O J Mayo

O.J. Mayo will spend the months leading to the NBA draft working on ballhandling and other basketball skills. He has already visualized a draft-day handshake with NBA Commissioner David Stern, which would follow his selection as a lottery pick. "I practiced it a lot," he said Thursday during a news conference at USC's Galen Center.

Character counts Dallas guard O.J. Mayo , on Sacramento center DeMarcus Cousins ' punching him in the groin during the Kings' loss to the Mavericks: "I told him, 'Man, play basketball. You've got a chance to be a good player, but when you do stuff like that, you're like a garbage player. It's not a sign of being great.'" Costly speech Stephen Jackson's rogue tweet, which earned the San Antonio guard a $25,000 fine for threatening Serge Ibaka after watching the Oklahoma City forward get tangled up with the Lakers' Metta World Peace : "Somebody tell serg Abaka [sic]

If that was a gauntlet UCLA freshman Kevin Love threw down Friday night, it was as if O.J. Mayo, the freshman across town at USC, completely missed it. The box score says Mayo scored 32 points in his debut Saturday, but -- mercy! -- he did it in a 96-81 loss to Mercer. And 25 of them came after the Trojans, already getting trampled, gave Mayo the ball in the second half and basically told the 6-foot-5 guard to break people down with the skills that will take him to the NBA as soon as next year.

Anyone who predicted that the Lakers would be teetering around .500, that the Charlotte Bobcats would be decent, that Chauncey Billups would play in as many games as Steve Nash over the season's first 33 days … well, that's just crazy talk. That it actually happened doesn't make it any less insane. There were plenty of startling story lines over the first month of the NBA season, many involving the Lakers. Coach Mike Brown lasted all of five games, as did the Princeton offense.

The color schemes were askew for a future Bruin and a future Trojan on Wednesday night at Freedom Hall, but one of them didn't seem to mind. UCLA-bound Kevin Love was wearing red and USC-bound O.J. Mayo was feeling blue after his three-point attempt bounced off the rim with five seconds left, allowing Love and the West to escape with a 114-112 victory over Mayo and the East in the 30th McDonald's All-American high school basketball game.

There are 12 minutes left in the first half, and I'm still waiting for this city's great NBA prospect to score his first point. In a college game. Against Oregon. O.J. Mayo has done just about everything else for USC, the center of attention as promised. He's had one of his dribbles stripped. He's had another dribble stolen. He's fouled a guy after missing a rushed shot. He's stood around while another guy sneaked behind him for a rebound and a basket.

While his teammates dressed and met up with their families to eat and commiserate over USC's sloppy 56-46 loss to UCLA on Sunday night, O.J. Mayo was taking a long, hot shower. Hoping, no doubt, that the memory of his four-point, 10-turnover performance for the Trojans would vanish down the drain with the soapsuds and sweat. For the first time in what has been an outstanding freshman season, Mayo didn't hit double figures in points.

USC basketball recruit O.J. Mayo returns to the court tonight, so presumably he will be able to open a newspaper this week to find reports about things other than suspensions and marijuana citations. The guard from Huntington (W.Va.) High made headlines in recent weeks for seemingly everything except the remarkable basketball skills that landed him here for the McDonald's All-American game.

Investigators from the NCAA and Pacific 10 Conference and officials from USC have met with Louis Johnson to discuss his allegations that a sports agency funneled money to basketball star O.J. Mayo through an intermediary before and during his one season at USC.

O.J. Mayo sits on an old wooden bench in a seldom-used locker room of an opposing team's gymnasium. He's wearing a Huntington High letter jacket, black pants and a plain black baseball cap. He is missing the gold chains, diamond earrings and other accouterments that so often accessorize teenage athletes of his stature. He might be the best high school basketball player in the nation. Nineteen years old. A well-muscled 215 pounds over 6 feet 5 inches.

AT DALLAS When: 5:30 PST. Where: American Airlines Center. On the air: TV: TWC SportsNet, TWC Deportes; Radio: 710, 1330. Records: Lakers 6-7; Mavericks 7-6. Record vs. Mavericks: 0-1. Update: The Mavericks have been up and down since beating the Lakers on opening night, 99-91. Dallas power forward Dirk Nowiztki remains sidelined since undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee last month. Former USC guard O.J. Mayo leads the Mavericks in scoring at 22.2 points a game.

They're 10 outsiders with varying degrees of horror stories about what they left behind. USC collected them to fill a hole, and in so doing made them whole too. "First of all," says guard J.T. Terrell, "we all want to thank USC for giving us a second chance. " Terrell is one of the 10 men's basketball players who transferred to USC, giving it the most transfers of any Bowl Championship Series conference school. The 10 hail from California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Egypt, and were plucked from as far as the Bronx and as near as Irvine.

O.J. Mayo had talked about being an NBA Hall of Famer going back to his days at USC, so his reaction was predictable last season when he was told he would be coming off the bench. Bench players and the Hall of Fame typically don't go together. "I was definitely mad at first," Mayo said Sunday before he and the Memphis Grizzlies played the Lakers at Staples Center. The shooting guard seemed headed in the wrong direction, going from runner-up to Derrick Rose in rookie-of-the-year voting and averaging 18 points during his first two NBA seasons to second-tier status.

The victories, and a national championship they produced, are vacated. The trophies — a copy of Reggie Bush's Heisman statuette and a crystal football for a Bowl Championship Series title — are now ghosts of Heritage Hall. The forfeiture of those wins and mementos is just a fraction of what USC lost in the wake of some of the harshest penalties in college sports history — delivered largely because the NCAA found numerous violations relating to Bush. The Trojans men's basketball program also was punished for violations related to former star player O.J. Mayo, and the school actually paid some of that in cash: a $5,000 fine and the return of $206,200 it received for participation in the 2008 NCAA tournament.

Da who? Da, er, the Bulls were such a surprise to everyone, including themselves, that they were still adjusting when the trade deadline arrived with its hard choices. At 38-17 with Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer limited to a handful of games together and two non-shooting shooting guards, they targeted Memphis' O.J. Mayo , who shoots, defends and could even back up Derrick Rose at the point. Unfortunately, they couldn't bring themselves to part with either Taj Gibson or Omer Asik and lost out. Within hours of the deadline passing, the Bulls came from 10 points behind to rock Miami's world ?

Memphis Grizzlies guard O.J. Mayo says he believes an "energy drink" he bought at a gas station contained the substance that led to his 10-game suspension for violating the NBA's drug policy. "I didn't know it had any bad substances in it, and it caused a 10-game suspension," Mayo said Saturday at the team's practice court. "It's not like I went to a GNC and got some Muscle Armor or ordered some supplement off the Internet or anything. It was just a local gas station that kind of got me hemmed up. " The NBA suspended Mayo on Thursday for testing positive for dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)

USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd delivered cash to the man who steered O.J. Mayo to the university, according to a former associate of the player and the middleman. That associate, Louis Johnson, says Floyd met Rodney Guillory outside a stretch of Beverly Hills cafes on Valentine's Day in 2007, giving him at least $1,000 cash in an envelope -- which Johnson has since reported to investigators from the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, IRS and the NCAA.

A basketball prodigy at age 8, when he was dunking on 8 1/2 -foot rims, O.J. Mayo's fast-forward ride to national attention has him anointed as the next LeBron James, a former Ohio prep star who went from high school to the NBA. The Cincinnati phenom -- still only a junior, but the top-ranked player nationally in his class -- along with his North College Hill High teammates, are in the Southland to compete in a two-day showcase tonight and Friday at Cerritos College.

The NBA suspended Memphis Grizzlies guard O.J. Mayo for 10 games without pay for violating the league and union's anti-drug program with a positive test. The league announced the suspension Thursday for Mayo's positive test for dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Mayo's suspension will start Friday night when the Grizzlies visit Philadelphia, and he will be able to return Feb. 15 against the 76ers in Memphis. Mayo said in a statement released by the team that he is extremely disappointed he will sit out 10 games as the Grizzlies are making a push for the playoffs.