I was sweating bullets at 7:35 last night. After listening to how trades were falling through, I had this terrible feeling that the Miami Heat were indeed going to pick O.J. Mayo second overall. Looks like I was duped by my old friend Pat Riley. B-Easy is going to rock the red and black alongside two former Jayhawks, Mario Chalmers(!) and Darnell Jackson. Here's what espn.com's Chad Ford had to say about Miami's draft:
"I hate to break it to what looked like a very sober, perhaps disappointed Pat Riley, but the Heat won this draft. They walked away with arguably the best player in the draft and then got a second-round steal at point guard, a position at which Miami really needed help.
Beasley has a chance to be a superstar. With him and Dwyane Wade, the Heat have a terrific future. On top of that, Miami got a player at No. 34 who I had ranked as a potential mid-first-round pick. Chalmers is perfect for Riley: He is tough, plays defense, can shoot the lights out and is a winner. Once the Heat find a way to trade Shawn Marion, they'll be in great shape to make a big run at a young free agent next summer.
And according to John Hollinger's statistical formula, Jackson is one the biggest sleepers in the draft."
He gave them an A+. Needless to say, I am stoked. Hopefully they will find a taker for Marion before the trade deadline. It would be pretty interesting to see Chalmers, Wade, Haslem, Beasley and Marion on the floor at the same time. They could definitely pull it off against a lot of the teams in the league right now.
The Boston Celtics had a chance to STEAL Chris Douglas-Roberts at 30. They instead chose to go with J.R. Giddens. Not a bad pick, but I thought CDR would have been a perfect fit for the C's. He strikes me as a James Posey-type player. We all saw how well that worked out. Guess they're planning on resigning him and his man-hugs. Late in the draft, they traded for Bill Walker who was drafted by the Wizards. He has been described as, "Vince Carter before the ACL injury." Dang. And with the last pick, they took a seven foot dude from Turkey who they'll stash away in Europe. Solid picks but again, I'm really surprised they didn't take Douglas-Roberts. How did he fall all the way to 40?
The whole Memphis-Minnesota trade is weird to me. How did McHale and Wallace even talk to one another? That's quite the meeting of the minds. Don't really see how Love will help out Big Al...
What can be said about ESPN's coverage that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan? I knew it would be horrible, but that was an absolute trainwreck of an embarrassment. AwfulAnnouncing did a great job of pointing out just how bad it was in their live blog coverage. I would start to get into here, but I would just get too worked up knowing that those jokers can be downright unwatchable and my journalism degree is collecting dust. (Thanks BU!)
Of course the Knick fans would boo Gallinari. I think he'll actually do pretty well there with D'Antoni running the show. Anyone but Rose wouldn't drastically benefit the team anyway. They are still a couple of years away from erasing the mistakes of Isiah. Nice Jeff Van Gundy chant though...
The only real shocker was Jason Thompson going to Sacramento at number 12. It looked like they had a chance to get either Bayless or Augustin, but they were both snagged right before the Kings were on the clock. Looks like they didn't have much of a backup plan. Oh and can the Maloof brothers just move this team to Vegas already? After what David Stern is doing to the Sonics franchise, he should give the Kings the go ahead just to balance things out.
So there you have it. There's plenty I missed I'm sure, but the forties of a certain champagne of beers didn't exactly help keep my head clear. And seeing as how I am an unreliable (at best) poster, there are talks of bringing in a few other writers to expand the site. I'll keep you posted.
P.S. Okay, just one thing about Stuart Scott. He badmouthed the person who bought Doc River's "Gatorade" shirt for $50,000. The money went to charity you buffoon! He was atrocious the whole night but that was the icing on the cake. I cannot stand this man. The amount of enmity that flows through my body is getting to dangerous levels. He had no business being anywhere near Madison Square Garden last night. None.
P.P.S. "So Brandon Rush, are you excited to be playing alongside Brandon Rush?" Good one Stephen A.
1 comment:
Alright here'e the whole skinny. But first of all congrats on Miami's great draft. Can't believe they got Chalmers on top of Beasley.
Stu Scott was truly atrocious. I listed to the first 5 or 6 picks on ESPN Radio on my drive home. Pretty solid. Get home and turn on the TV.. BLAMO. First, he's not funny whenever he tries to be. The badmouthing the shirt thing was SO fucking retarded. And he's got this awful habit of telling the viewers what emotions they should be feeling ("if this don't make you cry you're a robot.. STAY TUNED"). I already wanted to kill him for bringing up Doc's dad during the Trophy presentation (very classless in my opinion). What a dick.
Agree completely on passing up on CDR. I was so fucking pissed. There were 4 guys I was targeting for the Cs there: CDR, Chalmers, Dorsey (even though he's a lot like Baby, but he's way better), and if you're going the "project" route, DeAndre Jordan. CDR was my top choice. He projects to be a very good pro and could be used immediately off the bench for both Ray and Paul.
Giddens is OK. I'm warming up a bit as I'm hearing some good things from various sources and he rebounds like a fucking maniac, plus Danny has a great reputation with late picks. But what scares the shit out of me is he's 23 and shoots <60% from the FT line. How many 2-guards shoot that poorly? Coupled with his very mediocre 33% 3pt shooting (college no less), he's just not a good shooter, and 23 year olds tend to improve less than 19 year olds. I tried explaining this to the mouthbreathers over at CelticsBlog's forums, but they just used handy retorts like "Well Magic Johnson improved his FT%".. well holy shit a top 10 all time player improved awesome argument asshat. Basically it seems to me he's filling Tony Allen's shoes. On the plus side, I like the Billy Walker gamble. Yeah he's been injured but he's a good guy to take a risk on, and we didn't even waste a pick on him we just bought him.
Re: The Love/Mayo deal. McHale fucking raped Wallace. Wallace is now the worst GM in the NBA. Doesn't help he has an owner forcing him to cut payroll, which I figured factored into the move. Love is easily a top 3 talent in this draft, by a wide margin. OJ, on the other hand, projects pretty poorly actually. I got some hope for him because he seems to love basketball and at least talks about defense and passing, but he performed very poorly against the top 10 defenses he faced. I think it's a slim chance he turns out great. Throw in the fact that Minny shipped nothing else of value and got Miller in return. BONERS. They might win 40 games next year. I think ~35 is more likely. I assume Memphis isn't done making moves, as they have 23 swing men currently.
Not sure how I feel about the Portland/Indy deal. Everyone seems to think Portland killed it. But I actually think Rush will be better than Bayless (undersized tweener with no real PG skills). Diogu is nice when healthy, which is basically never. If either team came out ahead it's not by much in my opinion. Regardless Portland still had an awesome draft.
I also think New Jersey had an awesome draft. I'm not high on Lopez because he sucks at rebounding and I generally hate when big men don't board, but he's got talent and was a good pick up at 10. And I like Ryan Anderson a lot (mostly based on analysis by some advanced stats dudes I respect), and then CDR in the 2nd round in nuts. There's no way Kiki is the one calling the shots in NJ. Must be Rod Thorn's puppet.
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