Brief thoughts on the NBA draft

First, by the numbers:

Number of chili dogs consumed by the bloggist: 4.

Number of quarts of Gatorade consumed by the bloggist: 2.

Number of pages of hastily scrawled notes: 3.

Number of times I re-checked the spelling of Minnesota's pick at #57 (Loukas Mavrokefalidis) : 3.

Time, in hours, elapsed from pick #1 to pick #60: 4.5

Number of trades involving the Portland Trailblazers: 6, although I may have lost count.

It's all in the numbers...don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

As expected, the NBA draft was a convoluted affair. My predicted top 5 wasn't really close unless you factor in the bizarre trades the Trailblazers made. I misjudged Mr. 23 and thought that Charlotte wouldn't draft Adam Morrison. That meant that Rudy Gay enjoyed a slippery slide to #8, where Houston drafted him and promptly shipped him to Memphis for Shane Battier.

The big winners tonight were Chicago and Portland. Chicago was able to get Tyrus Thomas, along with Viktor Khryapa and future considerations for the privilege of picking LaMarcus Aldridge for Portland. They also picked up a nice player in Thabo Sefolosha a 6'7" forward who pulled out of last year's draft. San Antonio was hoping to grab him last year and keep him percolating in Europe for a year or two. Like Charles Barkley said when Tony Parker was drafted...I don't know who he is but if the Spurs are drafting him he's probably pretty good. Portland, despite their dizzying trades, wound up getting a lot younger and a lot smarter, with guards who can flourish under Nate McMillan's tutelage.

The big loser was definitely (and this cannot really be a surprise) the New York Knicks. I thought Stephen A. Smith was going to burst something sensitive and bodily important when the Knicks picked Renaldo Balkman at #20. Jay Bilas just seemed disgusted. The interaction between those two was quite comical, and was almost worth the mental trauma of enduring the entire draft.

The biggest question mark had to belong to the Phoenix Suns. Perhaps I'll need the full canvas of an empty blog post to fully examine what the Suns are doing. Essentially, Phoenix traded their entire draft for a future #1 and a future #2. I understand that the Suns are salary taxed, and do not want to add guaranteed contracts. They dumped off Brian Grant's $4.5M contract (which was going into it's last year anyway) and I'm not sure what else they gained out of it. However, Phoenix's gimmick is what's causing them to overpay their players and will cost them in the very near future. Sure, Amare Stoudamire is the real deal, but I think the rest of the lineup is severely overpaid (Steve Nash only less overpaid..he's worth high dollars because he's good, but his age is or should be a worry) and they are obviously worried that other teams will poach their talents. I know it's somewhat of a leap to make that claim, since we can only point to inept teams like the Knicks (where Quentin Richardson did not come anywhere close to putting up his Phoenix numbers) and the Hawks (can we really count on seeing any player's full potential as long as they're Hawks?) but if anyone tells you Boris Diaw would put up those numbers anywhere else, they're either stupid, intellectually dishonest, or Isiah Thomas. I propose that NBA fans and pundits should put a 25% premium on stats built while playing in that junkball system. Until proven otherwise, I think when you look at a Phoenix player's states, discount them by 25% to see what they'd be under normal circumstances.

This definitely merits more consideration. That will have to come later, though...this is about the NBA Draft, damn it!

The coverage was mildly entertaining. If I never see anyone sit at that table with Stuart Scott, I will be completely fine with it, especially when it comes to speaking to players whose first language is most assuredly not English. It's completely unfair to the viewing public to be put through that. And I won't even suggest that Stuart Scott's first language isn't English.

The crowd at the MSG theater was vocally present in so many ways. They energetically booed the mention of the WNBA's New York franchise, and especially the fact that New York is hosting the WNBA All Star game. However, the true weirdness happened towards the end of the first round. Dan Patrick wanted some first round analysis from Dick Vitale (thankfully, ESPN let him have his Duke moment when Shelden Williams went at #5, and we didn't have to watch him towel off) and Vitale started pimping the upcoming college basketball season, and then proclaimed that he was 67 years old, and it was bedtime, and he needed his oatmeal and cookies and then he was going to bed. A startled and confused Dan Patrick said "But Dick, the draft isn't over. We'll need you for the second round." and Vitale responded with a Benny Hill-esque salute and left.

As the cameras waited for the beginning of the second round, the crowd chanted "We Want Russ!" Sadly, David Stern came out...but wait! He introduced Russ Granik, deputy commissioner of the NBA, to a chorus of cheers and those masks-on-a-stick featuring Russ's visage. Russ came out triumphantly to thunderous cheers, and to EMF's "Unbelievable" pumping over the PA system. I wish I was making that up. It was truly bizarre and amusing. Russ seemed humbled and a little weirded out by the whole thing, and I must say, I concur.

There will be more analysis on the actual draft workings, but with the number of trades involved, it'll take a while to sort it all out. Expect a team-by-team review of the draft in the coming days.

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Pre-draft jitters

Alright, so it's not really jitters. Just an overall feeling of wicked excitement now that we're about 15 minutes from the oddest NBA Draft in memory.

Here's how the top 5 goes, in my opinion.

1) Toronto - Andrea Bargniani (I reserve the right to spell or misspell this name at my discretion)
2) Chicago - Tyrus Thomas
3) Charlotte - Rudy Gay
4) Portland - Adam Morrison
5) Atlanta - Shelden Williams

In a year or two, I think you'll see Brandon Roy and Tyrus Thomas as being the best in this draft class, with Randy Foye being close to that grouping. And watch out for Ronnie Brewer. He could surprise us all.

Post-draft (not immediately, but soon after) we'll have a re-cap of the draft complete with projections for the draftees, and grades for the teams.

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Recapping the NHL Draft

What can you say about a draft that begins in the middle of the afternoon, in a very well-lit arena, where the commissioner is lustily booed and the teams get to send whoever they want to announce their picks?

Ladies and gentleman...live from GM Place in Vancouver, British Columbia...the 2006 NHL Entry Draft!

To the surprise of no one (well, no one who follows the NHL), St. Louis chose first, going with D Erik Johnson. Despite using the Nordic spelling of his first name, Erik is indeed American, and will more than likely start for the Blues next season. They're that bad. Fortunately, he's that good. Jordan Staal went 2nd, to the Pittsburgh Penguins, joining with 2 other brothers in the NHL, with a 4th one on the way. Nothing beats the genetic lottery!

The first round plowed through, with a couple of trades to lighten up the day...Pavol Demitra went to the Wild in exchange for someone who doesn't ring a bell, Colorado sent Alex Tanguay to Calgary for Jordan Leopold and some Albertan beef (or something) and there was a goalie swap between the Maple Leafs and the Bruins. Honestly, the highlight of the rest of the first round was the Capitals' picking a guy named Semen.

The best thing about the NHL Entry Draft is how the teams without fail always say something gracious to the host city, and then make their pick. None of this Paul Tagliabue or David Stern hogging up the podium, it's whoever the team sends up. Washington (for the 2nd pick) let Alexander Ovechkin make the pick in surprisingly good English. Most teams sent their coach or GM, which brought us the return of former coach of the year, Ted Nolan. Yup, Nolan is back in the NHL, coaching the New York Islanders, and botched the name of their pick. Watch out, Ted. You've been blackballed before...don't think the minions of the USHL didn't notice your slight of their leading player you sentenced to the wasteland of Nassau Coliseum.

It kind of makes you wonder what would happen if you combined aspects of the NHL's draft with aspects of the NFL and NBA Drafts. Would Jets and Eagles fans be so vocally rude and hilariously disruptive if the lights were on and the whole world was watching? Yeah, probably so. Would a guy named Semen look as pimptacular as Jalen Rose did wearing that red pinstriped suit? Alas, we'll never know.

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A First Look at the 2006 NBA Draft

See, it would have been nice if we just threw up our mock NBA draft. Surely you can't find that sort of thing anywhere else, right? However, now that the 2005-2006 season has come to an end, the 2006-2007 season officially begins.

Sure enough, not even a full 24 hours after Shaquille O'Neal proclaimed Pat Riley the best coach he's ever had and Dwyane Wade has been crowned the next Michael Jordan, the first trade of the new season happens....Toronto receives Spurs C Rasho Nesterovic and cash, and sends F Eric Williams, F Matt Bonner and a 2nd rounder in '09 to the Spurs.

At face value, it looks like your standard stiff-for-stiff trade, with extra parts thrown in to make the money a little closer to matching. However, this trade has huge ramifications for the 2006 NBA draft. Reportedly, Chris Bosh really wants to the Raptors to draft University of Texas F/C LaMarcus Aldridge. The Raptors are supposedly high on Andrea Bargnani, but also appear willing to trade down. The acquisition of Nesterovic would seem to preclude the Raptors drafting a PF/C type. They surely didn't not assume the next 3 years and $23.5M of Nesterovic's contract to nail him to the pine. They're also a little light at forward now, so assuming Bargnani would play SF, (after all, he's being compared to Dirk Nowitzki, a small forward in a center's body) he would still be a good pick.

The best choice for the Raptors (and the route I think they'll most likely take) is trading down a few spots to save the money, and get a player that fits next to Bosh. I also think it clearly shows Aldridge will not be the Raptors' pick no matter where they wind up. If they drop down a few spots, they could still get either Rudy Gay, Adam Morrison, or Brandon Roy, plus either a player or a future pick for whatever team is just dying to draft first.

For the Spurs, this trade is about finding players who might help the team's quest to be more athletic and who are in the last years of their contracts. Both Williams and Bonner are in the last years of their deals, opening up $6 million at the end of the '07 season. This also signals that the Spurs are likely to re-sign C Nazr Mohammed, or possibly deal him in a sign-and-trade. In short, they cleared up cap room in getting rid of a weighty contract that didn't work out as they would have liked. Yet another reason why the Spurs' front office is the best in the NBA...the two biggest mistakes they've made in the last few years have been signing Malik Rose and Rasho Nesterovic to medium-sized deals. When the players didn't pan out, they shipped 'em elsewhere. Even the Spurs' big mistakes aren't really all that big. I ask you...what's a bigger mistake...signing Malik Rose to a $7M/year deal or signing a headcase like Stephon Marbury to a max deal? You can always get rid of a $7M contract for a mildly overpaid role player. You can't always get rid of a max deal shoot-first point guard. Unless you call Isiah Thomas first. It's worth a shot.

This trade puts a huge question mark on the possibilities for the first handful of picks in the draft. In the interests of not stuffing names into a hat and getting nice and drunk before pulling them out and calling it a mock draft, it'd be a lot wiser to just project the top 10 players or so and where they might land...an exercise in futility that I'll attempt soon.

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Welcome

Welcome to draftmockery.com!

As the site name implies, we'll be heavy into drafts and mock drafts. We're definitely going to ignore the MLB draft...a draft that happens in the middle of the season, where few if no players make immediate impact on their team doesn't seem to be all that important. And wasn't Mike Piazza drafted in the 60somethingth round? Nice draft, MLB.

The same could be said for the NHL Entry Draft...however, we'll give slight coverage to those guys, as you can't beat the combination of pasty kids from Canada, the northern U.S. and Europe stuffed into suits and destined to ride the backroads of Canada's junior leagues. Some of these guys we'll actually get to see in a year or so, with the slight chance that one or two will hit the NHL next year. That, combined with the unique freak show that is the NHL Entry Draft, is why will give a tiny bit of coverage.

It's too late to cover the NFL Draft, but once fantasy season gets underway (and honestly, if you're not at least peeking at fantasy football stuff now, you're already behind) we'll hit on some of that. And, we're a week away from the NBA Draft...which is really what inspired this web site to begin with. We've long been fans of such websites as HoopsHype.com and NBADraft.net, so we're just going to add our voices to the cacophony of sound that surrounds pretty much every pro sport on a daily basis. There really is no off-season in any sport anymore, and that's how it should be.

Other ideas may come and go for this web site...we reserve the right to disavow anything we post if it goes horribly, horribly wrong. We don't have any insider connections, and we certainly hope we don't offend (or get sued). We're just another harmless web site. Really.

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