NBA Blog

• For 364 days out of the year, San Antonio is my favorite team.  But on draft night, I am going with Portland.  Paul Allen and Kevin Pritchard have been thoroughly entertaining over the past two seasons.  They go about the draft in a manner that can best be described as frantic.  Seriously, they cannot sit still during the draft.  It is like watching an eight-year-old with ADHD who just downed 12 jolt colas, 4 red bulls, and 27 packs of sour patch kids.  They cannot be stopped.  I believe the final tally was 11 trades in two consecutive drafts.  It has to be some kind of record. 
• Portland did a great job last night by finally cleaning house.  All of the relics of the Jail Blazers are finally gone, and they have a tremendous young core of players to start over with.  Frye, Rodriguez, Jack, McRoberts, and Fernandez can all be solid NBA players, while Roy, Aldridge, and Oden will be superstars.  Nate McMillan will have a lot of fun toying with his rotation, because of the versatility of Fernandez, McRoberts and Roy.  They’ll go extremely big, but still be able to get up and down the court.  It will be great to have the Rose Garden rocking again.
• Phoenix sold another pick last night.  I just don’t get it.  They realize that they are allowed to use those things, right?  This year they sold Rudy Fernandez to Portland.  Last year, they sold Sergio Rodgriguez to Portland.  Rodriguez easily could have been their back-up point guard.  Two years ago they sold Nate Robinson.  Last year they also passed on Rajon Rondo.  I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if team Colangelo were still running the show.  Then again, if team Colangelo were still involved, I’m pretty sure Kevin Garnett would be wearing the PHX right now, because he would have shipped Amare’s lazy, no-defense, slow rotation, no practice, selfish rear-end to Minnesota for the chance to win at least two titles while Nash still has something in the tank.
• Houston now has three point guards who shoot first, two shooting guards, two injury-prone centers, and no small forwards or power forwards.  At least they drafted Aaron Brooks and Carl Landry about 15 picks too early.  That was borderline retarded. 
• Isiah continued to impress by trading for headcases with long-term contracts.  But he always gets the best player in the deal.  I just don’t see the Eddy Curry-Zach Randolph-Stephon Marbury trio ending well.  Get ready for some fireworks.
• Get ready for a mega-blockbuster deal.  Golden State has been trying to get Kevin Garnett, and by dealing Jason Richardson last night, they picked up a $10 million trade exception.  That means they would only have to come up with roughly $12 million in contracts to land Garnett.  I wonder what type of package would be necessary to get him.  Do you think Brandan Wright, Al Harrington, Monta Ellis the exception and two future firsts would get it done? 
• Another possibility for Golden State is to make a run at Kobe Bryant, because Mitch Kupchak and the Buss family certainly did not help themselves last night.  They drafted a point guard who is not NBA ready, just like last season, even though they don’t need a point guard for their current head coach.  In the words of Scooby-Doo, “Ruht-roh!”  Kobe is definitely gone, and soon.

I was going to leave it alone during the Draft, but I could not pass this up.  The Bulls let Tyson Chandler walk away.  Then they used up all their free agent money on Ben Wallace, a player at this point who is less talented, shorter, and older than Tyson Chandler.  Chandler was a monster this year, and Wallace already showed the signs of aging.  Wallace won’t last the duration of his contract, but Chandler will be an All Star and soon. 

So here is what the Bulls did, they used their pick, Pick #9 on a bootleg version of Chandler.  The Bulls could have re-signed Chandler avoided bringing in P.J. Brown who did nothing for them this season, and they could have given Tyrus Thomas more minutes.  By the way, Thomas was a monster on the stat sheet if you go look at his per-48 minute averages.  If the Bulls had done that, they would have been able to do something else with this pick, perhaps draft another scorer in Al Thornton or Thaddeus Young.  Or they could have drafted down, picked up future picks and stacked their team via sign-and-trades.  However, they signed Wallace, and let Chandler walk for P.J. Brown who they failed to trade for Kevin Garnett or Pau Gasol this past season.  What on earth is going on there?  I’m dumbfounded.

While I was typing this rant, I saw the Hawks do the first thing I’ve agreed with in twelve years, and I’m not talking about their uniforms.  (For the record, I am completely against teams just changing their colors out of the blue.  Why should the Hawks be able to pick blue as their main color when they’ve worn red and gold for their entire duration in Atlanta.  It is kind of like the Jazz switching to powder blue or the Grizz jumping to navy blue out of nowhere.  It’s stupid).  Anyway, the Hawks got a stud power forward and a tremendous scoring point guard.  Go look at Acie Law’s point per game averages, and then look at his scoring in the final four minutes of games.  You will recognize that Law averaged more in the final two minutes of a game than his opponents did.  That is awesome.  I’ve already compared him to Sam Cassell because of this “big ball” factor.  And anytime Marc Jackson raves about how awesome a point guard is, I’m backing it.  I’m out.