Good morning. Happy NBA Draft Day. (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN.) Let's basketball.
Let’s watch NBA teams hire some teenagers
Good morning. We have that and more in Thursday’s NBA Draft focused newsletter.
DARE-ICK ROSE: The Bulls traded Derrick Rose to the Knicks for Jose Calderon, Robin Lopez and Jerian Grant. Rose has one more year on his deal, which makes this a curious move for New York. If Rose plays like he has in recent years, you’ve given up Lopez and Grant for a middling point guard you’re going to want to upgrade in 2017. If Rose plays like an MVP, you might lose him in 2017. Weird! Seth Rosenthal is not a fan.
There’s also the whole business of Rose leaving Chicago, a very emotional matter given his maelstrom of success and failure in his hometown. Here’s a timeline of Rose’s rise and fall.
The Knicks cut a video of Rose, as a Bull, destroying the Knicks being sent to Chicago in the trade. Rude, in my opinion.
AND ANOTHER ONE: The Hawks traded Jeff Teague to the Pacers, who sent George Hill to the Jazz, who sent the No. 12 pick to the Hawks. This clears the path for Dennis Schroder in Atlanta, upgrades the scoring punch at the point for Indiana and gives Quin Snyder another option in Utah as Dante Exum returns from injury. Good deal for everyone!
FINAL KEVIN O’CONNOR MOCK DRAFT! If you have some time, you should also buy KOC’s excellent draft guide and rip through it before the event starts.
SPEAKING OF MOCKS ... Here’s DraftExpress’ Wednesday edition.
NOT SOFT: It amazes me anyone would call Skal Labissiere soft. Yaron Weitzman on why you shouldn’t.
FORCED INCOMPETENCE: Chad Ford reported late Wednesday that the Kings brought only one top-30 prospect -- Wade Baldwin -- in for a personal workout. (The Sacramento Bee had previously covered the topic in depth.) The man who goes by @basquiatball on Twitter, my second favorite Lakers fan on the internet, raised on interesting point about the supposed collusion of NBA agents to prevent their first-round prospects from working out with the Kings. Here are those thoughts.
[The Ford report] wouldn’t be funny. Unforced incompetence is funny (until it’s tragic), but this would be an instance of external third parties colluding (or having the effect of colluding) to deny a team the information and tools it requires to be competent. That would be a glaring failure of the system itself. It would undermine the basis upon which the market is built and is completely improper. I am sympathetic to players, especially rookies, having increased self-determination but within the system we actually have this can’t be the mechanism for that. If there are legitimate issues agents and their clients have about mistreatment by a team they should be handled in an official manner. This would be a coordinated attempt to disenfranchise one specific team out of 30, and the league can’t allow agents to decide to do that.
Amen.
Let’s revisit the finals!
PARADE DAY: LeBron and the Cavaliers had themselves a championship parade! Most of Northeast Ohio showed up. Heckuva crowd. Like, 1.3 million people. In a downtown. Yeah, man. People got desperate (or creative?) and chilled in the open air notches in a massive parking garage. DID BRAN STARK TEACH YOU NOTHING, CLEVELAND?
SAVE THE SIGN: Sherman-Williams hosts the famous LeBron Nike billboard in Cleveland. They plan to cover it up to display a milquetoast message about something or other for a few months as the Republic National Convention comes to town. Now is not a good time, Sherman-Williams! Here’s a petition where Clevelanders are trying to convince the company to change course.
DISBELIEVELAND: Yago Colas reflects on the finals.
JOE LACOB INVENTED BASKETBALL: Some more humble gems from Joe Lacob of the Warriors. But wait, he did exit interviews with the players on Sunday night?! Is that what he’s saying?
Back to the draft!
WHAT IS BEST: Malachi Richardson talks to Jonathan Abrams about the struggle of unrequested advice on whether to stay in school.
BEST CLASS EVER: Shareef Abdur-Rahim reflects on the 1996 NBA Draft class, where he went No. 3 and a few MVPs went later.
Happy Thursday. See you on the internet this evening for the NBA Draft!
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Two views of the 76ers and ‘the process’
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