Remember when you first started hearing a lot about Mark Cuban?

Cuban went after the referees again in wake of Dallas' 105-103 loss to San Antonio on Jan. 5, and in particular, the NBA's director of officials, Ed Rush, himself a former referee. Cuban, a repeat offender, was fined an NBA record $500,000 for his comments.

The kicker was this: "Ed Rush might have been a great ref, but I wouldn't hire him to manage a Dairy Queen."

In short, Ed Rush is responsible for the image above. This is clearly the greatest basketball official of all time, trailing Earl Strom and this dude.

I have about as much to say about Rush as I do about Bulgarian monetary policy. The man was before my time. The best thing you can find on Rush is this interview he did about a decade ago with Charlie Rosen, where he goes in-depth into how he managed the game.

We take a look at some of the salient points from the interview.

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There was a time about five years ago when the conference was producing more first-round draft picks than any other conference in the nation. Oh how times have changed. While there clearly has been a huge drop off in the level and depth of talent in cities on the West Coast in recent years, the conferences marquee programs in UCLA, Arizona and Stanford have also struggled to pull in superstar players from other regions of the country.

The good news for the conference is that this all changed with the Class of 2012 with UCLA and Arizona both pulling in some of best classes in the history of conference. It will be very interesting to watch in the next couple of seasons to see if the talented classes Ben Howland and Sean Miller brought in can turn around not just the recent negative perception of their programs, but also the entire conference.

With the recent signing of some of the most heralded recruits the conference has ever seen, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the biggest recruits to sign with Pac-12 schools in the internet era (2002-present).

1. O.J. Mayo - Class of 2007 - PG - Huntington, WV - USC

-Mayo shocked the world when he committed to the school better known for its football program when he could have gone anywhere in the country. Mayo's huge splash immediately drew attention into the USC basketball program's cleanliness and it was a red flag that while regarded as the top prospect in the nation, Mayo essentially chose between USC and Kansas State as opposed to more elite programs who may have backed off. In the end, Mayo's signature ended up costing the Trojans in more than one way with then coach Tim Floyd giving a Mayo handler cash and the Trojans receiving heavy sanctions.

2. Shabazz Muhammad - Class of 2012 - SF - Las Vegas, NV - Bishop Gorman - UCLA

With UCLA beginning to look more and more like Western U from Blue Chips every day, Ben Howland was able to snag Muhammad's signature and the ultra-talented forward (along with 5-star recruit Kyle Anderson) is expected to pull the Bruins out of their recent struggles while also saving Howland's job. Battling a large amount of negative press around the program and himself, Howland was able to convince Muhammad to turn down a red hot Kentucky program and stable Duke program to try and turn around the Bruins.

3. Kevin Love - Class of 2007 - C - Lake Oswego, OR - UCLA

A once in a lifetime type player, Love was freakishly skilled for a big man coming out of high school and was perfect for the college game with his size, ball skills, motor and shooting touch. Coaches marveled over his ability to pass from the post and rebound while still being able to score at will. The son of Duck great Stan Love, it was a huge blow to Oregon and Ernie Kent when Howland secured the signature of one of the best big men to ever play in the conference. Supposedly the elder Love said that Kent did something to ruin Kevin's recruitment and whatever the slip up was, it may have ended up costing Kent his job as the Ducks under Kent were never the same.

4. Jrue Holiday - Class of 2008 - SG - North Hollywood, CA - Campbell - UCLA

An explosive combo guard, Holiday could do it all, shoot from the outside, drive to the basket, rebound and play tough defense. It looked as though Holiday would be the next great Bruin guard in the mold of Russell Westbrook, only with a better shot when Howland secured the local product's signature. It appeared that Washington had a shot to get Holiday to head North and join his older brother Justin, but the Bruins, hot off three straight Final Four appearances were one of the most attractive programs in the country at the time and sealed the deal.

5. DeMar DeRozan - Class of 2008 - SF - Compton, CA - USC

It is a testament to Ben Howland and Tim Floyd that they signed all of the top-5, or maybe just a testament to how much athletes want to play and live in LA. DeRozan is probably the most gifted this list from a straight athleticism standpoint as he could get to the basket with ease and jump out of the gym. Despite some competition from North Carolina, Floyd was able to lock up DeRozan and keep one of the best prospects to come out of the LA area in the last 10 years home.

6. Leon Powe - Class of 2003 - PF - Oakland, CA - Cal

Slightly undersized for a power forward and not overly athletic, Powe was one of those guys who could simply just play basketball. A versatile scorer, Powe was great in the post and could also shoot the mid-range a little bit. He showed some serious hometown pride when he turned down a plethora of elite programs nationwide and stayed in the Bay Area.

7. Spencer Hawes - Class of 2006 - C - Seattle, WA - Seattle Prep - Washington

A rare seven footer to come out of the Northwest, Hawes' height alone made him a coveted recruit for every school on the West Coast, but it was his soft hands and shooting touch that made him one of the most sought after recruits in the country. After a heavy courtship with North Carolina and Stanford, Hawes decided to stay home and become the most highly rated recruit ever signed by Lorenzo Romar.

8. Brook Lopez - Class of 2006 - C - Fresno, CA - San Joaquin - Stanford

Always the more highly regarded of the Lopez twins, Brook had a little more offensive game coming out of high school than Robin but both were rated so high because of their sheer size and defensive presence along with rebounding skills. An excellent student and unique character, Brook, along with his twin brother, chose Stanford early in the process.

9. Chase Budinger - Class of 2006 - SF - Encinatas, CA - La Costa Canyon - Arizona

One of the most unique prospects to ever come out of the West Coast, Budinger was a 6'8 guard with curly blonde hair that could jump out of the gym and had a deadly outside shooting touch while also being a world class volleyball player. Known for having a laid back demeanor it wasn't a surprise when Budinger chose an Arizona program known for being more relaxed over the rigid intensity of Ben Howland's UCLA program.

10. James Harden - Class of 2007 - SG Lakewood, CA - Artesia - Arizona State

An absolute pure scorer, Harden could get to the rim and stroke the outside shot with ease. Despite being from the LA area, Harden ended up choosing between Arizona State and Washington and chose the Sun Devils after an intense recruitment.

Honorable Mention: Kyle Anderson (Class of 2012 SF Jersey City, NJ - St. Anthony UCLA), Jerryd Bayless (Class of 2007 SG Phoenix, AZ - St. Mary's Arizona), Mustafa Shakur (Class of 2003 PG Wynnewood, PA - Friends' Central Arizona), Jon Brockman (Class of 2005 PF Snohomish, WA Washington), Robin Lopez (Class of 2006 C Fresno, CA - San Joaquin Stanford), Jabari Brown (Class of 2011 SG Oakland, CA Oregon), Jordan Farmar (Class of 2004 PG Woodland Hills, CA - Taft UCLA)

The quest to find meaning is a noble and righteous journey set out upon seekers of fact, elucidators of truth, explorers of life. From Siddhartha to Dorothy to three-quarters of The Hangover's Wolf Pack, this path to meaning can lead to many different things. There are uphills and downhills; familiar foes and new challenges, tears, fears, smiles, nerves, laughter, disappointment, joy, the proverbial roller coaster.

The quest to an NIT Championship is no different.

For some, its an opportunity. The chance to extend a year, play on, grow and build on the moderate if not terrific successes of the season. For others, the NIT is a disappointing venture into mediocrity and oblivion. A baron and arguably fruitless trek.

The paths may be different - Allen is not the Tin Man just as Washington's and Stanford's seasons did not mirror each other - but there is always meaning to be found.

Let's look at what an appearance in the NIT Championship game means to a basketball program.

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With the Pac-12 making its long awaited move from Los Angeles to the Strip, we figured it'd be best to discuss this issue with the basketball minds of the Pac-12 writers of SB Nation in our inaugural Pac-12 roundtable.

Larry Scott talks about the move here.

(via pac12conf)

Here are my brief thoughts on the issue.

Putting it right in the Strip does make it as easy as possible for fans to enjoy the game. It would be a fun first-year experiment for the conference to try out. Fans will come out, they'll be happy to spend a week in Vegas, and if their team loses, they'll be happier to stick around and soak up the sights, sounds, and salary dumps on the slots. It'll be a strong packed audience, and it'll be something TV will love to soak up. Who can turn down Vegas in the spring?

For the rest of you, here's two discussion questions to lead off:

How satisfied are you with the Vegas move?

If you had your choice of where a Pac-12 tournament would be held (LA, Vegas, alternate, rotating model), where would it be and why?

The rotating model has been suggested before, and it definitely has its merits. However, there are issues with rotating the thing every year.

Attendance would suffer from similar instability issues. How are alternative sites like Phoenix, Portland, and Salt Lake City any different from Los Angeles? In many ways they're worse, particularly if the teams hosting are down (notice how poor the attendance was this year in Staples with USC and UCLA out early). Seattle, San Francisco and Denver are probably suitable in terms of ideal travel spots and diverse Pac-12 representation in each city, but they would also struggle to sell out. The NBA rules the West Coast major cities even when the conference experiences its upswings.

I have the feeling the Pac-12 wants a stable site, and they want a site similar to the Big East tournament which would be centralized and guarantee attendance. Vegas makes sense for the near future, although I do believe the conference would soon like to put it smack dab in San Francisco (right next to the new network headquarters) if the Warriors ever decide to build a new arena downtown and make the move away from Oakland.

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If you want to know why the Oregon St. Beavers fell apart at the seams and ended up in the CBI instead of making an NCAA Tournament run, just look at their three point defense: 331st, one of the worst in the country ($). Oregon State lost many games they could've won because they couldn't guard the outside, giving up 40-50% on way too many occasions to be a consistent basketball team.

So down they went in their final game of the season, as Washington State used Abe Lodwick to nail dagger three after three (five of eight, to be precise) and Oregon State had no similar offensive counterpunch. However, the defense of Marcus Capers on Jared Cunningham might have been just as critical to victory as Lodwick's offense.

Capers' stat line won't wow you, as it had recently, but he deserves the bulk of the credit for holding Jared Cunningham to just 13 points on 5-of-12 shooting. The Cougars didn't play even one possession of zone tonight, and Capers more or less shut down Cunningham one on one. It was one of his best defensive performances of the season, if not the best, given the competition.

Oregon State is improving quite a bit as a team, as its offense has become one of the fastest and most efficient units in the conference, capable of putting up points on almost any foe (as it proved with the numerous upsets the team pulled off during the conference season. But the defense still remains at best mediocre to the rest of the conference, and it's holding them back from making that next big step. Getting torched by a team missing Brock Motum for most of the contest relying mainly on the spotshooting of Lodwick and the playmaking of Reggie Moore is a pretty damning indictment, and Craig Robinson will have to start fixing his team up this offseason if he doesn't want his team to start feeling the heat.

Meanwhile, the Cougars move onto the CBI Finals. It has to be a satisfactory finish for Washington State, who weren't really expected to do much of anything this season. To get the chance to end their season with a victory might not be worthy of laudibles for Ken Bone, but things could've been far worse for him considering what he had to deal with. Time to win two out of three against Pitt.

Previous Pac-12 basketball Internet awards: All Pac-12 teams (all-conference, all-defense, all-freshman), freshman player of the year, most improved player of the year, defensive player of the year, coach of the year.

The Pac-12 has struggled through hard times. Nowhere is that more evident than the Player of The Year award.

You can tell it's been a weak year for the Pac-12 just by looking at these candidates. Only two of these players are likely to be drafted, and none of them are sure things to pan out (by contrast, three of the leading candidates from 2011 are already thriving in rotations for NBA teams). In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to look up and down a Pac-12 rotation and see a surefire pro prospect. That's a pretty shocking revelation for a conference that prides itself on producing professionals in hoops.

Of the ten votes by our Internet writers, five players received first place ballots, and the margin between first and fifth wasn't that much (there was even a three-way tie for second based on our voting methodology). So you have to admit that when Devoe Joseph of the Oregon Ducks gets the win, it's hardly an open-and-shut-case.

The explanation of each voter follows.

Jeff Nusser, CougCenter: Brock Motum.

Unlike the conference coaches, who like to give this award to the best player on the best team, I prefer production over such intangibles as "leadership" and "toughness." I also prefer efficient production, and in that regard, Motum is above everyone else. He's one of two guys in the conference I would consider true "go-to" players, using more than 30 percent of possessions for WSU in conference games. Tony Wroten also used more than 30 percent of possessions, but he couldn't match Motum's production.

Motum is the only player in the Pac-12 who averaged more than 20 points in conference games, and he did it with an offensive rating of 111 -- Wroten could only manage 16 points and a 96.6 ORtg. Motum also played the sixth-most minutes of anyone in the conference -- highly unusual for a big man. There isn't another post player in the top 20 in that regard.

Put simply, nobody else in the entire conference was relied upon as heavily as Motum and he STILL outperformed everyone else, becoming the single most unguardable player in the Pac-12. I know some people want to reward "winners," but penalizing a guy because his teammates aren't great, or because some horrendous team defense led to a subpar record (as it did for WSU) is silly. Besides: Don't you think it's harder for a guy to score -- and score efficiently -- when he's the best option on a not very good team?

Jack Follman, Pacific Takes: Tony Wroten, the best player on the team that one the conference. Wroten isn't a perfect player yet, but he led the Huskies to the best record in the league and when the game was on the line he stepped up his game, carrying the team many times.

Joey Kaufman, Pacific Takes: This one wasn't exactly easy. The Pac-12 coaches will likely select California's Jorge Gutierrez. Then, there are others who will likely warrant consideration. Washington guard Tony Wroten was arguably the best player on the best team. Oregon State's Jared Cunningham and Washington State's Brock Motum were certainly dynamic but neither exactly won a ton of games for their respective schools. Nonetheless, for POY, I like Motum, who finished second in the conference in scoring with 18.1 points per game, sixth in rebounding at 6.5 per game. And did as much by shooting more than 50 percent from the field. No player meant more to his team than Motum. If the distinction, Player of the Year, goes to the best player in the conference, that's Motum.

awbutler, Pachoops: You know how LeBron always takes heat for not closing things out? Fourth quarter this, fourth quarter that? Merited or not there is something to be said about closing stuff out so while the entire conference collectively made no effort to win it all, DeVoe Joseph went ahead and averaged 17.7 ppg in conference play and 19/3/3 in Oregon's 6-1 close to the season. Plus every shot he hits feels like a back breaker. Did you see that Colorado game?

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The Washington Huskies have arguably the two most NBA-ready players in Terrence Ross (arguably the best developed talent in the conference) and Tony Wroten (a player with a great deal of talent plus upside). Add in another future draft prospect in C.J Wilcox and it was a real disappointment they ended up a one seed in the NIT. Ross and Wroten were too inconsistent game-by-game to keep Washington moving the rudder the right way, and the Huskies flamed out in too many games they should have won.

So to see Washington get solid performances from all three to send them to Madison Square Garden is a bit frustrating if you're trying to root the Pac-12 on. It reminds you too much of what could have been.

Ross, Wroten and Wilcox combined to score 63 of 90 points while hitting 19 of 43 field goals, six of 16 threes, and 19 of 23 free throws. Solid support came from Abdul Gaddy though, who probably had a better game than all three of them (and might very well be a pro prospect down the line).

Gaddy is finally getting some of the explosion back into his leg. Tonight we witnessed him make his usual smooth dribbling moves in getting to the rim. But Gaddy had a little more explosiveness post-move than I have been accustomed to seeing. Usually he just flows out of his move. Now he still flows out of his dribble move, but with a little more quickness in getting past his defender. This little bit of quickness is huge. Think about how big one-tenth of a second is when players are running the 40 for the NFL Combine. Now think about how much bigger one-tenth of a second gained in the span of two feet is. He has gained more confidence in his leg thanks to the increased quickness. This has allowed him to be stronger when attacking the rim, and consequently able to find teammates from inside the paint when the defense collapses.

As for Oregon, the Ducks relied a lot on their offense to win them basketball games, but when the shooters went cold the situation turned sour. Things were no different tonight.

Joseph and Sim never got on track, shooting a combined 7-24. Olu and EJ were able to carry the Ducks for about ten minutes, but they ran out of gas, and the entire team just stopped being aggressive. Meanwhile, the defensive end was a complete nightmare, with Wroten still getting into the lane at will, with Wilcox and Ross nailing jumpers, aided by a foul call on nearly every play. Washington was well into the double bonus before Oregon was anywhere near the bonus. The officiating was at times very questionable, but the bottom line is that the Ducks stopped being aggressive, while Washington continued to gain confidence. Oregon hit just enough shots to keep them within striking distance, but never enough to make you think they were going to pull it out.

Indeed, Oregon, a team generally very good at keeping teams from attempting free throws, gave up 35 free throw attempts Thursday night, including 14 to Wroten and six to Gaddy and Wilcox each. Not good enough, even against a poor free throw shooting team like Washington.

Oregon will have plenty of issues to resolve this season (especially with a bunch of major contributors like Ashaolu, Joseph and Sim graduating), but considering what Dana Altman got out of a moltley crew, it shouldn't be too rough a rebuild in Eugene and they should continue to be a feisty bunch to deal with.

It remains to be seen what Romar can do if he's unable to fill in the coffers with quality talent. He'll probably have to do better than the NIT with future squads.

Previous Pac-12 basketball Internet awards: All Pac-12 teams (all-conference, all-defense, all-freshman), freshman player of the year, most improved player of the year, defensive player of the year.

The Colorado Buffaloes weren't expected to do much of anything when they came into the Pac-12. They lost the majority of a squad that had recently been snubbed from the NCAA tournament, and the talent that came in wasn't highly regarded. It was going to be an uphill slog for them to catch up with the rest of the conference.

How quickly we all forgot about how bad the Pac-12 was compared to everyone else. After a rough start, Colorado seemed to adapt and thrive once they reached conference play while establishing their domain at Coors Center as one of the toughest homecourts in the conference, and of course their magical run in the Staples Center capped off an incredible run to the tournament.

Our Pac-12 experts bestowed Tad Boyle with Coach of the Year honors, but it was closer than expected as one other worthy contender rose up and made a strong challenge (with actual Pac-12 coach of the year Lorenzo Romar finishing third, and Johnny Dawkins and Mike Montgomery receiving some scattered votes).

Jeff Nusser, CougCenter: Dana Altman. Just a masterful job blending together a lot of pieces. He had to meld three transfers with his current roster, and his leading scorer was a transfer (Devoe Joseph) who missed the beginning of the season. Excellent job.

Jack Follman, Pacific Takes: Dana Altman, the Ducks were expected to finish at the bottom of the conference and they challenged for the regular season title for a good portion of the season. He coached a team that was heavy on transfers and young guys and got them to play well enough together to finish third in the standings.

Joey Kaufman, Pacific Takes: Remember when Colorado, after losing four starters, was picked 10th in the preseason media poll? New conference. Hey, why not? But the Buffaloes ended up winning 19 games on the season and finished fifth in the Pac-12. Tad Boyle deserves a lot of credit for that.

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