1. Some Summer League Fun: Here we are nearing the dead zone of the NBA year. Most of the major NBA free agents are taken care and a few trades may pop up in August and September and the Olympics won’t be coming until that time either. The only games right now are those wacky summer league games. I thought I’d go through and throw out some fun names that we haven’t seen for a while:
Transactions 5/17-7/9
Atlanta Hawks
5/28 Name Rick Sund general manager
6/17 Sign coach Mike Woodson to contract extension
Atlanta has been a weird a dysfunctional organization for a while now. How does Mike Woodson survive but GM Billy Knight get the axe? One would think that Knight and Woodson, having been together for so long, were tied to the same train. Actually, Knight apparently made several appeals to ownership to can Woodson during the season. Knight was ignored and Woodson led the Hawks to their best season since 1998-99. Viola! Woodson wins the power struggle and Knight is outta town.
Quick Thoughts
1. Champs and D: We’ve taken a step back from the season thanks to Ed Weiland’s excellent draft coverage but now it’s time to take a quick look back at the Celtics’ run. In the end, the Celtics excellent defense coupled with the inability of the Lakers to match up with Paul Pierce gave Boston another banner. Indeed, the Celts’ were the best defensive this year (number one in points allowed per minute), but this serves as a nice jumping off point to test the old adage that “defense wins championships.”
NBA Draft 2008: Grades
The 2008 draft is a tough one to grade. I had 3 players, Rose, Beasley and Love, head and shoulders above the rest. I felt after the top 3, there were 15-20 players who could have been shaken up and drawn in any order and it wouldn’t have surprised me much. Because the pool of talent from 4-25 was so deep and evenly matched, there were many varied opinions on this draft. I’m guessing there will be more busts than normal and more round 2 and free agent surprises than normal.
NBA Draft 2008: Power Forwards
This is a very strong group. The strongest in the draft and it might rival the SFs of ’03 and ’07 as strongest group in any draft class I’ve seen. Beasley and Love are at the top. I really can’t decide who should go on top either. Love does have better numbers and improved during the season. Beasley had to carry an otherwise weak team. Both are terrific offensively and raise doubts defensively. If I were a GM, I’d be happy with either one, but if forced to choose I’d give Beasley the slightest edge. Beasley looks more able to slide to SF than Love would to center. Beasley seems to have more potential to dominate, while Love seems to have more potential to be dominated. But they’re very close and any team lucky enough to land either one should feel fortunate. There are several other PFs capable of making an impact.
NBA Draft 2008: Centers
I like this year’s crop of centers. There isn’t the star power we had last year with Oden, but there are enough good prospects that watching this bunch develop over the next few years should be interesting. This year one of the questions will be whether to go for potential or immediate help. Roy Hibbert is available and offers any team a useful defensive presence on the inside immediately. I don’t think there’s a team in the NBA that couldn’t use that. But there are also some young players out there with legitimate promise who are a couple years away from making an impact.