NBA Draft: a look at the top ten

I’m not a big an NBA fan as my blog bud Ron is. I haven’t paid too much attention to the NBA since the Johnson/Worthy days of the Lakers, and after that, only a passing interest in the finals. I’m a Tar Heel alum, and even I tired of Jordan’s dominance. However, I love watching college hoops (ACC games especially, of course). So I do get interested in the draft and seeing where the players I’ve watched closely over the season end up as professionals, how they may contribute to their team, and if they’re underclassmen, whether or not they should have waited.

With that, let’s take a look at this year’s draft.

The Death of Pro-hoops in the ATL

It’s been 40 years since the Hawks moved from St. Louis to Atlanta, and during their time there they’ve mostly been dismal. It’s been eight years since they even made the playoffs, and lately such topflight players as Jason Terry have opted to take less money and go elsewhere rather than earn max dollars playing for a team universally deemed as a failure. You have to be at least 40 and maybe older than that to remember when the Hawks were a championship contender. Sadly race played a factor in the breakup during the early ‘70s of a potentially great club. “Pistol” Pete Maravich was drafted, which was a great move. What wasn’t so great was subsequently letting Joe Caldwell go to the ABA and losing Bill Bridges for simply being cheap. Of course during those years the Hawks always ran into either the Lakers or the Knicks (yes, there was a time when the Knicks were a great team) and got bounced out of the playoffs.

The second contending edition had Hall-of-Famer Dominique Wilkins, Doc Rivers and Tree Rollins among others, but could never get past the Celtics. The last decent Hawks team with Dikembe Mutumbo and Mookie Blaylock actually had the Chicago Bulls down by two games in a playoff series, but then Michael Jordan took over and quickly erased any chance of a Hawks victory. But those days are long gone, and the Hawks have been little more than a joke throughout much of the last two decades.

Perhaps the most amazing sports paradox of the moment is the fact that pro basketball, a sport dominated by African-Americans, has so little traction in heavily black cities like Atlanta and Memphis. The Grizzlies once seemed on their way to becoming a popular attraction, but last year’s 22-60 nightmare took all the wind out of those sails. Their best player Pau Gasol wants out of town, they now have a rookie coach and new general manager, and things just look bleak.

Meanwhile everyone wants to live in Atlanta, but no one wants to play there. If the Hawks make more idiotic draft moves despite having both the number 3 and number 11 choices, they’ll lose even more of the few fans they still have left. It’s hard to implore anyone to come out and watch a hideously coached, ineptly run franchise, and it doesn’t matter what color the people running it are if the product stinks.
Ron Wynn

NBA Finals

Cultural reflections (6/13.07)

Last night’s 75-72 abomination in the third game of the NBA playoffs just narrowly missed breaking the all-time record for fewest total points in a final. You have to go back to 1955 and the days when Fort Wayne, Indiana was in the league to get a worse outcome and that was back in the days of set shots and supposedly far inferior athletes. What this current San Antonio Spurs/Cleveland Cavaliers mismatch is doing besides sending people racing away from their television sets is also spotlighting something that many people repeatedly miss when talking about and analyzing basketball at any and all levels. There is an enormous difference between being a great athlete and being a great basketball player. One doesn’t always equal the other, though when it does (people like Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, etc.) the results are phenomenal. But unfortunately so much of current pro basketball has become two-on-two isolation, walk the ball up the court and try to do a backdoor lob for a dunk. This in turn is pretty easy to defense, especially when you have a veteran, well-coached team that knows how to rotate people to open shooters quickly. San Antonio has simply decided to double, if necessary, triple-cover Lebron James and take their chances with everyone else. They also don’t fall off him the second he drives the lane the way the Pistons did. When James heads for the rim, people on both the weak and strong sides collapse, forcing him to either pass off or try to score over two or three people.