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"You have your ups and downs in a season, and it's hard being tired,'' said Gordon, who entered the NBA after one season at Indiana. "You have plenty of games like that where you're tired. What really gets you is your first game back at home after a road trip. Because you're playing so many games in a short amount of days, you'll have like seven games in 10 days on the road, and then you have to travel a long distance to get back home and play a couple of games back home.''

After those trips he would come back home to Los Angeles, though it didn't really feel like home and there wasn't time to relax anyway. The games arrived one after another like a swarm of defenders that wouldn't stop coming. As a shooting guard, he found himself matched up against the biggest names in the league night after night.

"I would say Dwyane Wade was the hardest guy for me to guard this year,'' he said. "He and Brandon Roy were the two toughest guys.''

The mood around the team has been unavoidably negative amid rumors of personality issues between Davis and Dunleavy as well as speculation of an offseason trade involving Camby or Kaman. But Gordon appears to have been unaffected by the toxins. He and improving second-year small forward Al Thornton (16.8 points) have created promise.

"If you play strong and aggressive, the majority of things might go your way,'' Gordon said. "The NBA is about timing, about getting your own way and being able to do the things that you want to do. College is all about sprinting hard and running hard and doing everything as hard as you can. But in the NBA, you've got to switch gears.''