NBA Blog

I have been shouting this from the mountaintops for a long time, Tim Duncan is the G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) when talking about power forwards.  Considering the fact that Timmy has won four titles in 10 years, and his franchise has been the BEST across all of the major sports for that same period of time, I think that is a pretty compelling argument.  I would get into greater detail, but I need to get some work done.  Instead, I’ll let the people at realgm.com do it for me.  It is a solid article, and you should go here to check it out for yourself.

Timmy,  LL Cool J has nothing on you.

If you are like me, you are in full NBA mode right now.  The NFL season (and fantasy football is too far away), the MLB All Star rosters have already been set, and there is still some dead time until the game.  However, the NBA is in full off-season mode.  The Finals just ended.  I realize some of you probably did not know that, judging from the ratings.  The NBA Draft just happened, and the first rookie contract has been signed (Oden).  Free agency has kicked off, and the first major free agent has switched teams.  It has been released that Rashard Lewis has agreed to join the Orlando Magic this season for an estimated 5-year, $75 million deal.  To get this deal done, the Magic have renounced their rights to Darko Millicic, making him an unrestricted free agent.  I am intrigued to see who goes after him now.

For those of you still yearning to watch some hoops games, the NBA Vegas Summer League is set to tip off in a few days, and the Summer League rosters are beginning to trickle in.  For more information, and updates throughout the day, go here.  As usual, the Spurs are dragging their feet to post their roster.  You can already assume that Marcus Williams, James White, and Jackie Butler will be there.  The rest of the active roster will not, after all, they are the oldest team in the NBA.   Yet, I can’t help but wonder if the Spurs don’t make a push for Beno to play in order to increase his trade value.  He is in the final year of a contract, and there are too many teams in dire need for some point guard help, for Beno not to move on.  Luis Scola and Tiago Splitter have no reason to come over and play, because they continue to show what they can do against top competition in the Euroleagues.  I just wish Mahinmi had not gotten hurt.  I was really looking forward to seeing his development.  He’s a tremendous athlete for his size.

I scoured the rosters of the other teams and found a NBA HOOPS Blog favorite, Justin Williams.  You may remember some of my previous posts discussing the former Wyoming shot blocker.  Williams finally started to get minutes at the end of the season last year, and in the final 10 games of the season, he averaged a pretty impressive 9.4 points per game, 7.1 rebounds per game, and 1.0 blocks per game.  He was only getting about 20-24 minutes at that point as well.  Those figures would cause ESPN.com’s John Hollinger to jump out of his skin when getting into per-48 minute averages.  For the season, Williams only played 12.8 minutes per night, but still shot 61% from the field and put up 5.0 points per game and 4.4 rebounds per game.  The kid only played at Wyoming for three seasons, and I am not sure if he even played in high school.  At 6′9″, 211 lbs., the Kings may have something very special if they can be patient.  Hopefully, they won’t be patient enough to allow Williams to develop some more, and will let him walk away.  If you want to check out more on Williams, go to his realgm.com page here.

I will be back with more news later.

Well, we are less than two days into the free agent moratorium, and several players have already netted themselves some nice pocket change. 

• Jason Kapono turned one stellar free agent season into a hefty payday.  It is rumored that Kapono will ink a 4 year, $24 million deal after the moratorium is lifted.  I guess that means that Morris Peterson (and his penicillin) will be playing elsewhere next season.
• Luke Walton will remain a Laker for an estimated $30 million
• Fabulous Oberto will continue to wear black and silver, but the length of his new deal has not been disclosed.

Hey, I did not say that it was exciting stuff yet, this is only the beginning.  However, in the next few days, you can expect to see Chauncey Billups, Mo Williams, and Vince Carter all agree to deals with their current teams.  Also, continue to scour the newswire, because I expect Kevin Garnett to be a Warrior by the end of the week.  I think Minnesota will cave for Patrick O’Bryant instead of Andris Biedrins, as long as the other pieces are still included in the deal.  Jermaine O’Neal will probably be moving to New Jersey as well.  If the Nets can get O’Neal and be able to unload the soon-to-be always injured Richard Jefferson and Nenad Kristic’s surgically repaired knee, that would be a steal.  O’Neal will be able to anchor that defense and contribute offensively when Vince Carter starts hoisting 27-footers to avoid any contact. 

In other news, Barry Bonds will get the opportunity to start for the National League in the upcoming All Star Game in San Francisco.  I personally am glad to hear this news.  Black cloud or not, Barry Bonds will soon be the all-time homerun record holder.  Sure, he did it in an era where steroids were more important to baseball players than hard cups were, but at this point, I really don’t care.  There are far too many players that I honestly believe took steroids, yet were never tested or found positive.  At this point, I’m acting under the impression that all players during this era took steroids, or none of them did.  Unfortunately, ‘Quantum Leap’ was cancelled a long time ago, so we won’t get Scott Bakula to go back in time to find out which guys took steroids. 

I will just rattle off some names of players (off the top of my head) that I think took steroids.  **Be warned, I have no way of verifying this information.  This is just one man’s ignorant opinion based on chin size, and I spent no more than 7 minutes thinking of names.**

• Barry Bonds
• Jason Giambi
• Jeremy Giambi
• Juan Gonzalez
• Ivan Rodriguez
• Mark McGwire
• Roger Clemens
• Eric Gagne
• Miguel Tejada
• Rafael Palmiero
• Ken Caminetti
• Dean Palmer
• Darren Daulton
• Dave Hollins
• Bud Selig (just checking to see if you were paying attention)
• Albert Belle
• Jason Grimsley
• Guillermo Mota
• J.C. Romero
• Armando Benitez
• Jared Wright, and
• Chris Berman

Boomer Berman had to take steroids, nobody has ballooned like Boomer over the past few years (try 15 years) yet continues to deliver material like it was his first day in the office in 1979.  You cannot keep that pace.  Even Beeno Cook faltered.  I would have also included Keith Jackson, but he was never associated with baseball, and was basically the same size for thirty years. 

• 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.