DALLAS – Long before Mark Cuban flushed a maximum NBA contract into him, Chandler Parsons stood inside a locker room, terrified of the words Kevin McHale had written on a dry-erase board. Eight games into his Rockets rookie season in 2012, Parsons stared toward the starting lineup matchups on the whiteboard: "Parsons/Durant."

View photos Chandler Parsons is recovering from knee surgery. (NBAE/Getty Images) More

Kevin Durant was on an arc to league MVP, testing the resolve of Parsons, a second-round draft pick who lacked clearance from a French team in the week after the 2011 lockout and had one training-camp day as regular-season prep. Durant gave Parsons a clinic in the NBA's forward position, and Parsons could only read his footwork, react to his movement and find a return on perhaps his only rookie start.

"I remember walking into the locker room, saying, 'Oh, [expletive],' " Parsons says, biting into his salmon and salad inside an uptown Dallas restaurant. "This was maybe my only chance to show something. I actually played Durant really good. He shot [10 of 25]. I didn't score much but I affected the game. And then Durant ends up hitting the game-winning shot on me that night. So that was a short-term hit, but the next night we went to Charlotte and I went for 20.

"It all started to click for me ever since."

Parsons emerged as one of the league's most versatile players, a 6-foot-10 playmaker and capable shooter. He became a closer training partner of Rockets assistant J.B. Bickerstaff, a nurturing project for an organized young coach.

"When Chandler showed up, we didn't have that type of energy and versatility on the wing," Bickerstaff says. "He was always chomping at the bit. Going against KD in his first start, of course he was unsure. But once the game started, any fear went out of the window and he worked KD. Chandler made him work for his numbers.

"Chandler sat back in practice when we couldn't sign him as a rookie and saw what we needed – and filled it. It was never the scoring that set his career off. Scoring, for him, is a byproduct of functioning the proper way."

Within his first several practices with the Mavericks, the coaching staff realized Parsons didn't overvalue scoring or shooting early in the shot clock. "Give me a choice between averaging 20 points or 10 assists, and I'll take the dimes," Parsons says.

The roster construction of Dallas never meshed with its max offseason signing a season ago, and it's why the organization pursued available players in DeAndre Jordan, Wes Matthews and Paul Millsap and inevitably parted with its own free agents Rajon Rondo and Monta Ellis. Parsons had no issues playing off the ball, no dissent from complementing James Harden – tolerant of his swift shots and difficult drives. For Ellis and Rondo?

"Rondo and Monta weren't exactly shooters, so it was tough with our offensive spacing," Parsons says. "James is an MVP player. It's different than Monta. I don't need much out there for me to be productive. I'm a point forward, but some games you saw it and some games you didn't. It was really inconsistent.

"Now, it will be more fluid, with Deron Williams, Dirk [Nowitzki], Wes [Matthews]. Even in JaVale McGee, we saw how talented he has been. We all have chips on our shoulders, too. D-Will and JaVale, with the setbacks in Brooklyn and Denver. Dirk, with people saying he's done. Wes and I are coming off major surgeries, needing to prove our contracts and prove if we can be go-to players. We're not guys who are gunners, who just jack up shots. The floor is going to feel wide open now."

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