With Blake Griffin sidelined for the first six weeks of the season, the race for ROY is suddenly wide open. Griffin will still have plenty of time to stake his claim, but for now, the spotlight is elsewhere. It was supposed to shift to Tyreke Evans in Sacramento, but the Bucks’ Brandon Jennings has stolen the show.

He nearly became the second rookie in the history of the NBA to register a triple-double in his first game when he posted 16 points, nine rebounds and nine assists against the Sixers. The next night, after a quiet first half where he only scored three points, he erupted for 16 points in the third quarter, leading Milwaukee to a huge comeback (and an eventual win) against the Pistons. Here’s a look at a phenomenal steal and finish that brought the house down…

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This is very bad news for the once-likely Rookie of the Year. (LA Times)

Clippers’ rookie power forward Blake Griffin, the No. 1 overall draft choice in June, has a stress fracture of the left patella, or kneecap, and could miss as much as six weeks of the season.

Tests revealed the fracture and a second opinion later in the day backed up the results and conclusion of the first doctor.

A Clippers spokesperson said it is a non-displaced fracture. But the team will take a conservative approach, meaning Griffin could be out of action until December. On top of the fracture, Griffin is also dealing with tendinitis of the left knee and has been said to have been playing with some measure of pain.

He suffered the stress fracture in the team’s final exhibition game against New Orleans on Friday, wincing after he came down on a dunk late in the third quarter.

The Clippers (wisely) shipped Zach Randolph to Memphis to clear minutes for Griffin, so they are suddenly a little thin on the front line. Chris Kaman and Marcus Camby will likely see an increase in playing time, and DeAndre Jordan and Craig Smith should see a big jump in minutes as well.

With Griffin sidelined, the race for Rookie of the Year is pretty wide open, though I have to give Tyreke Evans frontrunner status for the time being. He is going to get a ton of minutes and should be immediately effective at the NBA level. The Bucks’ Brandon Jennings is my darkhorse pick.

Every year, first-year players greatly impact the NBA regular season. They tend to thrive on bad teams for two reasons: 1) the best players generally go early in the draft to struggling franchises, and 2) those teams need their services so they play heavy minutes. In fact, over the last three years, the players that made the All-Rookie First Team played an average of 29.0 minutes per game. Playing time is opportunity, and with opportunity comes production.

Over that span, players that were named to the All-Rookie First Team played on teams with a combined 500-730 (.407) record. Only four players — Andrea Bargnani and Jorge Garbajosa on the 2006-07 Raptors, Luis Scola on the 2007-08 Rockets and Michael Beasley on the 2008-09 Heat — played on teams with a winning record. The other 11 players were on teams that averaged 25 wins.

Looking ahead to the 2009-10 NBA season, there are a number of rookies that will get big minutes on bad teams. I’m going to rank them in order of what I perceive to be their talent plus their opportunity, because a rookie needs both to succeed in his first year. Fantasy hoopsters should take note: Rookies can be great picks on draft day, if you know which ones to pick.

1. Blake Griffin, Clippers
In the preseason, Griffin is averaging 14.7 points and 8.5 rebounds in 28.5 minutes per game. The Clippers found a taker for Zach Randolph to clear the way for Griffin to start at power forward, and he should be a fixture there for the next few years. I expect he’ll get 33-35 minutes per game during the regular season, so 16-17 points and 9+ rebounds are a reasonable expectation. From a fantasy perspective, he’s currently PF19 off the board, but will likely finish as the PF11 or better if he stays healthy. 10/27 Update: He didn’t stay healthy. Griffin will miss six weeks with a stress fracture in his knee.

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The draft kicks off (or is it “tips off”?) in less than three hours, so I thought it would be fun to publish one last edition of the consensus mock draft. I pulled in mocks from SI.com and ProBasketballNews since they are current and are well respected enough for NBA.com to use in their consensus.

If three or more mocks made a pick, then it’s considered majority rules and that pick is listed in bold with the number of votes next to it in parenthesis. For those picks that have two or fewer mocks agreeing on a pick, I make the pick for them. For example, the five mocks have five different players going to the Knicks, so I made my best guess — Jrue Holiday. I went with Jennings over Flynn for the Bucks at #10 because Chad Ford reported that the Bucks are in love with Jennings’ upside. Et cetera.

A few random thoughts…

- Even though the #5 and #6 picks aren’t true consensus picks, three mocks had the T-Wolves using one of those back-to-back picks on Stephen Curry, while three mocks had the T-Wolves using the other pick on James Harden — who cares who is picked first? (Besides the players, of course. Their salary depends on it!)

- I’d be a little surprised if the Thunder drafted Rubio and kept him. Although I don’t think it would be a bad move, as Russell Westbrook is too much of a shoot-first point guard in my opinion, Westbrook’s camp has been pretty adamant that he doesn’t want to move off the ball. If OKC sees Westbrook as a point guard, then the best fit appears to be James Harden.

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T-Mac for Amare?

According to the same source that disclosed Terry Porter was about to be fired as Suns coach, the Rockets are leaning toward swapping Tracy McGrady’s expiring $22M contract, Carl Landry and Aaron Brooks for Leandro Barbosa and Stoudemire, who owns an escape clause after next season and is demanding an extension this summer to waive it.

I’m not sure what the upside is for the Suns. Stoudemire will likely opt out of his contract after the season, so they aren’t gaining any financial flexibility. They do get a couple of good young players (Landry and Brooks), but is that really enough? McGrady is a very good player when healthy, but he can’t seem to stay upright.

This would be a bold move for the Rockets, but it would leave them awfully thin at point guard. Kyle Lowry would be the only experienced PG on the roster, but Houston could use its mid-level exception to go out and get a veteran like Andre Miller or Mike Bibby, though the MLE may not be enough.

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The draft is just a few days away, so it’s a good time to take one final stab at mocking the first round of this draft. I’ll continue to update the consensus draft this week, but this will be my last attempt at predicting what will happen this Thursday.

First, let’s take a look at the most recent consensus. Chad Ford released the most recent version of his mock draft today, NBADraft.net also updated today, while DraftExpress updated their mock yesterday.

Now I’ll go, pick by pick, through the first round, taking the consensus into account while also throwing in my $0.02 here and there.

#1 CLIPPERS
The Clips have shown no signs of trading away their opportunity to draft Blake Griffin. There is much fluidity with the next few picks, but the Oklahoma product is pretty much guaranteed to be the first pick. The Clippers will then (reportedly) try to move Zach Randolph or Chris Kaman, though it might be wise to move forward with Kaman and Griffin in the front court, Baron Davis at the point, and Eric Gordon and Al Thornton on the wing. Randolph is going to be tough to move. (I still can’t believe that Mike Dunleavy traded for him last season.)
Pick: Blake Griffin, PF, Oklahoma

#2 GRIZZLIES
The consensus says that Hasheem Thabeet will be the pick and I don’t disagree, even though he just pulled out of a workout with Memphis due to a shoulder injury. DraftExpress thinks that Memphis will go with James Harden and move O.J. Mayo to the point, which they say is his natural position. I don’t know that they’ve given up on Mike Conley yet, so I think they will go big with this pick. Their biggest need is at power forward, so trading down and drafting Jordan Hill is a possibility. But if they stand pat, Thabeet could very well be the pick, even though he doesn’t seem to want to play in Memphis.
Pick: Hasheem Thabeet, C, UConn

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Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard has been actively working the phones, as usual.

The Blazers have been making inquiries all over the first round. Their main target has been Pittsburgh’s DeJuan Blair, a burly power forward who plays with a toughness the Blazers lack and coach Nate McMillan would appreciate.

However, Sunday night, there was talk Pritchard has even grander plans. With point guard Ricky Rubio possibly slipping out of the top four, the Blazers are talking to the Wizards about acquiring the No. 5 pick.

There’s no question Pritchard also is trying to figure out a way to get maximum cap room this summer to use for a free agent or in a trade. The Magic’s Hedo Turkoglu gets the most mention, but sources say Portland’s real target is Bulls point guard Kirk Hinrich.

Portland drafted Jerryd Bayless last year, but he didn’t have a very good rookie season, and head coach Nate McMillan would like Pritchard to steer clear of drafting another rookie. Hinrich would be a great fit. He’s relatively cheap (three years, $26.5 million remaining), experienced, and is a good defender.

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It has been about two weeks since I published my first mock draft, so it’s a good time to check back in with all the news and rumors and take another stab.

Like I said in the intro of my first mock, it’s tough for me to make predictions about what teams will do because I’m constantly thinking about what they should do. These are obviously two very different things.

For this go-around, I’m going to try something a little different. I’ve compiled the picks for four mock drafts from sites that I respect — ESPN (Chad Ford), Dime Magazine, DraftExpress and NBADraft.net — and then I’ll provide my own picks taking their picks into account, to form some sort of consensus.

Let’s get on with it…

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With the NBA Draft Lottery behind us, we now know the exact order of the first 14 picks. The Los Angeles Clippers hit paydirt when they won the right to draft Oklahoma forward Blake Griffin with the first overall pick. The Grizzlies moved up from #6 to #2, and the Thunder moved up one spot to pick #3. The big losers Tuesday night were Sacramento and Washington, who had the best and second-best shot at the top pick, but instead fell to #4 and #5, respectively.

Mock drafts are tough for me because I’m usually thinking about what teams should do instead of trying to predict what they will do. This mock will be more predictive, but if I disagree with a selection, I’ll say so. Over the next few weeks, I’ll update this mock to jive with the latest news from around the league. It’s still very early in the process so things are very fluid. One mock has a player going #11 while another may have him going #29.

I’m just going to make picks for the first fourteen slots on the first go-round and then provide the picks of a few different mocks that I respect for #15-#30, along with a short writeup for each team.

#1 LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS
Even Mike Dunleavy can’t screw this one up. Barring something obscenely out of the blue, Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin will be the first overall pick. The Clippers could use a power forward to replace Elton Brand, and Griffin is the only “sure thing” in this draft. He’s strong, skilled and athletic, and he has an improving offensive game. He has star written all over him.
Pick: Griffin, PF

#2 MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES
The Grizzlies were reportedly one of the few teams more interested in UConn’s 7’3” center Hasheem Thabeet than they were in Blake Griffin. The Grizzlies already have 7’1” Marc Gasol, so Thabeet wouldn’t fill a need like Jordan Hill, Ricky Rubio or Brandon Jennings would (assuming the team isn’t sold on Hakim Warrick or Mike Conley), but Thabeet has the potential to become a dominant defensive center along the lines of Dikembe Mutombo. But will he be willing to put the work in to become an effective post player?
Pick: Thabeet, C

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Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds, Memphis’ Tyreke Evans, Duke’s Gerald Henderson and Spanish-leaguer Ricky Rubio all plan to declare for the NBA Draft.

Once John Calipari left for Kentucky, it became clear that the ready-to-bolt Evans was probably as good as gone. Reynolds isn’t considered a top prospect; neither NBADraft.net nor DraftExpress.com project Reynolds to go in the first two rounds. With his superior athleticism and improving offensive game, Henderson is projected by both sites to be a lottery pick, so while he’d definitely benefit from another year at Duke, his stock isn’t going to go that much higher.

DraftExpress projects Rubio to be the #2 overall pick while NBADraft.net still needs to put him back in their mock. His name was removed midseason when it looked like a buyout would be too expensive, but the increasing financial pressures on his Spanish team have cleared a path for Rubio to enter the NBA sooner rather than later.

I’m not sold on Rubio as a top 5 pick. He’s being compared to Steve Nash and “Pistol” Pete Maravich, and while he does have similar ball handling skills, Nash and Maravich can/could really score. Rubio’s shot is suspect, so even if he’s the greatest passer in the world, he’s not going to be worthy of a top 5 pick unless he can put the ball in the hole as well. He fared pretty well at the Olympics against Chris Paul and Jason Kidd, but the NBA is a different game.

We’ll see.