Live Blogging The NBA Draft from my Man Space
And we're back from the FTT Man Space. Obey my Man Space!
8:30 -- Sacramento, still giggling with relief about Noah not being there for them to play opposite Ron Artest just for pure comedy value, picks Spencer Hawes, the center from Washington. Will anyone be able to tell him apart from Brad Miller? All these white people look alike to me.
8:35 -- The Hawks take a point guard! Good thing I was home for that, because I'm pretty sure I'd have wrapped the minivan around a pole. Acie Law from Texas A&M goes south. How will he manage to take time away from immortals like Claxton and Lue?
8:45: Thaddeus Young goes to the Sixers. ESPN says he needs to tighten up his ball skills. That and $20 will get you something on South Street. It's also not a good sign that he fails under the Mom Test (see below).
8:50 -- NOLa takes Julian Wright from Kansas. Wright gets to avoid the big Green Room wait and, as a bonus, takes passes from Chris Paul. Too bad he's in the West, where no one will even hear from him. Meanwhile, the Hornets get to recover from the tragic contract of Peja Stojakovic...
9:00 -- The Clips go for Al Thornton, my dark horse pick for all-rookie team, just because he's got absolutely no learning curve. He should also get playing time and shots, given that this team just played raw energy guys at 3 last year. Watch him. (Or not, since he's with the Clips.)
But everyone on Jay Bilas's list has bad ball skills. Just once, you'd like to hear that guy really knows how to take care of his ball.
9:05 -- Al Thornton's mom is named Philomenia. For once, the mom has got the worse name than the kid...
9:09 -- Rodney Stuckey, my mom's hope for the Sixers at 12, goes to Detroit at 15. Beware the SG from a small school. Sometimes, they turn into Joe Dumars. (If he turns out great, give it up to my mom. It won't be the first time she's smarter at sports than me.)
9:12 - The Wiz, who have the worst big men in a conference filled with astoundingly bad big men... take a guard, Nick Young, from USC. Let the Gilbert Arenas Is Leaving Rumors Begin!
9:14 -- The Knicks are getting Zach Randolph for Steve Francis and Channing Frye. Other than Zach being batshit crazy and going to the worst town in the league for a batshit crazy man, this is a great deal for the Knicks. Play him next to Curry, and you have actual young low-post talent.
Next to David Lee, they have the best young front court in the East -- but only on paper, because Curry and Randolph have no heart and play no defense, and the alpha dog on the team is still Stephon Marbury. Emphasis on dog. Good thing Isiah Thomas has a really good coach in... Isiah Thomas. Whoops.
9:15 -- Stephen A. Smith just jizzed all over Zach Randolph. Too bad he doesn't, you know, play defense. And he's batshit insane. And he couldn't handle the nightlife in, gulp, OREGON.
9:16 - The Nets take Sean Williams, a pot-smoking shot-blocking center from BC. No one cares. We're all still all over Zach Randolph.
Isn't that always the way with the Nets? We're talking about a team that had a thermonuclear divorce with Jason Kidd, made the second round of the playoffs, played the hokey pokey with Vinsanity... and still, all anyone wants to talk about is the five-star tire fire in midtown. If you're not in the boroughs, you ain't shit.
9:23 - The Warriors take a guard from Italy. Marco Belinelli, who looks like Manu Ginobili's sleazier cousin. Like all Euro guards, he's the Jordan of some other country, and the footage shows 3's and dunks. At 6'5", he will have no chance to handle the point in the league, which means he's a 3-ball specialist. Hope he can wave a towel real good.
9:27 - The Lakers are on the clock! Jerry Buss has no comment on whether he's going to deal Kobe. In other news, Kobe is shopping for a white Bronco, and Coach Philip just turned 75.
9:28 - Stephen A. says it will take the Lakers decades to recover from a Kobe trade. I think it will take decades to recover from Stephen A.
9:29 - The team says they don't want Jermaine O'Neal for Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum. Can't say I blame them -- Jermaine is astoundingly overrated, brittle, and not a very good guy -- but they're going to have to, you know, do something.
Because Kobe's in the bushes with piano wire.
And he's not wearing any clothes.
9:30 - Lakers take Javaris Crittenton, a freshman PG from Georgia Tech. Rather than give the audience any idea about what Crittenton brings to the table, ESPN throws it to Dick Vitale, who decides to take his time to invite Stephen A. out to dinner. Get a room, you crazy kids!
9:35 - Miami, with the 20th pick in 120 minutes, takes Jason Smith, a breathtakingly white forward from Colorado State. Since he's not quite 7 feet, maybe he's not a stiff. Er, no. Then again, Shaq somehow made Mark Madsen stay in the league, so there's hope beyond the three-year rookie contract...
9:38 - Mitch Kupchak says no one on his team is untouchable. Including, one must think, Mitch Kupchak...
9:42 - Philly takes Daequan Cook, a frosh guard from The Ohio State U. ESPN says he's going to Miami for Jason Smith, which makes sense -- the Sixers need a spare Shavlik Randolph in case something bad happens to their first one. The eight Sixers fans left in existence just reached for the ether. So much for Smith's chance at Madsen Money...
Cook turns out to be a big sixth man type who is a workout warrior and defensive player. If it's my team, he plays 3 and Antoine Walker is wedged into a Barcalounger, then secured with duct tape. He'll gnaw his way out eventually.
9:48 - Bobcats take Jared Dudley, a senior forward from BC. He's played the 7th most minutes in NCAA history. So MJ just took a guy in the draft with a lot of miles on him. That's special.
9:50 - Spike Lee defends Isiah's drafting record; he does have a point. Isiah's drafts are tolerable. It's the rest of his, well, entire life that is so deficient.
9:51 - As time goes by, Spike resembles Bill Cosby more and more. This is not a healthy development for Spike.
9:53 - Isiah drafts fast, and takes Wilson Chandler, the DePaul soph forward that Spike Lee predicted, and the guy they've supposedly wanted for a month. Is Isiah now one of the smarter GMs in the league? I think my head just exploded.
9:56 - Portland just plain buys the pick from the Suns. If you're a Suns fan, this can't be an encouraging sign. If you don't get KG there, it's looking very weak there all of a sudden... they wind up taking Rudy Fernandez from Spain, one of those Euros that will probably wait a year to deal with a contract buyout. Nothing quite spices up a draft like procedural moves!
10:04 - Utah is on the clock, and Stephen A. is on Mehmet Okur's ass. I think he pays rent there. It's like no big man has ever come up small against Duncan before...
10:05 - The Jazz take Morris Almond, a senior guard from Rice who might give the Jazz a chance at getting some scoring at the 2. They haven't had that since... gulp... Jeff Hornacek. Seriously.
5 picks left to go... which, at five minutes per pick, means we should be done by 11. The NBA is trying, very hard, to make sure that people don't find this to be more interesting than the Finals. I'm staying in just to see if the Sixers get Duke Puke McReynolds with the last pick in the first, so he can be the new Cherokee Parks.
10:11 - The Rockets take Aaron Brooks, a small guard from Oregon who has a lot of free time now that the Raiders drafted a QB in the first round. Brooks has always managed to be great for his fantasy teams, but not in reality. But I don't know if he's going to have enough of an offensive line to deliver big numbers here.
10:18: - Thanks to my commute, I've only had to endure 90 minutes of Stephen A. Smith tonight. Which is good, because it means that I won't have to Benoit my wife and kids. (What, too soon?)
10:19 - Pistons take Arron Afflalo, a 6'5" junior guard from UCLA. With Stuckey, the Pistons have better ideas than Lindsay Hunter now, though I still think they gave up too soon on Carlos Delfino.
10:24 - The Spurs make the most boring pick of the whole draft. I hate the Spurs so, so much. (There, that should get the Texas readers happy.)
Seriously, they take Tiago Splitter, a 7-footer from Brazil, who, like all foreign players, would have been in the lottery, according to Jay Bilas. Once again, another buyout moment, and I'd make fun of the pick, but it's obvious that they know what they are doing...
10:27 - Phoenix is on the clock, assuming that they don't just sell the pick to another team that isn't too depressed to draft. They wind up with Alando Tucker, the senior from Wisconsin who looks like a glue tweener.
10:31 -- With the final pick in the first, the Sixers continue their march to obscurity... and the Heat / Sixers trade gets announced. Whoop de damn do. The Sixers then end the round with Petteri Koponen, a 6'-4" 19-year-old point guard from Finland, who becomes the second Finn in NBA history. He looks like Kyle Korver is going to kick his ass, and that no one will hear from him for many years.
And that, my children, is a wrap. I hope we have put to rest the idea that drafts are more exciting than, you know, actual sports.
My big winners for the night... Atlanta actually got pieces that made sense for once. Portland got a ton of cap space for Randolph, freeing up playing time for Aldridge. Seattle did a similar move with Lewis. Both of those franchises are poised to be big players in a few years.
Losers? Knicks and Celtics both chased fool's gold for immediate gains, and let defense be damned. Milwaukee may be in for a world of hurt from Yi Jianlian. Phoenix, Dallas and the Lakers need to make moves and haven't.
Thank you, and good night now!
