NBA Draft: Trying to Make Sense of it All

↵
↵I don’t quite know what that draft means for the league (more on that later), but boy was it an ordeal for us viewers. First, it was way too long, and you got the sense that no team really wanted who they took -- starting with the Heat’s selection of Beasley. Then, when players got traded, they seemed unhappy with being moved, as if they’d already managed to buy a house or whatever. The slide of Darrell Arthur and Chris Douglas-Roberts was so sad that not even Dick Vitale could summon much outrage; he was remote and defeated on the subject, at least for him.↵
↵
↵

↵But what really messed things up was that monster trade that went down after most people -- including me, on the West Coast -- had already moved on with our lives. That was the transformative gust we’d been waiting for, the sense that two teams had managed to back a bold statement about their (not-so) immediate future. Minny gets whiter and more “skilled,” as Kevin Love and Mike Miller come to town. Seriously, though, Love and Miller should help cement that team’s motley talent base.↵
↵
↵The Grizzlies, on the other hand, just became the new Hawks or Warriors, as they walked away with O.J. Mayo and the unlucky Darrell Arthur. A backcourt of Mayo and Mike Cnonley, or Javaris Crittendon, or Kyle Lowery, is seriously dope. Then you’ve got Rudy Gay, emergent star, master of length Hakim Warrick, Marc Gasol coming from overseas, Arthur as the versatile 3/4, and that French guy who likes to dunk have a bad ticker. It’s the kind of move that sent shockwaves through two franchises, and it happened in a draft that felt a lot like Ishtar. Had they managed it a little sooner, viewer morale would’ve been much higher -- instead of us just maschoistically waiting to see when CDR would go.↵
↵
↵So for next year, Stern might want to think about expediting talks like this. Not only did this trade energize the whole night -- after the fact, of course -- it made all the stuff we wrote during the thing kind of a waste. In specifics and general tone. Oh well. Go Grizz!↵