Introducing Willie Cauley-Stein, Mavericks center and painter extraordinaire

Willie Cauley-Stein was in fifth grade when he packed up his bag for a trek across Spearville, Kansas, a tiny blip of a town -- population: 800 -- just up US-50 from Dodge City, which passes for a metropolis in a blur of flatlands and windmills.

Cauley-Stein was headed to a class, in which he was enrolled by his grandmother, at a family friend's house. The snacks were good, he thought, so it was worth the walk. His bag brimmed with notebooks and pastels. It was his introduction to art.

Since then, Cauley-Stein has graduated from a schoolboy drawing houses and landscapes to a 27-year-old using spray paint -- and acrylic paint when he wants to get more intricate -- to work on his canvases.

It's…