NBA Draft 2006

2006 NBA Draft Order

First Round
1. Toronto
2. Chicago (from New York)
3. Charlotte
4. Portland
5. Atlanta
6. Minnesota
7. Boston
8. Houston
9. Golden State
10. Seattle
11. Orlando
12. New Orleans
13. Philadelphia
14. Utah
15. New Orleans (from Milwaukee)
16. Chicago
17. Indiana
18. Washington
19. Sacramento
20. New York (from Denver through Toronto and New Jersey)
21. Phoenix (from L.A. Lakers through Atlanta and Boston)
22. New Jersey (from L.A. Clippers through Denver and Orlando)
23. New Jersey
24. Memphis
25. Cleveland
26. L.A. Lakers (from Miami)
27. Phoenix
28. Dallas
29. New York (from San Antonio)
30. Portland (from Detroit through Utah)

Well, as a Bulls fan this years draft interests me. It's not every year a playoff team ends up with the 2nd and 16th pick of the first round. They'll really have a chance to make a huge impact on their future. Not only can they potentially draft a quality player, but with two first round picks they could possibly pull off a trade that will pay dividends right away.

I'd also like to point out that Isiah Thomas is an idiot. The Eddy Curry trade might be one of the worst deals I've ever seen. Not only did they make the trade and still finish with the 2nd worst record in the league. They lost any chance of improving their team by giving up this years first round pick in that deal.

Click the link above to read a little more on the first round. Looking at the top players available this year, maybe I shouldn't be so excited about having the 2nd pick. It's a very unstar studded draft list, but you can see for yourself.

Random Weekend Thoughts

SHAMELESS PLUG OF THE WEEK :

Shad Kabango, a good friend of mine from high school, is releasing his debut album titled : When This is Over. Shad is a really talented musician, with thoughtful lyrics, a good sound and he can really rock the mic (and I'm not just saying that because I owe him money). Visit his website and support a brotha, ya heard!
(Make sure your computer's speakers are turned on to hear a few of his songs)



... now, to the thoughts ...




-Don't look now, but the Lakers are on a bit of a hot streak ... If only Kobe's teammates could keep up with him for more than a few games, then we could really get something started.





-Is anyone else secretely giddy that the supremely-talented Chuck Klosterman is now writing a monthly column on ESPN.com? Um ... me neither.




-My friend John, who owns this entertaining little blog (is that what the kids are calling it these days?), brilliantly suggested that I change my name to Marcellus Wallace. Now, though this idea tempts me to no end, my lone reservation would be living out Mr Wallace's final scene in Pulp Fiction.





- Holy mother of GOD !!! (early candidate for scariest film of the year)





-Herein lies the difference between a film I would be perfectly comfortable watching and one that would cause irreparable damage to my psyche.




-As a service to the male readers, here's a chick flick that will all but ensure an enjoyable night with your girlfriend/wife but more even more importantly, won't make you want to perform Seppuku (a form of ritualistic suicide practiced by the Samurai class in ancient Japan).




-There's nothing that makes me more angrily confused than the career of one Brevin Knight ... Let's just move on before I break something of value.

-So, Grady Little got another managing gig huh?! That would be the same Grady Little who permanently and unforgivably scarred my soul and the souls of all Red Sox fans in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS ... I would say more about this but my psychologist advises against it.

Here's what my favorite sports columnist Bill Simmons had to say on the matter : "Speaking of insane, not only did the Dodgers hire Grady Little as their manager, they gave him Steve Garvey's old number. Way to tick off the diehard Dodgers fans coming out of the gate, guys! Just wait until he's trying to figure out double switches and stuff -- this was a guy who managed to lose his No. 1, 3 and 4 hitters in extra innings of a must-win playoff game; I can't even imagine what he'll be capable of with pitchers batting. It almost sounds like a sociological experiment. Thank you, Comedy Gods -- you have put me in the same city with Pete Carroll AND Grady Little."

-I wonder if anyone else realizes that two of the ugliest players (maybe ever) are both playing for the surprising LA Clippers this year : Sam Cassell and Chris Kaman
Here they are together in a harrowing photograph that's sure to haunt your dreams for months to come

-As I mentioned last week, Oprah showed up on David Letterman's show to squash their petty little beef. Looks like America tuned in : Big time

-Why anyone watches Leno, I'll never understand.

-Maybe this whole blogging thing isn't such a good idea after all!!

-Good news for Chappelle Show fans : I'm Rick James Bitch!

-Speaking of TV shows, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos (what a name!) is the best show on Canadian Television. There, I said it .... More on this next week.

-Last week, we had the Kemp Highlights.

-This week we have Reggie Bush (also known as the best college football player in the land) : This is Reggie in high school ... Scroll down the page and click on the video to the left ... Give it about 30 seconds to load and please, for the love of God, pick your jaw up and off the ground after viewing.

-Seems like the US government is apparently running secret prisons in Europe ... hmmm

-So. let me get this straight. Clinton was President while his nation enjoyed its greatest economic growth and prosperity and was impeached for sleeping with a woman who wasn't his wife and inappropriately sharing a cigar with that same woman.
Yet Bush remains in power despite the nation's floundering economy, despite having blatantly lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, despite having the deaths of more than 2,000 US troops on his hands since the war in Iraq began, and still hasn't found Osama? ... Makes perfect sense. Glad we settled that.

-Rumor has it that this might be one of the coldest winters in history ... It's news like this that makes me pine for the long-gone days when the Heaven's Gate cult was still accepting new members.

RETRO QUOTE OF THE WEEK (from the immortal Michael Irvin during one of his infamous trials in the mid 1990s):

"They can talk about me like they want to, but, um, I got my money...so no matter what you all say, Mike black, but Mike rich!"

Picks Challenge Tie-Breaker

TODAY'S LINES:

Dallas +3.5 at San Antonio (8 PM)LA Clippers +4 at Phoenix (10:30)

Tiebreaker: Simon, pick both games for tonight and the total points for both games. Thus, if you think both games will finish with 101-100 scores, select 402 points. Good luck

RULES

1) Everyone must now stop posting their picks in the comment section and instead, email me them at nbasource@hotmail.com. If you haven't figured out why this is the case, don't worry about it. Curtis and I will post our picks right before the tip of the first game.

2) This round will last two weeks. You must make 15 picks over that span. As usual, the games that you're short of 15 will be counted as losses. Thus, I would load up on games early so that you're not left scrambling in the latter half of next week. Keep in mind that there are only 24 guarenteed games over the next two weeks and that's assuming each series goes the distance.

FINAL FOUR MATCHUPS:

Ant/Curtis (7-8)

vs.

Simon Chan (7-8)

_________________

Buh (8-7)

defeats

Michael (7-8)

Good luck to all...

Baylor's Clippers Finally More Than An Opening Act

Bob McAdoo is a 54 year-old former NBA scoring champ who now sits on the bench of the Miami Heat, glasses propped on his head, functioning as an assistant coach for Pat Riley. It's an ironic job, for when he played, McAdoo drove many of those suit-clad coaches to the funny farm. There was even a line about him: "McAdoo, McAdon't, McAwill, McAwon't."

McAdoo played for the Pistons, of course. Dickie Vitale was so hellbent on bringing him to Detroit that he gift-wrapped M.L. Carr and two draft picks -- who would later be used or traded to become Robert Parish and Kevin McHale -- to the Celtics in order to put McAdon't into a Pistons uniform. It was a short-lived, awkward marriage that ended in bloody divorce.

I bring up McAdoo because he was a player on the last team of the Buffalo Braves/San Diego Clippers/Los Angeles franchise that advanced past the first round of the playoffs. It was in 1976.

Until now.

The Clippers brushed aside the Denver Nuggets of Carmelo Anthony in five measly games, and now await the winner of the Phoenix Suns-Los Angeles Lakers series.

A Clippers-Lakers series? Yikes!

Oh, where are Kurt Nimphius and Benoit Benjamin and Danny Manning? They should be enjoying this -- Clippers of bad teams gone by. When they played, the thought of a Clippers-Lakers playoff series was about as folly as it gets. But what's even funnier, if the Clips and Lakers squared off -- and they'd have to call it the Hallway Series, as they both play in the Staples Center -- I believe the Clippers might be slight favorites.

Not to be dramatic, but that's sort of like Eastern Michigan University and U-M finally meeting in a football bowl game -- and U-M being the underdog. Of course, with the Wolverines' bowl history....

Sorry.

These may not be your father's Clippers, but they're still Elgin Baylor's, and that's a story that fascinates me.

In this day and age when a man can be a coach in a city for 10 months and have the most seniority of all that city's coaches (read: Mike Babcock in Detroit), the fact that Baylor, who's been the Clippers' equivalent of a GM for nearly 20 years -- for a team that hasn't won a playoff series under his watch -- is still employed, is either amazing or an indictment on that franchise's ownership. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Baylor: His ship (Clipper) has finally come in?


Well, Baylor is a former Laker player and at age 71, it would be nice to see him taste some team success as a Clipper -- beyond even this second round appearance. If the Lakers should upset the Suns, Baylor's team could find itself in the Western Conference Finals.

And Jack Nicholson would gag on his arrogance.

The NBA has always been a league of vagabonds and geographical shifts. The Buffalo Braves of Bob McAdoo moved to San Diego and became the Clippers of Bill Walton and Jellybean Joe Bryant, who has a son named Kobe who I think still plays in the league somewhere. Then the Clippers moved two hours north to Los Angeles and became the longest-running second banana in pro sports history. The Lakers were Johnny Carson and the Clippers were Ed McMahon -- except in some years, they were more like Doc Severinsen. Or Tommy Newsom.

But these Clippers, with ex-CMU player Chris Kaman, and Sam Cassell, and Elton Brand leading the way, are a nice blend of youth and veteran leadership. Their coach, Mike Dunleavy, once coached the Lakers before being run out of Tinseltown. But now he's baaaack, to steal a line from nearby Hollywood.

I'd say the Clippers are back, too, but they were never "here" to begin with. They started out bad, and got progressively worse. I remember once, in the mid-1980's, the Clippers were in town and Bob Page, who was on Detroit radio at the time, declared it "Guaranteed Win Night."

"If you're the kind of fan that seems to only go to the games where the home team loses, then buy a ticket and see the Pistons-Clippers game tonight," Page said on the air. "It's 'Guaranteed Win Night. I guarantee if you go to the game, you'll see the Pistons win. It's the one night that you can make such a guarantee."

The Pistons won -- in a season in which the Clippers went 12-70.

But those days appear to be long gone. And it only took Elgin Baylor 20 years, hundreds of players, and a gaggle of coaches to get it done.

Matt Millen, there's hope for you yet.

The St. Louis Local Organizing Committee will be hosting the 2005 NCAA Final Four at the Edward Jones Dome on April 2 and 4, 2005. The committee is a partnership between the Missouri Valley Conference, St. Louis University, the St. Louis Convention and Visitor's Commission, and the St. Louis Sports Commission.

The City of St. Louis, which is hosting it's third Final Four in 2005 has played a prominent role in the development of the NCAA Division Men's Championship. In 1973, Bill Walton and UCLA met Memphis at the old St. Louis Arena in the first ever Monday primetime national championship game.

Here's a list of FREE activities that will be taking place on Laclede's Landing throughout the four-day Championship Weekend, April 1-4, 2005:

la clippers

In 1984 the Clippers moved to Los Angeles, California, playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena while the Lakers, with a better reputation, continued to play at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, a few miles south. The Clippers were completely overshadowed by their cross-town counterparts, who were in the midst of a championship run with future Hall of Famers, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy. The Clippers, under head coach Jim Lynam (and later Don Chaney) and new acquisitions Marques Johnson, Junior Bridgeman, and Harvey Catchings (all acquired via trade from the Milwaukee Bucks), finished with a disappointing 31-51 record in the first season in the City of Angels.