NBA Draft Diary!

Seems like a good night to do an NBA Draft Diary. Leonard, Natty, and I collaborated on this, and Thelonius functioned as our muse, so if it ends out shitty, blame Thelonius for not musing good.

Derrick Rose goes first to the Bulls, so he should be getting lots of calls from all his high school buddies who aren’t millionaires.

Beasley goes to Miami, which makes Pat Riley a liar. Pat kept indicating he wouldn’t take Beasley with the second pick. All these years of Pat being honest, like when he honestly told everyone that Stan Van Gundy was resigning midseason so he could spend more time with his family.

O.J. Mayo just got drafted third by the T-Wolves, but he sent Farnsworth Bentley as his proxy to shake hands with David Stern.

Russell Westbrook was the third best player on his college team but now he’s the fourth pick in the draft. We are bemused by this choice. Brook Lopez was a lock for this pick ever since he declared. There’s nothing the Sonics have enjoyed more over the last five years than spending a top ten pick on a big man (Johan Petro, Saer Sane, Nick Collison, Robert Swift).

The fifth pick was Kevin Love, which is great…like his chin strap.

D’Antoni takes an Italian with the sixth pick, because he’s a racist. I don’t know what her name is. Donnie Walsh justified the pick by saying the Italian is an “unusual package.” We all know there’s nothing more appealing to Donnie Walsh than unusual packages. They showed a team photo from when Gallinari’s dad and D’Antoni played on the same team, and it looked like it was from last season. Gallinari was greeted with merciless booing by the Knicks’ fans…this would have been an amazing opportunity for him to go Ivan Drago and exclaim in Italian, “I play for me! For me!!”

At seven, Eric Gordon and his big baby face.

Joe Alexander to the Bucks? After the Dick Jefferson trade? That make no sense? They did show four West Virginia fans who were cheering their asses off, and someone was holding a “Joe Alexander…Vanilla Sky” poster. Seriously.

Why in the hell did the Bobcats pass on Brook Lopez? Bunch of crap. I like D.J. Augustin, but why go with Augustin when you have Ray Felton and need a center.

Pick of the night. Brook Lopez. The golden age of professional basketball begins. Seriously.

Pacers take Skip Bayless’s son, but the kid didn’t even pick a fight with Steven A. Smith. Guess the apple fell a ways away from the tree.

The Kings made the safe pick and took Jason Thompson from Rider. Rider has long been known as a Basketball powerhouse and their guys always do well at the next level.

Blazers take Brandon Rush. Outstanding. He has the whole package: perimeter shooting, defense, rebounding, and a nice fade. We also have it on good authority that his grandmother volunteers at the Kansas City VA Hospital. Leonard wishes he was Brandon’s grandmother. The Blazers are becoming my favorite team. They just need a little more at point guard and they can contend for a title. I hear Ray Felton and Kirk Hinrich might be available.

*Oooh, a juicy little trade: Looks like Rush could be heading to Indy in exchange for Bayless. I’m not a big Bayless guy, but I think this could really work out well. This is similar to when the Cavs drafted Daniel Gibson, except Bayless is more talented than Gibson. Portland basically runs its offense through Brandon Roy, and Bayless gets to effectively play two guard, but he can defend the other team’s point guard, so that he won’t be an undersized defensive liability. Now Portland’s starting lineup figures to be Bayless, Roy, Travis Outlaw (who had a very solid season last year), LaMarcus Aldridge, and Greg Oden. Roy and Aldridge are both good for twenty plus a night, and that’s going to leave Oden, Bayless, and Aldridge plenty of room to operate. And I think that makes Roy the oldest starter at around 25 (“around” means I don’t have seven seconds to look up his actual age).

Golden State takes Brandan Wright’s twin brother, Anthony Randolph. Stu Scott says, “They go big and they go young.” That’s our best “that’s what she said” moment of the night. Jay Bilas just added that last season some bigger guys in the SEC really got into Anthony’s body. Apparently his freshman year hazing was worse than most.

Robin Lopez to the Suns. He looks like he’s making fun of himself wearing that hat over his big goofy mop. The Lopez twins are going to have a Disney movie marathon to celebrate tonight. He’s being brought in because Amare plays no defense. When was the last time a team drafted a white guy for defensive purposes to compensate for their super-athletic black guy at that position? Steven A. Smith called him bold, as opposed to Brook, who is smooth, and has no after taste.

Sixers are up, this is always good for a laugh….they played it safe and take Marreese Speights. Basically the question on him is if he’s too lazy. Luckily, when you give lazy guys lots of money, then tend to work harder. We’re also worried that nobody is going to be able to tell Speights and Sam Dalembert apart. Speaking of Big Sam, Natty just pointed out that he’s from Haiti, thus the nickname, Papa Doc Dalembert (we concede that’s politically incorrect, because Papa Doc was a butcher and everything). And props to Natty for the highest brow joke of the evening, collaborating with this guy is like creating a draft diary with one of the writers from “Frasier.”

Toronto has the seventeenth pick and uses it on Roy Hibbert. Roy would have been a top five pick last season. This pick should go to Indiana, which gives them Bayless and Hibbert…not a bad upgrade. Roy wasn’t there because he’s working on his booger collection. Stu Scott keeps the hits coming by saying they used to call Roy, “The Big Stiff.” A creative and informative nickname, thanks Stu! Seriously, I think I’m a lazy eye away from being eligible to host the NBA Draft. The big news in this trade is that it means Maceo Baston is still in the league.

Seventeen picks seems like a good stopping point. We don’t want to contradict our traditionally half-ass approach to this blog.

• Gotta say that Chris Douglas-Roberts slipping into the second round is the biggest head scratcher of the night. Especially when the Bulls had the chance to add him to go alongside his college teammate, Derrick Rose, but went with Sonny Weems. Weems is a nice prospect but I can’t imagine anyone watching both of those guys last season and deciding that Weems is a better prospect. The Bulls continue to amaze with their complete abhorrence of finding a scorer. I guess they’re really banking on Rose being the second coming of Jason Kidd. Way to put all your eggs into one basket, that usually works out in team sports.
• The Kings easily had the worst draft. They took a kid from Rider in the first round, Sean Singletary (who is less than six feet tall), and Patrick Ewing, Jr. Ewing’s accolades include being a fifth year senior who didn’t start on a team that lost to Davidson in the NCAA tournament.
• If you're like me, sometimes you wonder why the Sonics aren't good. Well let's exclude Durant and take a look at who they've used their first pick on for like the last fifteen years: Russell Westbrook, Saer Sane, Johan Petro, Robert Swift, Nick Collison, Peter Fehse, Vlad Radmanovic, Desmond Mason, Corey Maggette (who never played there), Vlad Stepania, Bobby Jackson, Joseph Blair, Sherell Ford, Carlos Rogers, and the other Ervin Johnson. Out of all those guys, Bobby Jackson and Carlos Rogers were the only ones who were definitely the best player on their college teams (and Carlos Rogers played for Tennessee State).
• Love the Mayo for Love trade for both teams. Maybe the Wolves won't be athletic enough on defense, but Al Jefferson and Kevin Love are going to be extremely difficult to guard. Mike Miller also gives Minny some extra shooting and whiteness. Memphis secured what should be its back court of the future with Conley and Mayo.