ESPN wastes my time: Oden to Blazers

So the NBA lottery has always bothered me and it continues to this day. I’m pissed that ESPN has wasted a half hour of my life knowing full well that they have already told me the same information for the last week. They do this on purpose; make me keep checking back to see if the information has been released. They pretend like this is something special… In reality they probably should have released the draft order at halftime of the game. They introduce a bunch of people I don’t really care about and who will not make a decision for another month. On top of all of this they allow David Stern to beam about the Spurs and Tim Duncan in particular while defending his decision to tank the Sun’s season.

The teams that actually need/ deserve the # 1 pick don’t get it. Milwaukee won it a few years back. Duncan was picked up the one season that David Robinson went down. I recall this one time my favorite basketball team had the worst record with one Mr. O’Neal and one Mr. Mourning in the draft. Who do the Wolves end up with? Christian Laettner… A Duke player. Do me a favor and start naming all of the Duke players that led their NBA team to a championship. Now do it with Tar Heels.

As expected Memphis and the Celtics both got the shaft. You’d think that Stern would have rigged the thing in favor of a team like Boston with such a rich history, but he probably read that thing that John Mellencamp said and decided that he would punish Larry Bird along with Kevin McHale by not giving them the # 1 pick. Actually, I consider staying at #7 a victory. I was sure we would have been kicked back to # 10. The shitty part is that we now have Greg Oden in our division on a team that will be very scary by the time the Wolves consider offering contracts to worthy players (if that ever happens). On top of that the Sonics pick second so Kevin Durant will be in our division as well. Welcome to the basement Minnesota.

The Wolves need to pick up a center or a big guy. I want Roy Hibbert. I’d like to have Al Horford, but he’ll be gone. Neubie’s head would explode if we picked up Joakim Noah and I’ve always wanted to see what that looked like… so I’d be ok with that pick (for a day or two). The Wolves will pick up Yi Jianlian because he is the Asian Mark Blount and if McHale is going to go big he is going to find a way to blow it anyway. I hate my favorite basketball team.

On a side note- does anyone else see the parallels between Noah and A.J. Pierzynski?

I work, the world watches great basketball

Yesterday two great basketball games and one that set up a championship rematch occurred all while I was stuck at work. I refuse to comment on the Florida-Oregon game because Joakim Noah is a punk and they’ve already gotten more than their fair share of coverage. I hope Arron Afflalo gets his revenge and destroys the Gators next week. UCLA is less cocky, plays better defense and I’d rather not witness a pelvic thrust while the winners hoist their trophy.

The game that I missed that angers me the most was UNC-Georgetown. The game was an instant classic and I don’t have ESPN classic. I SOL. The game sounded amazing and ended with UNC chocking in overtime. I have Georgetown winning it all, so I’m glad to see that they came out on top. Now we get to see grandpa Oden go up against another NBA caliber center in Roy Hibbert and a chance to see if he can handle someone closer to him in ability. I had been under the assumption that Mike Connelly Jr. had been more important to the Buckeyes in the tourney until I saw this. I’m sticking by Georgetown because I believe they came out of the tougher conference and region and have more upperclassmen in the starting line-up.

The final game I missed yesterday was the Timber wolves over the Blazers. Garnett at the buzzer, are you kidding me? I don’t think people realize how good his season has been, this is his third best season… in his best season he won the MVP and in his second best he should have won it. Not a single person even mentions his name for the MVP and I understand that some of it depends on making the post season but imagine this team without the big guy. We’re talking Celtics bad. The other thing I liked about this win was that I believe the Blazers will be a very good team in the not too distant future.

We may not have had a Bracey sighting, but Randy Foye’s Ben Gordonesque performance in the fourth makes me feel better about a team that probably won’t make the playoffs. (And honestly I’m not sure I want them to make the playoffs if they are going to lose 3 straight to the Mavs and owe the clippers a draft pick for Jaric) Maybe it would be better to start James in hopes of drumming up some trade talk. I could handle packaging Davis and James for a big guy and something, then and handing over the reigns to the younger guys next year.

I’m just going to bring a TV to work from now on.