Sports Blog

The San Antonio Spurs got a little younger and more dangerous on Tuesday.  In a 4-player deal involving the Milwaukee Bucks, the Spurs will receive Richard Jefferson for three aging bench players with expiring contracts (Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas, and Fabricio Oberto).  The Bucks were just looking to get rid of the $29.2 million still owed to Jefferson in the last two years of the contract.  They needed that money to sign other important players that are in the last years of their current contracts.  Because of this, the Spurs were able to come in and get Jefferson, a versatile wingman who averaged 19.6 points last year, for almost nothing.  Well, if you call $29.5 million over the next two years nothing!  The deal makes the Spurs a threat in the strong West again as they lost in the first round last year.  It gives them a formidable core of Jefferson, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili.  I’d say that’s a pretty good team and probably second only to the Lakers out West.  And, as a Laker fan, I have to admit that it’s going to be different not seeing Bruce there to guard Kobe.  Though I hated him, he made the games more fun to watch and I enjoyed the intensity between the two.  He was getting old and last season he was no where near the player that he used to be so a change was needed.

In another trade in the NBA, the Minnesota Timberwolves gave themselves some good leverage and ammunition for another big deal on draft day tomorrow.  The T-Wolves traded Randy Foye and Mike Miller to the Washington Wizards for their number one draft pick (5th overall) and three others.  This gives the T-Wolves four first round draft picks (5th,6th,18th,28th) and frees up some cap space.  There is talk that they will use some of those picks to move higher in the draft or trade for another quality player.  We’ll have to wait and see what they do tomorrow.  The Wizards, on the other hand, get an up-and-coming point guard in Foye and a great shooter in Miller.  They believe that their team already has a good core of players and the only reason for the bad year was injury.  Coming back next year will be Gilbert Arenas, a former All-Star who missed all last season with a knee injury.  They believe that’s like getting a top 5 pick in the draft.  I think the Wizards will be a lot better next year if he can come back as the same player he was.

Photo Source: AP Photo

There was some media speculation that the top of the NBA draft was facing a possible shake up, but the first three picks ended up playing out pretty much as most people thought they would.

The Chicago Bulls chose hometown hero Derrick Rose number one overall and it’s hard to argue that he is not going to be a star. One thing to consider, however, is that he lands among a Chicago backcourt already overcrowded with the likes of over-paid Larry Hughes, over-hyped Ben Gordon, and over-paid/hyped Kirk Hinrich. Plus Rose’s nickname is Pooh, making him the player most likely to have his name be the butte of a poor joke (or in this case pun).

Michael Beasley put all the speculation of Riley’s man crush on O.J. Mayo to rest when he was drafted second overall by the Heat. One thing he didn’t do is trick David Stern like he said he would. There were issues about his character going into the draft and I wonder if he was advised by his agent/entourage not to go through with the fake-handshake. Childish antics aside, he did set a record for college freshman by racking up an astounding 28 double-doubles last season and is sure to make an impact on the Heat from day one.

Here is when the draft got interesting. In front of a national TV audience and to no one’s surprise, Kevin McHale did something stupid. Despite my earnest pleas, he selected USC guard O.J. Mayo third overall. I can’t say that I was surprised – after all he did give away the beloved Kevin Garnett for 30 cents on the dollar – but at this point we all have to agree to call bad basketball decisions, McHalean decisions.

“Did you hear about that trade?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t just bad. It was a McHalean bad.”

The rumored Supersonics/Clippers trade fell through the cracks, then for some reason Seattle decided to draft Russell Westbrook about a million spots too high. Hyperbole aside (and this is coming from a Bruins fan), Westbrook wasn’t even the undeniable best point guard on his team last year.

UCLA’s Kevin Love went fifth to the Memphis Grizzlies, the place where good young talent goes to squander in irrelevance. The Clippers took sharpshooter Eric Gordon of Indiana seventh overall and I personally can’t wait for him to make his first all-star team as a member of another team.

The Bucks traded for offensive juggernaut Richard Jefferson, pairing him with Michael Redd and creating in theory a killer one-two punch. Then the Bucks made a truly McHalean pair of decisions. They drafted small forward Joe Alexander eighth overall and then proceeded to take small forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute in the second round. That’s three small forwards in a span of 24 hours … what in the world were they thinking?

Other notables from the first round: Stanford center Brook Lopez dropping to 10, Arizona’s Jerryd Bayless falling to 11, Brook’s brother Robin Lopez rising to 15, and Georgetown big-man Roy Hibbert going 17.

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