Wondering how your team did last night?
Chad Ford graded each team’s draft and provided analysis for every pick in the draft.
He gave out 10 “A” grades to the Nuggets, Rockets, Clippers, Grizzlies, Thunder, Sixers, Suns, Spurs, Jazz and Wizards.
Meanwhile, Bill Simmons has posted his own running diary of the night’s events.
I’m going to be doing a running diary of the NBA Draft, so check back at 7 PM ET when I’ll be giving my initial impressions on every pick in the first round and commenting on all the other happenings (trades, bad commentary, crazy suits, etc.). I’ll also be answering questions if anyone gives two sh*ts about what I think. It’ll be fun.
LaRusso, my buddy and admitted Minnesota Timberwolves fan, will be joining me. I’m a Bucks fan, so between the two of us, our teams have three picks in the top 10.
All times are in PT. (Eastern Time gets all the love, but Pacific Time is where it’s really at.)
Let’s get this thing rolling…
4:18 PM: There’s a rumor that the Warriors might send Andris Biedrins, Marco Belinelli, Brandan Wright and the #7 pick to Phoenix for Amare Stoudemire. That seems like an awful lot to give up given the trades we’ve seen go down in recent days. But Stoudemire is a borderline franchise player, so a good center (Biedrins) and three prospects (Belinelli, Wright and the #7 pick) doesn’t seem crazy.
Jeff Van Gundy is talking like the Vince Carter trade means that Hedo Turkoglu is gone. I’m not so sure.
4:26 PM: Regarding Turkoglu, Kyle Hightower of the Orlando Sentinel echoes Van Gundy’s take: “The Magic have yet to confirm the deal, but the addition of a scorer in Carter, the trade would seem to end the Magic’s quest to bring back forward Hedo Turkoglu for a long term deal.”
This all comes down to whether or not the Magic are willing to go over the luxury tax for the long term to keep Turkoglu.
4:39 PM: Thanks for eating up four minutes with that pick, Mike Dunleavy. He makes maybe the worst acquisition in years (Zach Randolph and his bloated contract) and he gets awarded with the #1 pick and Blake Griffin. The NBA should do away with the progressive lottery system and give all non-playoff teams an equal chance at the top pick. In fact, all 14 picks should be decided by an equal lottery. It would be more exciting (just think, every team has an equal chance of coming out of the lottery with the #1 pick or the #14 pick — talk about the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat) and it would eliminate all the tanking we see at the end of the season, which not only betrays the NBA fan base but also taints those late season playoff races.
But back to Griffin, who looks like the real deal. He’s my bet for Rookie of the Year. (I know, I’m really going out on a limb there.)
4:41 PM: LaRusso just told me that Taylor Griffin was the #1 pick of the Harlem Globetrotters. I don’t even know what that means.
Barring a trade, I think the Grizzlies are going with Thabeet here.
Whoa! I thought Vince Carter might be on the move, but I wasn’t expecting this.
The New Jersey Nets have agreed to a trade in principle with the Magic that will send Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson to Orlando for Rafer Alston, Tony Battie and Courtney Lee, two league sources told ESPN.com.
As for the Nets, the move is a cost-cutting measure. Both Alston and Battie are in the last year of their contracts, and trading for them would shave $16.5 million off New Jersey’s roster in the summer of 2010 and put the Nets well below the salary cap.
Now this is a trade that helps both teams, unlike the Suns’ Shaq giveaway and the Bucks’ donation of Richard Jefferson to the Spurs’ championship fund. Not only do the Nets get loads of salary cap relief — Carter has three years and $52 million remaining on his contract — they get a nice prospect to replace him in Courtney Lee, who averaged better than 11 points per game and 43% 3PT shooting in February and March. The Nets project to go into the summer of 2010 with almost $30 million in cap space.
For the Magic, Carter adds a boost of athleticism to lineup of spot up shooters. But how will this affect the team’s ability to re-sign Hedo Turkoglu? If they can get him to re-up, they’d have a lineup of Jameer Nelson, Carter, Turkoglu, Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard that looks deadly on paper. I think they’re planning on retaining him, but the Magic are looking at a pretty hefty payroll over the next few years with Carter on the roster.
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.
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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