts, including such unlikely names such as Luis Scola, C.J. Watson and C.J. Miles.

Most of the players are stars, or were stars at the time. Many still are. But some of those players have fallen from this intermittent grace so badly that they now only earn the minimum salary.

Despite their proven potency, Nick Young, Al Harrington, Anthony Morrow, Aaron Brooks and Michael Beasley are now earning as little as a player can - in the case of Beasley, not one dollar of this minimum is even guaranteed. This was agreed to less than three calendar years from his 42-point game, quite the backwards progression.

Four others, however, haven't even got that much to show. Four players who scored 40 or more points in an NBA game over the past four years aren't in the NBA any more.

Two are injury related - Brandon Roy and Gilbert Arenas. Roy has retired, twice, due to his debilitating knee troubles, while Arenas is a mere fraction of the player he was. He doesn't need to officially retire from the NBA - he simply wasn't good enough to stay in it any more, and fell out of it before the age of 30.

[T]he amnesty clause (that we're having to pretend will exist here, but which almost certainly will exist in some form) will further expand the range of available talents. A lot of decent players are going to become available, not because they can't play the game, but because they can't justify their contract. A lot of the candidates are obvious and inevitable, some perhaps less so. Here's a potential list:

- Portland: Brandon Roy - All the talent Roy once had no longer matters, as he limps horribly around the court, hoping for the occasional pain-free blitz. It's horrible to watch, but not as horrible to look at as this.