What Would the IMU Do?

So I'm getting pretty stoked about this draft tonight and I'm been talking to Bez while he slacks off at work. He asked me where I thought everyone would go because I was telling him I though Chad Ford's latest Mock Draft was pretty shitty. It started because of a handful of players being in what I thought was the completely wrong place in the first round, but also because He has the Wolves taking two international players and keeping them over seas in the second round. I've already stated that I think the Wolves should move up, which I'll talk about at the bottom of this, but should they keep those picks what good is it to keep players away from this team when backing up our Power Forward turned Center are Micheal Doleac and Chris Richards who is shorter than Jefferson. Our Power Forwards are all too small as well. Gomes and Smith are 6-7 and Madsen is not only nothing more than a glorified cheerleader, but also a 6-9 player who tends to mop up in the 5 spot more than the 4.

Anyways... Here's how I see the Top Ten going down.

1. Chicago takes Derrick Rose. Easy.
2. Beasley goes here. If Miami doesn't take him they trade the pick to either Seattle or Memphis. From Seattle they get Chris Wilcox and the 4. From Memphis They get Mike Miller and the 5. I'm sure there would be other current NBA players involved in this trade for money purposes, but I'm not going to bother figuring that sort of stuff out.
3. The Wolves take Ovinton J'Anthony Mayo. Please take him. Please take him. Please take him. God strike McHale down before 6 PM. ( you don't have to kill him, just incapacitate him during our picks)
4. Jerryd Bayless goes here either to the Heat or to Seattle.
5.The Grizzlies take Kevin Love or The Heat take Russell Westbrook.
6. I think the Knicks take Westbrook or D.J. Augustine Lets face it... the Knicks could use everything and Ford has them leaning towards Danillo Gallinari. I think they want Westbrook to fix that Starbury problem. I'm not sold on teams digging that European Point-Forward bullshit after they all seemingly flop unless they are named Dirk (who just chokes in the clutch)
7.I think the Clips take D.J Augustine. If he is not available they pick Eric Gordon.
8. The Bucks take Joe Alexander. This seems pretty set in stone.
9. The Bobcats will take Kevin Love if he isn't selected at 3 (no please) or 5. If he is gone they take Brook Lopez so that they can move Emeka Okefor to Power Forward.
10. The Nets take Danillo Gallinari at 10.

I think Ford has Bayless way too low, Lopez and Galinary too high, and Augustine and Westbrook slightly lower than they should be. This is a Guard's top 10 and a Center's mid section.

Now. About that trade I want the Wolves to make to jump into the middle of the first round. It looks like The Warriors at 14 are our best hopes if we try to package this years two second rounders and/or Antoine Walker. The Warriors have Andris Biedrins and Monta Elis as restricted free agents and could use Walker's salary off the books to help sign one or both along with not having guaranteed contracts for second rounders. The Sixers are in the same boat as the Warriors at 16 as they have Andre Iguodalla as a restricted free agent this season. If the combination involves the first rounder we got from Boston there are more options... probably the The Wizards who need to figure out a way to get Gilbert Arenas and Antwan Jamison back on their team. My guess is they'll only get Gilbert back.

I'd rather not bother giving up a first rounder and ending up lower with the Wiz, but it may end up happening and that Celtics pick won't be too many spots above the one Miami gave us any way. I want to figure out a way to get rid of Antoine Walker, Marko Jaric, Rashad McCants and Craig Smith are on my chopping block. Bassy and Gomes are very reluctantly there as well. There are worse players that are obvious choices to go, but I don't think they'd be wanted unless contracts don't match up. If you want to know who I'd like us to pick up for a big man its either Kosta Koufus or DeAndre Jordan leaning towards Koufus.

UPDATE: It looks like the Sonics and Clippers will swap the 4 and 7 picks if Mayo is off the table by then. Sounds like the Clippers wanted Eric Gordon even more than I thought they did(I'll go ahaed and take half a point when this thing goes through). I still think Seattle will be looking for a PG.

Latrell's kids must be really hungry.

MILWAUKEE -- Former NBA star Latrell Sprewell's home is up for foreclosure and his yacht sold at auction to help pay off the $1.3 million he owes on the boat, according to court filings.

Sprewell, who once turned down a three-year, $21 million contract extension saying, "I've got my family to feed," has apparently fallen on tough times.

RBS Citizens NA, or Citizens Bank, filed a foreclosure suit last week in Milwaukee County for the $405,000 home Sprewell bought in the Milwaukee suburb of River Hills in 1994.

In court documents, the bank said Sprewell owed $295,138 in outstanding payments plus interest.

Sprewell failed to make his mortgage payments of $2,593 per month from September 2007 to January 2008, the documents said.

I guess the sub-prime mortgage problem is worse then we thought. For a guy who made millions playing in the NBA, times are tough. For a house that was only 400,000 you'd think he could have made some big payments with the money he was making and have it all payed off. I guess it shows the flaw at it's core.
I wonder which team needs his services the most for a playoff run. Labron always needs help, and as benny was saying, it's close to miluakee. Maybe even Houston, although the Wizards could use some help with Caron out and Gilbert on his way back in less then a month.

This NBA season is becoming quite fun. I would like to thank Steve Kerr, Mitch Kupchak, Chris Wallace, and Pat Riley for helping February not suck as bad as it usually does.

I never talked much about either of the big trades when they happened so I will take this opportunity to.

Shaq for the Matrix*
When I first heard about this I was dumbfounded, which was the case with many of the people I talked to. I first called my brother who lives in Phoenix to see what he thought of the deal. Just like me he had just heard about it but didn't know. Again, dumbfounded.
As I thought about it more, the more it made sense to me. As long as the guy can play 20-25 min a game, maybe a little less, in the playoffs he'll bring so much to this team. There really hasn't been a team, at least one I can remember that would be similar to this team. They can run, and when need be they'll be able to throw the ball down low. This will give Boris Diaw a chance to show what kind of player he really can be. He had a great year when Amare was out and now I think he'll get to play like that again. I'm guessing he'll play many of the minutes opposite to Shaq.
So after my knee jerk reaction of hating it, this trade has grown on me, and I really hope it works out. I'd love to cheer for the Suns this year in the playoffs.

Pau for player a,b,c,d,e,f &g.

I haven't thought about this one as much, but it's a great deal for the Lakers. I feel that it's accepted that they stole him. He's pretty young, and will help them make runs for years to come. When they get Bynum back, they're really going to be a tough team to beat.


*Marcus Banks sucks so we won't included him as being part of this trade.

“Gilbert being Gilbert”

Gilbert answered his critics today on his blog. It is really long, but totally worth the read. This guy has it all figured out. He has a reason for everything, here's a taste, but go check it out.
"The reason everybody loves T.O. is the same reason everybody hates T.O. It’s the celebration, having fun, pulls out the pen and signing autographs. They love it, and then they hate it, for the same reason.

"I love T.O. for that. For having fun. For enjoying football. Same thing with Chad Johnson. That’s where I got the idea of putting “Agent” on my All-Star jersey and try to play in the game with it, because he put “Ocho Cinco” on his jersey.

You know, that’s funny! That’s hilarious to me. It’s all entertainment.

When we step inside that court and people come into those arenas and sit down, it’s not about what they did that day, it’s not about their rent, their jobs, how bad their day is going. It’s about, “I’m going to forget about it for two hours.”

Two hours while this basketball game is going on.

Same thing with a player, no matter what’s going on outside of the arena, when you get in there it’s my job to entertain for two hours.

The antics aren’t taking away from my level of concentration. I’m sleeping in the gym. I’m working out three times a day. I spent my whole summer to get back at two so-called teams."

This is just a small fraction of what he wrote today, it's totally worth the time to read it.

Agent Zero: The Blog File.

Duluth is a cool city!!

The Wizards played here in Minneapolis yesterday and it doesn't sound like it went very well, all around. They had about a 15 hr delay, got to see Duluth, and had no hot water after the game. On top of that they lost. Here is the story from Agent Zero's blog:

Minnesota Nightmare

You all want to hear a story? This is a story people need to be reading on.

Man, we leave Chicago at nine o’clock in the mornin’ to go the plane -- in the mornin’ son, in the mornin’, we in the mornin’, this was nine in the mornin’.

We get on our flight, (this is straight out of Die Hard, I’ve seen it in Die Hard plenty of times), headed to Minnesota and we’re 300 feet away from the ground landing and we have to pull back up because it was all ice.

So, now we’re hovering over the airport for three hours! We’re hovering over it for three hours and running out of fuel, so the pilot says, “We got 30 minutes of fuel left, and the closest place is 20 minutes away.”

So we made an emergency landing in, I don’t even know … Sambook? Sambooki? Oh right, Duluth.

We landed over there and then we sat on the plane on the ground for another two hours. They finally got us a bus and it took us four hours to bus there because the roads were still all snowy and icy. We didn’t get to our destination in Minnesota until 12 at night.

15 hours of traveling, yes sir. What did we do to stay occupied? Complain. I complained for at least 12 hours of it, and the other three I was asleep.

After we lost to them, we went to go take a shower and there was no hot water. It’s 20 below outside, and the water was 10 below. How are we supposed to take a shower?

I had to get about 12 evian waters and use the warm evian waters to take a shower. Actually I had to re-take a shower when I got back to New York because I felt all itchy from all the soap that stayed on me.

It was like my AAU basketball days. Just straight AAU basketball when you go from one city to another city just stinkin’.

We gonna cut off they hot water when they come to our city. See if KG likes the feel of that cold water. It was so cold that I almost went in their locker room and took a bath in their Jacuzzi. The water was cold man, it was cold."

Duluth is a cool city though. Hopefully they start winning here soon, they get caron and antwan back soon so it should start happening.

Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert

Gilbert Arenas AKA Agent Zero promised his loving fans that he would drop 50 on the Portland Trailblazers yesterday. What happened? He scored 9 points and took far too many “quality shots.” I am writing this post for two reasons. The first is that my good friend Stuff has developed a man-crush on Gilbert, if Gilbert got frisky before a game and asked Stuff to bend over he would gladly drop trow and ask in his prettiest fan boy voice “could you please sign my ass while you’re back there”? The second is because I like the Wiz and I think that by the end of the year they’ll be the team to beat out east. I don’t think Detroit can make it to the finals without Ben Wallace, I don’t think the Bulls can make it with him, I think that outside of D-Wade and Udonis Haslem the Heat are far too old of a team and the Atlantic division won’t have a representative in the finals for about a million years.
I like Caron Butler and Antwan Jamison, but I think that that nutty bastard Arenas’ personal vendetta against all on team USA that wronged him is detrimental to the team. Look at that, I sound like a college basketball suspension. Arenas needs to recognize when his shot is off and think about winning the game some other way. In the end it should be about winning a game and getting one step closer to the easiest path to the finals not trying to constantly prove yourself. Look at Kobe last year, his scoring at will got his team nowhere and he didn’t have the talent surrounding him that Gilbert does. The man is a point guard, when his shot is off he should probably know how to pass the ball. He has to realize that people are going to catch on to the fact that he feels the need to prove himself to others; teams will start provoking him so that he tries to drop 50 on them. Kobe couldn’t win when he tried to shoulder the load and Gilbert won’t be able to either. Teams win championships, not egomaniacs.