Good morning. The Hawks got that dirt off their shoulder.
That and more in Saturday’s NBA newsletter.
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
ON TO THE NEXT ONE: I’m sensing a pattern. The Hawks blew out the Nets in a no-nonsense Game 6, just as the Bulls had with the Bucks. Atlanta moves on to face the Wizards and ... a lot of people are going to pick the Wiz! What a world. The Nets’ just couldn’t realize their bone goal. Maybe next year. (HA HA HA of course not next year.)
TONIGHT! We have Clippers vs. Spurs in Game 7 at 8 p.m. ET on TNT. It's a huge day for sports -- the NFL Draft, the Kentucky Derby, Pacquiao-Mayweather -- but the final battle in this epic basketball war should be the primrose. Can't wait.
BRIGHT, YOUNG BUCKS: Ricky O’Donnell is sold on the future in Milwaukee.
SURE! Bob Myers of the Warriors was voted Executive of the Year by his peers. His biggest trade or signing was Shaun Livingston. This award has become in many ways a nod for building a roster over several years, so Myers’ win isn’t odd or anything. It’s just kind of funny. (I picked Gar Forman on my invisible ballot.) Stan Van Gundy’s FIRST-PLACE vote? That’s odd. A second-place vote for MITCH KUPCHAK? That’s odd.
THE NEW BLAKE GRIFFIN: Griffin’s huge Game 6 showed his development in full view.
YEP: Doc Rivers pleads for seeding reform. Notably, Doc is on the competition committee. I still think a decent solution while we still have conferences is to all the top three seeds to choose their opponent from among the bottom four seeds (and to eliminate the automatic top four seed for division winners). If that were in place, the Warriors might have picked the Mavericks, the Rockets might have picked the Pelicans and the Clippers could have chosen to play the Blazers. That would have stuck the Grizzlies with the Spurs.
ALDRIDGE RUMORS! LaMarcus Aldridge is going to be the prince of free agency, it appears. Marc Stein said the Spurs are near the top of his list, but the Cavaliers could get involved too.
THE LEBRON HUMP: Nice Alex Sonty piece about the Bulls’ struggles with LeBron.
HOW TO KILL A ZOMBIE: Devin Kharpertian with a wholly appropriate eulogy for the Nets.
IMPORTANT REMINDER: You can choose “Vlade Divac” to be the voice of your Waze GPS app.
WIGGINS, SHOT CREATION AND ADVANCED STATS: Neil Paine sets up the debate around Andrew Wiggins and that timeless argument over whether shot creation is as valuable as we all think. I don’t have many issues with the piece outside of the final paragraph, where Paine indicates that the gulf between subjective analysis (Wiggins is dope) and the analytic read (eh) sets Wiggins up as this generation’s Iverson or Toine. No. Remember that Kevin Durant was in the exact same situation his first two seasons. He learned how to be efficient and he learned how to defend. So did guys like LeBron, Westbrook, Harden and DeMarcus Cousins. Not to say Wiggins will develop in that way, but it’s pretty impossible to guess that Wiggins will be a high-volume, low-efficiency scorer after one season. That’s what basically every ROY candidate looks like after one season.
THE GREATEST ORAL HISTORY OF OUR TIME: The Redman episode of MTV Cribs.
Happy Saturday. See you for Clippers vs. Spurs.
