Summer league round-up: Indiana Pacers

Still nothing from the Cavaliers about their summer league roster. Don't act like you're busy, Danny Ferry.

This entry feels a little bit weird, considering that they've already played their games. But, still.

View the Pacers summer league roster.

- Will Blalock: The Pacers have been said to be looking for a point guard all summer long now. They kept Jamaal Tinsley inactive for all of last season, despite him being able and willing to play. Jarrett Jack is a restricted free agent, and even though he's expected back, he isn't really a point guard anyway. Neither is Travis Diener, and they seem to hate T.J. Ford more than it seems as though they should. (Must be because he's black.) But while Will Blalock is very much a point guard, I don't think the answer to the Pacers' point guard problem lies in a man who averaged 4.5 points and 2.1 assists in the German league last season.

- Derrick Byars: Byars was briefly covered in the Nuggets round-up, but here's a bonus fact about him.

Byars' three point percentage by month, last season:

November - 0%
December - 56%
January - 28%
February - 50%
March - 26%
April - 0%
Overall - 38%

It might be a coincidence that the two months he shot the most threes in were December and February. Or it might not.

- Tyler Hansbrough: Us Bulls fans discussed at length whether it would be a good idea to pick Tyler Hansbrough at #26. We eventually decided on "yes". (And, after what we wound up doing with the pick.......well, you know.) As draft day approached, we moved on to discussing whether it'd be justifiable to pick Hansbrough as high as #16. Opinion was split, but the majority said "no". Turns out it was irrelevant anyway, as Indiana went for him at #13. And, since it's the 2009 draft we're talking about, I think they can get away with that.

That earlier comment about T.J. Ford's race was uninspired satire, by the way. I don't care how vanilla the Pacers are. Neither should you.

- Roy Hibbert: Frank admission - Roy Hibbert is better than I thought he would be. He can score at the NBA level. Just can. He'd be better if he toned down the shot block attempts and focused more on the rebounding, and that foul rate is pretty ridiculous, but not many 22 year old rookie centres can score at that rate. Once he stops being Bargnani-ish on the defensive glass, he'll be goooood.

- Jared Homan: The Ho-Man played 16 games in the Euroleague last year as a member of Cibona Zagreb, which is a very high standard of basketball for any man to be playing. Unfortunately, he didn't play very well in them, averaging only 4.6 points and 3.3 rebounds, along with 2.4 fouls. His size is still a virtue, but his size is also nothing special by NBA standards. And nor is his age (26). Still, Rasho Nesterovic is a free agent, which opens up a space on the Pacers for a new white centre.

(If I keep forcing this joke home, it might start being funny. Maybe.)

- Aaron Jackson: Jackson broke the freak out last year, averaging 19.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 1.6 steals per game, with percentages of 55.4%, 40.5% and 80.9%. Those numbers are up across the board from the year before, and his scoring output was more than doubled from his junior to senior years. Learning to shoot can do wonders for a man's game. If he'd been in a less point guard heavy draft, or at a school more noteworthy than Duquense, then he might have gotten drafted. As it is, he's now fighting Will Blalock for a training camp spot, a fight that both will probably lose.

- Trey Johnson: Johnson briefly played in the NBA last season, signing a couple of ten day contracts with the Cavaliers. He only scored 4 points, all from the foul line, but it's an NBA career at least. When he wasn't at the big dance, he was in the D-League, living up to his first name with the Bakersfield Jam. Johnson scored 21 points per game in 41 minutes per game, shooting 46% from the field and 41% from the three point line. If he can be bothered to start playing defense, he might go down as the best player in the history of Jackson State. But until then, that title belongs to Lindsey Hunter. Or Purvis Short.

- Leo Lyons: I watched a lot of Missouri last year. It was hard not to, because they did pretty well. J.T. Tiller is my boy. But my opinion of Lyons isn't highly flattering. He has some touch, some athleticism, and his wild flails to the rim are effective. But he makes a crap load of mistakes, doesn't really have NBA size, and nor was his heart really in it defensively. If he was a sophomore, he would have been one to keep an eye on. But he wasn't.

- Josh McRoberts: McRoberts finally got some PT last season, and in doing so he put up an almost identical PER to that of Marquis Daniels. He's also grown a brilliant beard, and either is or was plugging Lauren Conrad from MTV's The Hills. Not a bad year for McBob, all told. He's a restricted free agent, but he'll return.

- A.J. Price: If drafting three straight seniors out of big programs wasn't enough of a clue (Hibbert, Rush, Hansbrough), then the Pacers picking Price in the second round this year ought to have alerted you to the fact that Larry Bird watches the NCAA tournament. More importantly, if the Pacers really are serious about getting an extra point guard regardless of how many options they already have, I would imagine that Price has a beeline on that spot right now. But that's only if they do. (By the way, I just spent ten minutes trying to think up a plausible Jamaal Tinsley trade scenario. But I couldn't do it. Is there not room for him in Indiana to rebuild his value just a little bit?)

- Brandon Rush: Rush's rookie year wasn't good, scoring inefficiently and ranking last on the team in plus/minus rating. But he has an opportunity here; Marquis Daniels is an unrestricted free agent, Mike Dunleavy's knee is reportedly all kinds of haggard, and new signing Dahntay Jones is a not-very-good defensive specialist. There's minutes available for Rush, then, if he can figure out how to get to the foul line more than once a week.

- Anthony Smith: Smith averaged 17.6 points and 6.5 rebounds for Liberty last year. And here's a Googled factoid:

As a junior, Smith was the only player in the nation during the 2008 season to attempt at least 200 three-point field goals and succeed on at least 40 percent of his three-point field goal attempts (41.0), while also hitting over 50 percent of his field goal attempts (51.5). Only four other players in the nation accomplish the same feat while attempting at least 100 three-point field goals, including Mario Chalmers (Kansas), Lee Cummard (BYU), Malik Hairston (Oregon) and James Harden (Arizona State).

Despite the apparent brilliance of his jumpshot, though, he never shot over 66% from the foul line in his four year NCAA career. And that's all I've got.

- Scott VanderMeer: It's difficult to find out information on Scott VanderMeer, since I've seen his surname spelt 4 different ways; VanderMeer, Vander Meer, van der Meer, and Van De Meer. Really helps things along, that. But here's what I've got anyway: VanderMeer is a 7 footer who just shot 40% in the seminal Horizon League. If that doesn't put the shits up you, then it jolly well ought. The best part of his NCAA resumé is probably his shot blocking, to the tune of 2.1 blocks per game last year, an output which he'll have to roughly treble to trouble an NBA roster. Nevertheless, here's a 7 minute highlight video.



He's white. So he has a chance.

Incest Is Best (Also titled: Sham's Draft Novel, Pt 1)

I have a confession to make. I have an addiction.

It took an intervention of sorts, but I am willing to admit it: I am addicted to the NBA. Even when it's boring. Even when it's corrupt. Even when my team sucks. Even though I'm in the wrong continent. Even when doing so is to the direct detriment of my sleep pattern and general health. I am addicted to suckling every molecule of informative fecal matter from the grand protuding arse of NBA factoids, garnering even the most boring information about these people that I'll never meet, who just so happen to play a sport that I love, despite my never having played a game of it. This isn't something I'm proud of. I'd definitely rather have a sex addiction, or a relatively sedate heroin problem. But, so be it.

Nothing is more indicative of the grip of my addiction than the annual NBA Draft. I make no secret of the fact that I don't know anything about the potential draftees. I do not get to watch NCAA games, and so I will not pretend to know about them, and formulate broad sweeping generalisations of these players based off of the opinions of others. No, that would just be silly. Instead, I prefer to typecast people based off of my first impressions, a fleeting couple of minutes to judge the worth of the person presented to us. Who doesn't love doing this? This is why, as a species, we go speed dating. We are all prone to prejudice based on appearance. Let's just learn to accept it and make sure that we take it out on sportsmen - the ultimate punching bag, serving only as an outsource for our prejudice, immune from retribution.

This year, I went for a slightly different approach. Instead of spending the evening before the draft starts smearing my body in the veritable bounty of rumours made public, Scrooge-McDucking it up amongst their unmeasurable riches, I decided to stay off of the internet until the draft started so that there'd be an element of suspense for me in an otherwise increasingly predictable experience. (The other reason for this is that I fell asleep.)

Added drama hit the ShamBulls household on this particular draft night, as an as-yet-undiagnosed internet problem has left us with an annoyingly slow DSL connection, which meant that I wouldn't be able to watch the draft online, or even listen to it. (You wouldn't believe the number of Americans who told me to "go to a bar or something", as their remedy for this crisis. Oh you silly, silly fools. If it were possible to watch the draft on a TV set, don't you think I'd start there?) So, to watch the draft, and to be able to write the following anti-climactic piece, desperate measures were called for.

As a result, I drove to my friend's house at 1am, let myself in, and watched the draft in her front room for 5 hours as she slept upstairs. Now THAT'S how you feed an addiction.

(I then sold her TV for crack.)

I finally got a stream working about 90 seconds before the Bulls made the first pick of the night, and it is from there that My Totally Boring Draft Diary begins. (Written in realtime, even though it isn't. Not sure why.)

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- The first shot I see is one of the Bulls "War Room", in which General Manager John Paxson can be seen sitting down, biting his nails, surrounded by a lot of anonymous men in anonymous suits. I have only four questions:

a) Why do we have to do this War Room tradition every year?
b) Why are we pretending that some intense last minute decision making is going on in there, when it's clearly a bunch of men in suits watching themselves on the telly, their minds made up hours ago?
c) Why do we only get the War Room for the team picking first, when clearly that's the ONE room in which nothing frantic is going to be happening?
d) What the hell is wrong with Vinny Del Negro's ears?



- Also, where is Steven A. Smith? He seems to have been bumped from the analysts panel, and regardless of how much or how little you think of Mark Jackson, you surely know that this Smith's removal is a good thing. Less of a good thing are Stu Scott's glasses, recently borrowed from Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon on what we can only assume was a lost bet. Which is pretty much how Maddon got them from Joe 90 in the first place.



- Pick 1: A few seconds after leaving the war room shot, Commissioner David Stern walks up to the podium - to more cheers than he got at the NBA Finals trophy presentation - and, sure enough, he announces that the Bulls take Derrick Rose first overall in a move that shocks literally no one. Instantly we are thrown back to the green room, just in case the cameras accidentally caught something interesting. They didn't. The Bulls men in suits awkwardly clap themselves, and a single handshake is offered up by whoever sat nearest the camera. Yep, that green room camera was TOTALLY worth it. Let's do it again next year.

- Derrick Rose's interview offers up four interesting discoveries.

a: Steven A. Smith is seemingly doing the interviews this year. So we weren't finally free from him after all.

b: Rose's nickname is "Pooh", which is odd, but somewhat synonymous with roses at least.

c: He talks like a complete and total weirdo: slowly, deeply, extremely simple and formulaic diction, and not one single solitary word worth remembering.

d: His mum has exactly the same voice as him.

This was enough to make me apprehensive about the pick. Name the last player who was completely impersonable to lead his team to a championship. Seriously. It's quite hard, isn't it? Garnett, Shaq, Rasheed Wallace, Jordan.....I guess you have to go back as far as Olajuwon to find the most recent example, and he wasn't THAT bad. And Hakeem has the ol' English-as-a-second-language fallback that Rose will never have. This bugs me. (Tim Duncan doesn't count, by the way, because he's brilliant in ways that Derrick Rose never will be, and also because counting him invalidates my already-tenuous point.)

This brings us neatly into pick number two.....

- Pick 2 .....where the highly personable Michael Beasley is taken by Miami, who idly threatened not to pick him for a few weeks. If you bought into any of that bobbins, shame on you. Really. A plague on both your houses. It was the least convincing acting job since Val Kilmer in Top Secret, and if you thought there was any legitimate chance of them picking anyone other than the instant 20ppg scoring forward, then you really need to re-think how much you trust people.

Jay Bilas chimes in, touting Beasley's "second jump ability" as soon as he opens his mouth, which seems like a weird place to begin praising the most surefire star in this draft. (Well, so I've heard.) Beasley bounds up confidently to the stage, but then lets us all down by not signing David Stern's head. Shame.

Doris Burke - who is to spend the whole evening conducting green room interviews, flexing her biceps, and looking genuinely concerned and/or relieved at all times - interviews Beasley's mother, Fa-TEE-ma Smith. Doris congratulate Fa-TEE-ma on raising five kids by herself - the obvious connotations of this aside - but neglects to mention how stupid the infection in her first name is. (Also note: this instance marks the first time tonight in which the mother being interviewed has a different surname to the player just drafted. It's also not the last.)

- Pick 3 sees the Minnesota Timberwolves - who didn't have to try hard to suck this year - pick O.J. Mayo, who treats us to the first three piece suit of the night, as well as Sam Mitchell's glasses. This news breaks Jay Bilas's heart, as his "Best Available" list sees Brook Lopez confidently listed as the third best player in this draft. As Jeff Van Gundy comforts Bilas off-camera (maybe), Stu Scott asks the panel about the Jermaine O'Neal trade.

Woah, hang on: WHAT Jermaine O'Neal trade? Can someone please elaborate? Some of us were asleep and missed this. Don't assume that we know. Help me!!!

(No one elaborates. I am left floundering.)

There follows a brief O.J. Mayo interview, in which he awkwardly stares directly at the camera while describing how he will do whatever it takes to help the team win (a cliché that's currently appeared in all three draftee interviews), before we cut to a video conference with an extremely tired looking Pat Riley overdubbing a video clip of Michael Beasley's vertical leap test. Hasn't anybody told them? Beasley is 6'9! He's too small to be a power forward in the NBA! Even I know that, and I don't know anything! (Note: that bit about 6'9 being too short? That was satire.)

- Russell Westbrook is chosen by Seattle with Pick 4, in a move that draws audible stares from the panel, and a startled noise of bewilderment from the crowd. Jay Bilas confidently weighs in to fill the airtime void, exclaiming "who would have thought, this time last year, that Westbrook was a possible top 4 draft pick?". He probably could have changed "year" to "week".

Stephen A's interview with Westbrook lasts for precisely one question, before he is forced to throw it over to Doris Burke, who is subconsciously challenging Kevin Durant to an arm wrestle. The television executives believe that we, Joe Public, really want to hear Kevin Durant's views on his team's decision to draft Westbrook. And if Durant had something negative to say, they'd be right. Something like this, maybe;

"What? WHAT??? Russell Westbrook? Are you f***ing kidding me? Russell Westbrook? Who the f*** is Russell Westbrook? Here I am, stuck on my arse playing out of position, trying to win games single handedly as Chris bloody Wilcox is the second option right now......and you get me Russell f***ing Westbrook? RUSSELL WESTBROOK???!?!?? Don't just move the franchise; fold the f****r."

But, unfortunately, this didn't happen. Durant smiled, said words so meaningless that I can't even remember them, and the world continued to spin. While I love the drama of the draft, purely for the way that the entire NBA landscape can change within 4 hours, it could definitely be better television. Maybe there could be some monster truck racing between picks.

- Pick 5: Kevin Love goes to Memphis. I guarantee you, GUARANTEE YOU, that I thought of the Gay/Love jokes before you did. That shit was instantaneous, I swear to God. As was the subsequent Hakim Warrick for Luther Head trade idea. Stern hadn't even got the word "Love" out and I was concocting "Love Gay Head" blog posts. Good times. Between Kevin Love and Lopez twins, we have the outlines of a fine All-Porn Star Rookie Team here.

The subsequent Kevin Love analysis has warning flags all over it. Bilas begins the ultimate he's-not-that-good cliché round-up ("he knows how to play the game, he has a great feel for the game, and he's strong"), and as footage, ESPN choose to show Love's ability to hit 80 foot three pointers, before flashing up the polarizing caption "Must Improve: Explosion Ability". Is that even possible? Or is "explosion ability" just a soubriquet for "skin pigment"? I'd be worried about this pick right now if I was a Grizzlies fan. Add it to the list of things to worry about down there.

Then, things improve. First, we learn that Kevin Love's uncle Mike is the lead singer of the Beach Boys (I looked up whether Mike's name was Mike Love, and it was, so that's good news), and then both Kevin and the rest of "The Love Family" are interviewed. Kevin shows himself to be eloquent, friendly, and not firmly adhered to the interview chair like most other draftees, while his father Stan Love nervously twirls what looks like an iPod during his turn, apparently threatened by Doris Burke's hulking beauty. Following this, Stu Scott tries to build up the drama, for the hometown Knicks are picking next, but he is undermined slightly by the camera cutting to a shot of a Knick fan yawning. This was a good montage.

- Pick 6: The Knicks surprise and thoroughly piss off their travelling faithful by picking Danilo Gallinari to a resounding chorus of boos, which Gallinari overlooks with good grace. Even the panel had to backpedal, having talked about the Knicks selecting every candidate other than Danilo before the pick was made. Fran Fraschilla interjects with the soothing declaration that Gallinari "will not be a superstar", which didn't help to assuage the rising angst of the gathered New Yorkers. (Seriously, at number 6, wouldn't you at least pick a guy with an outside chance of this happening? If only a faint one? Especially if you're the Knicks? And why another small forward when they can't shift two of the four that they already have? Still, it's good news for the current Jared Jeffries bet that I have got going, which I stand to win unless Jeffries averages 9.5 points a game. Basically I've won it already.)

Stu Scott tries to brighten proceedings, by announcing that Gallinari already has a personalised shoe, called the "Reebok Rooster", helpfully pointing out that "Galli" is Italian for rooster. Thus, if you didn't already know, Gallinari is forever after known as "The Italian Cock". Good times.

(EDIT - "Nari" is an Italian name, meaning "Happy". Thus, Danilo Gallinari is, literally, Cock Happy. I'm going to tell this joke over a million times in the coming days.)

SAS's interview with Gallinari focuses on little else but the booing Knicks fans, which seems unfair. (You could say that Steven A. Smith was trying to manhandle The Cock. In fact, I will say that.) Gallinari copes with it well, citing the fact that he will win them over when they see that he "plays hard", a cliché now invoked of 5 of the 6 interviews so far. I'd like to see more "I will give it only the merest token effort during my time here" interviews, just to mix it up a little.

- Eric Gordon is chosen by the L.A. Clippers as Pick 7, taking to the stage in a get-up that I originally wrote in my notebook as "sharp", before crossing it out in favour of "shit".



White jacket, black trousers, black and white stripey shirt with a plain white collar. How very.....something.

It is pointed out that 5 of the first 7 players chosen are college freshman, but at no point does anyone mention why. (Has this 19 year old age limit really changed anything?) There follows an Eric Gordon montage, featuring him shooting jumpshots from around his right ear, a commentary that describes him as a small two guard, plus a screenshot that cites "ball handling" as a weakness. So my first impressions of Eric Gordon are unflattering at best.

We leave this high octane moment to cut to someone called Wendy Nix interviewing new Knicks president Donnie Walsh (oh, I see what they did there!) who is wearing Pacers colours. Walsh, looking a lot like a Mafia capo, lets down this image when he speaks without an Italian American New York drawl. Still, he's in the right place for it now. Maybe he can develop one.

Jeff Van Gundy explains that the Knicks don't need point guard help because they have Stephon Marbury. Everybody is stunned into a submissive silence.

- Pick 8: Joe Alexander goes to Milwaukee. I don't know who he is, or what he's about, but I'm calling him "Diamond", because all people with the name Joe get that prefix. Similarly, all Petes are "Pistol", all Daves are "Dynamite" and all Marios are "Super". These things write themselves.

The compulsory montage offers the viewer the chance to see Joe Alexander's baby pictures, which must be something that he consented to, but for reasons that I cannot possibly fathom. Clips of his play show that Alexander is a keen proponent of The White Guy Run™, the ultimate warning sign for any draftee. (FYI, The White Guy Run™ is a run defined by absolutely no arm movement, even when running at full tilt.) Name two players who star in this league, even when burdened with The White Guy Run™. You can't. Yao Ming is one, but the second.......he just doesn't exist.

Alexander then changes the very fabric of society in his interview, by saying that he will "work hard", as opposed to the usual "play hard". SAS responds, saying "you know the trade that the Bucks made today", and before I have time to excitedly mouth "NO!".....my online streams cuts out. Terrific. So I'm still none the wiser. Note to self - don't miss the build-up next year.

- Pick 9: After a quick scramble, the feed comes back barely in time to see Jay Bilas plugging Brook Lopez once again, just for Charlotte to disappoint him by picking D.J. Augustin. The pick is greeted by a consesus congratulations from everyone except Jay, who openly wonders why Charlotte wouldn't go big, but instead went for the 5'11 guy. Jeff Van Gundy begins his analysis with the sentence "the big thing is, what are they going to do with Gerald Wallace," thereby making it painfully obvious that he knows absolutely nothing about D.J. Augustin. By the way, I always get a jolly when I find out that I'm taller than an NBA player, and I don't know why.

The fact that Richard Jefferson was traded earlier today is idly mentioned in the build-up to the Nets picking 10th. Would someone please put me out of my bloody misery and tell me about all these trades, please? Was Jefferson traded to Jermaine O'Neal or something? What have the Bucks got to do with this? Don't ever assume the public are clever. We're not. And we have afternoon naps sometimes.

- Pick 10: Brook Lopez goes. Jay Bilas lives.

Here's what I know about big men from Stanford - Mark Madsen is one. As are the Collins twins. I shouldn't hold their towering shitness agaisnt the Lopez brothers, but I will.

Jay Bilas's main selling point on Brook Lopez is how "tough" he is. One question - if you're far bigger than all of your peers, more athletic, and also "tough", why would you only average 8 rebounds a game?

A lot is also made of the fact this twin brother Robin Lopez will be drafted at some point tonight too, making them the third set of brothers currently in the NBA (but soon to be one of four - read on, captivated viewer!). This, when combined with the well defined fact that half of the NBA is in some way the other half's cousin, makes the NBA one great big family love-in. Who said that the sport had lost its appeal to the white American audience?

Brook and Robin Lopez both strike me as complete frat boys, by the way. This is not good. At least Robin tries to be funny, even if he fails.

Someone FINALLY throws up a caption showing the Bucks trade mentioned earlier: Milwaukee acquires Richard Jefferson for the corpse of Bobby Simmons and the Chinese anticlimax, Yi Jianlian. Wow. In the unlikely event that you hadn't noticed, that trade is staggeringly bad for New Jersey. You mean to tell me a 21-foot jumpshooter and a contract so bad that it's not even expiring is the best value that you can get for a 28 year old 22ppg scorer in the prime of his career? Really? You couldn't even get a future pick out of them? Not even a second? M'kay.

Oh wait, they hired Kiki Vandeweghe, didn't they? Never mind then. Makes some sense now.

- Pick 11 sees Jerry D. Bayless go to Indiana, in a move that baffles the announcers, who proclaim that Indiana doesn't need a point guard. Either they weren't watching last year, or Jermaine O'Neal was dealt for a point guard. Rather than wait it out like the Jefferson thing, I looked it up, and saw that O'Neal had been traded to Toronto for T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic, Macy O'Baston, and the number 17 pick. Good trade for Indy, that. Too much from Toronto, but it might be all right. Scott helpfully points out that Jamaal Tinsley is now "for sale", the implication being that he wasn't before.

In his interview, Bayless says he'll play wherever he is needed. So that's nice. Bayless is apparently really good at golf. So that helps. He's also apparently not very good at passing, but really, which of these two skills do you need more in your point guard? It's clearly the golf.

- Pick 12: Jason Thompson is picked by Sacramento at number 12.

Now, when I say that I don't know anything about the draftees in any given year, I've usually at least HEARD of them. With Jason Thompson, I am stumped. I've never heard of him, nor his college (Rider), nor even his conference (the MAC or something). It would be immature of me to hold my ignorance against Thompson, but what else am I to do? This is a night for predjuce and first impressions, after all.

David Stern tells us that Thompson is "not here". So it follows either this wasn't a 'promise pick' by Sacramento, or Thompson declined the offer to turn up, as he didn't want several thousand people staring at him, mouthing "who the hell is that?". That seems reasonable, I guess.

A table is quickly fashioned by ESPN, showing us that the selection of Thompson ties the record for the lowest that the first senior in any draft has ever been drafted. His company on that table is made up of Melvin Ely, Rafael Araujo and Acie Law. A list with those three in it can't ever be good.

- Pick 13: Brandon Rush is selected by the Portland Trail Blazers, ostensibly to back up the backup to his namesake, Brandon Roy. So confusing is the names thing that Stephen A. Smith immediately asks Rush what it will be like to back up Brandon Rush, which I claim as vindication. This marks the second time tonight that a pair of brothers have joined the league, as Brandon's brother Kareem Rush is an Indiana Pacer for at least 5 more days.

At this moment, my feed cuts out again, freezing irrepairably on a screen that shows "Sacramento: Pick 12 (Jason Thompson). Fan Grade: F". Tough crowd.

(You know, there's only been one Euro drafted so far. Maybe that trend of picking completely unready Euros way too high is finally gone for good.)

- Pick 14: I missed pick 14, busy trying to find a new stream, when Golden State drafted somebody named Anthony Randolph. This marks the second straight year that they have drafted a 6'10, 200lb forward. But at least he has the same surname as his mum.

Dick Vitale makes his first appearance of the evening, in one of draft night's more annoying traditions. I have no problem with Dick Vitale - his name is Dick Vitale, after all, and no amount of deliberate mispronounciation of his surname will hide this fact. But....you know? Do people really have to encourage the "baby" thing? Let the baby have his bottle, but don't make the problem worse. We may as well get Scotty Nguyen in the booth if this is how it's going to be.

- Robin Lopez goes to Phoenix at Pick 15. That leads to this happening:



And that's unfortunate.

Also, let's get this out of the way now. Robin Lopez has big hair. OK? We get this. As a result, it is now obligatory to compare him to the other players with big hair, Anderson Varejao and Joakim Noah. So let's get it all out of the way early so that we need not bother with it again.

(By the way, his mum is called Deborah Ledford. I'm not keeping an official Mum's Surname count, but if you are, chalk this one up. Also, Ledford is a baaaaaad name for a basketball player.)

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Coming up soon: Part 2. I only broke it down into two parts because, as you can see - it's way, way too long. But I'm not sorry.


Part 2