It's shortly after midnight on the Saturday morning of NFL Draft weekend. At this point, I should be crawling into bed and getting ready for an all-day marathon. Instead, we're two days and three rounds into the draft. It's just not right. The NFL Draft used to be an event, where fans all followed intently thoughout the day on Saturday, and more casually in the later rounds on Sunday.
It looks like the new format, which brings the first round in primetime on Thursday and the second and third rounds on Friday, will be here to stay, at least for the short term. The TV ratings are good. I don't have to like it though.
A few quick hits from the draft, and then a deeper look at my team, the New Orleans Saints:
-- I really like what the Lions have done. Ndamakong Suh is about as can't-miss a defensive tackle prospect as there ever has been, and he's a great start at #2. They traded up at the end of the first round to take Jahvid Best at #30. Best, I believe, is the second-best running back in the draft and will have a better career than Ryan Matthews, who went 12th. They also got Amari Spievey, a defensive back from Iowa, at the top of the third round, and he'll give the Lions depth at corner and safety. The Lions have a fourth-rounder and three seventh-rounders today to add some more depth.
-- Other teams whose drafts I liked were the Chiefs, the Raiders (surprisingly), the Bengals, Cowboys and Jets. KC picked up two starters (S Eric Berry and CB Javier Arenas) and a major contributor (RB/WR/KR Dexter McCluster, who should get 10-15 touches per game in a variety of ways) in the first two rounds. Oakland, known for reaching for players with less-than-stellar production but great potential, picked up perhaps the second-best defensive player in MLB Rolando McClain at #8. Cincy grabbed stud TE Jermaine Gresham at #21 and a solid WR in Jordan Shipley in the third round, along with a steady CB Brandon Ghee at the end of the third round. The Bengals, of course, can't go a draft without taking a shady character, this time choosing Florida DE Carlos Dunlap in the second round. Dallas had just two picks but grabbed a future Pro Bowler in WR Dez Bryant at #24 and a future starter at ILB in Sean Lee. The Jets, meanwhile, were ecstatic that CB Kyle Wilson, a top-10 talent, fell to them at #29 at the bottom of the first round.
-- I just can't figure out what's going on in Denver. The Broncos trade their Pro Bowl quarterback last offseason. This offseason, they jettisoned perhaps the best receiver in the NFL and their starting tight end. Then, they traded down in the first round and traded back up twice for two reaches. I'm not sold on Demaryius Thomas as a future star receiver (although the choice of Eric Decker in the third round was a good one), and then the Broncos snatched Tim Tebow at #25. I like Tebow. But at 25? It's safe to call that pick a reach, and coach Josh McDaniels essentially has tied his future in Denver to Tebow's development as a quarterback. I'm not sure I would be willing to do that if I were in his shoes.
-- Congratulations to D'Anthony "Boo" Smith, the defensive tackle from Louisiana Tech, for being drafted in the third round by the Jacksonville Jags. Boo is a great kid who represented by alma mater wonderfully for the past four years. Now he joins two other Tech grads, Josh Scobee and Luke McCown, in Jacksonville. If only the Jags would trade for Ryan Moats now.
-- Now to my Saints: I'll just borrow a phrase from the immortal Vince Lombardi. "What the hell's going on out there?" You know, winning a Super Bowl, especially at a place with such a dismal past as New Orleans, will get you a lot of leeway. I'm trying to keep that in mind. But I'm just not getting this draft. I understand the premise that you take the best player available if you can't get a trade offer you like, but that idea also doesn't consider the fact that your team has needs. And the Saints haven't filled their needs through the first three rounds. They have glaring needs at linebacker, both depth and the big hole at the starting strongside linebacker spot with the departure of Scott Fujita. Yet, through three rounds, there have been no linebackers chosen, despite a myriad of options available.
New Orleans selected cornerback Patrick Robinson with the last pick of the first round. He looks great on paper, but he struggled with consistency at Florida State. That's usually not a great trait to have entering the NFL. It's the second year in a row the Saints have picked a corner in the first round, so that doesn't bode well for last year's pick, Malcolm Jenkins. There was talk then that he'd end up at safety, and that appears to be the case with this pick. Still, the Saints have an emerging playmaker in Tracy Porter at one corner and Jabari Greer at the other corner with Randall Gay as the nickel back. Depth is good, but you usually don't try to build depth in the first round. You normal look for immediate starters there. I understand injuries piled up in the secondary last year, and you can never have too many guys who can cover in this league, but I thought the Saints had bigger needs than cornerback.
The Saints picked an offensive tackle at the end of the second round in Southern Cal's Charles Brown. The best part of this pick, according to my wife, is the guy's name is CHARLIE BROWN! Yes, my wife, ladies and gentlemen. She'll be here all week. I'm a big USC fan, and if I haven't heard of the guy, he's probably not that good. And it's not like there's a glaring need at offensive tackle. Jon Stinchcomb is an entrenched starter at RT. Jamaal Brown is a Pro Bowler at LT, even though he's a restricted free agent who is coming off an injury and likely will be traded. Jermon Bushrod filled in admirably for Brown last year while he was injured. Zach Strief also plays a lot as a sixth offensive lineman during running situations. Maybe the Saints plan to trade Brown for a linebacker, or maybe they plan for him to play one more season while Charles Brown learns. Again, there were much bigger needs than a fourth offensive tackle.
And my least favorite pick happened at the end of the third round, when the Saints grabbed Miami tight end Jimmy Graham. Graham has great size and physical tools, and his upside is tremendous. But he's a basketball player who only played one year of football in college. Yes, San Diego struck gold with Antonio Gates, a basketball player from Kent State. But Gates was an undrafted free agent. Graham is a big-time reach in the third round, particularly when there were other more established tight ends like Pitt's Dorin Dickerson, LSU's Richard Dickson, Florida's Aaron Hernandez and USC's Anthony McCoy still available. Heck, I'm willing to bet that Dennis Morris, Louisiana Tech's tight end, has a better NFL career than Jimmy Graham.
The Saints have three picks in today's final day of the draft -- a fourth, a sixth and a seventh. Here's hoping two of those are linebackers and a third is a developmental quarterback who can battle with Chase Daniel to become Drew Brees's backup.
Leaving the draft, let's finish up with some NBA playoffs talk. We're about halfway through the first round, and a few things have stood out so far:
-- The Jazz just keep on winning. Two starters, Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur, are out of the series against Denver with injuries. Yet, the Jazz have taken two of the first three games and have the upper hand in the series. The star of Friday night's Game 3 was Paul Millsap, the team's sixth man and backup power forward who played at Louisiana Tech. Millsap posted career playoff highs of 22 points and 19 rebounds to help mask a subpar game from starting power forward Carlos Boozer. Deron Williams has emerged as a challenger to Steve Nash as the best point guard in the NBA, and he's the clear leader of this young team. But the Jazz's role players, led by Millsap, have really stepped up. Rookie Wesley Matthews, who was undrafted, has stepped in as the team's starting two-guard, and young center Kyrylo Fesenko have filled in nicely for the two injured starters. And the other two wing players, starter C.J. Miles and reserve Kyle Korver, have played strong as well.
-- It's time for Dwyane Wade to get away from South Beach. Yes, he won a title there. But this team is terrible. There's not a single player starting next to Wade who should be a starter in the NBA. It's really depressing, especially considering how hard Wade plays and how much he's done to keep the Heat in the games against Boston. But Boston leads the series 3-0 and is well on its way to a sweep.
-- The Chicago Bulls pushed Boston to the limit last year, and they've already taken a game against Cleveland, the NBA's best team during the regular season. How does LeBron James respond? Can he lift the Cavs over the next two games to close the series out in 5, or will Chicago continue to hang around and make this a series?
-- The OKC Thunder, the young but supremely talented eight seed in the West, stole Game 3 from the defending champion L.A. Lakers. Most analysts I've seen have the Lakers responding to win Game 4 and closing the series out in five. I think Kobe is fading and Kevin Durant is ready to step up and make this a seven-game series. The main question is can the Thunder steal a game in L.A.? If they can, they might just make it to the second round.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
No Bird, no Magic, no MJ ... no need
Full disclosure: I'm a LeBron guy.
The National Basketball Association, more than any other sports league, is a players' league. College athletics is about the college. You root for your school in all sports. Or at least you should. If you don't, you're a poser. The NFL is about teams. It's the ultimate team league. Was your dad a Cowboys fan? Then you're a Cowboys fan. If you grew up in Louisiana, then you're a Saints fan. Unless you're from Shreveport. Then you might as well be from East Texas. But that's another story. Major League Baseball has its star sluggers and ace pitchers that fans root for, but the passion is about the team -- the Yanks, the Sawx ... and everybody else.
But the NBA, oh the NBA is different. It's about the names on the back of the jerseys, not the front. It's always been that way. Wilt, the Pistol, Bird, Magic, MJ ... you root for superstars. And, man, are there plenty of superstars in the NBA right now.
For many years, we didn't know if the NBA could ever recapture its glory years. In the '80s, Bird and Magic dueled as the game's top two players. They lifted the league to a new level, and then passed the baton to Michael Jordan, who took the game into a new stratosphere in the '90s. The glory years. The MJ years. Then he retired. But he came back! And won three more titles to go with his three previous ones. And then he retired. But, unfortunately, he came back again, and wasn't the same player. Ever since, fans have been wondering if the league would ever see a player as good as Jordan.
As I've watched the first few games of this year's NBA playoffs, I'm not convinced that the league doesn't have more great players than ever. There have been some great players in the post-MJ era. Tim Duncan rivals Karl Malone as the greatest power forward ever, even if he's really a center masquerading as a power forward. Shaquille O'Neal won four titles and will go down as one of the top 10 or 15 players ever, even if he had the physical ability to be the greatest center of all-time and didn't fully reach that potential. Kobe Bryant has been a great player, perhaps the closest to MJ in terms of physical skills, even if he has never been as beloved as Jordan.
But I look at the young talent in the NBA right now and think that the next decade could actually be better than anything we've ever seen. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, I'm a LeBron guy. I've followed his career since he first burst onto the scene as a high school sophomore. I began buying into the hype as soon as I watched him play and thought this kid -- who at 16 looked like a 6-8, 235-pound man already -- could become the greatest player of all-time. His skill set is an unbelievable hybrid of Magic Johnson meets Karl Malone. He's 6-foot-8 and somewhere between 250 and 280 pounds, built like a defensive end with the athletic abilities of a running back. He's an athletic freak with a feel for the game very reminiscent of Magic Johnson, and he enjoys passing and playmaking so much that he goes out of his way to get his teammates involved. He'll soon garner his second straight MVP award and, at age 25, could conceivably win the award for the next 5-8 years. I honestly believe, if he stays focused and dialed in during crunch time, he could surpass Jordan as the greatest player of all time.
But LeBron isn't the only great young player. That draft in 2003 also produced Dwyane Wade, who already has won an NBA title with Shaq, and Carmelo Anthony, who is one of the top two pure scorers in the league. Dwight Howard, the No. 1 pick in '04, led the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals last year, and although he still has a lot of growth left in his game, has a chance to be the top center in the game for the next decade.
Deron Williams and Chris Paul went third and fourth to the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Hornets in the '05 draft, and along with Derrick Rose, the top pick in '08, are the point guards of the future in the NBA. Brandon Roy, the sixth pick in '06, looks to be the best player in a weak draft, but if his knees can stay healthy, he has the appearance of a future star for years to come for the Blazers.
Kevin Durant, the second pick in '07, looks like he could develop into the greatest scorer the league has ever seen. At 21, he became the youngest player to lead the league in scoring this year, and he's only going to get better as the leader of an up-and-coming Oklahoma City team. I'm not sure there is a player in the world with a more complete offensive skill set. Durant can simply put the ball in the basket.
And there are several promising rookies from this year in point guards Brandon Jennings, Steph Curry and Tyreke Evans, who joined MJ, LeBron and Oscar Robertson as the only rookies to ever average 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists during their first years in the league.
That's not even counting two No. 1 picks -- '07 top choice Greg Oden and '09 first selection Blake Griffin -- who have earned incomplete grades because of injuries. Even if he ever gets healthy, I'm not sure Oden is ever going to be more than a solid 15-12 center. He's not going to be a perennial all-star or the franchise center many expected, but Griffin has the athleticism and skill set to become a fixture on all-NBA teams at power forward.
With all of these young players, Team USA would appear to be in solid shape for the next two or three Olympic games. How's this for an Olympic roster:
PG Deron Williams
PG Chris Paul
PG Derrick Rose
SG Dwyane Wade
SG Brandon Roy
SG Tyreke Evans
SF Kevin Durant
SF Carmelo Anthony
PF LeBron James
PF Blake Griffin
C Dwight Howard
C Greg Oden
Sure, it's certainly a guard-heavy squad, and it's weak in the post. You could swap out one of the guards (Evans and/or Rose) for a young post player like Andrew Bynum, Al Jefferson or Al Horford. But I think you could win with this team in international competition. You're not going to find a better backcourt with those three point guards, or more prolific scorers from the small forward position. Heck, Durant and Melo might be the two best scorers in the world. LeBron could easily play the 4 in international play and present some very difficult matchups, and Howard should be able to hold his own at the center position.
These days, though, the NBA is a guard's league. More importantly, it's a scorer's league. And there are plenty of young guards and scorers in the league. It's pretty safe to say that the NBa is going to be safe for years to come, and in 20-30 years, fans may be talking about this upcoming decade as the glory years of the NBA as compared to the Bird, Magic and MJ days of the '80s and '90s.
The National Basketball Association, more than any other sports league, is a players' league. College athletics is about the college. You root for your school in all sports. Or at least you should. If you don't, you're a poser. The NFL is about teams. It's the ultimate team league. Was your dad a Cowboys fan? Then you're a Cowboys fan. If you grew up in Louisiana, then you're a Saints fan. Unless you're from Shreveport. Then you might as well be from East Texas. But that's another story. Major League Baseball has its star sluggers and ace pitchers that fans root for, but the passion is about the team -- the Yanks, the Sawx ... and everybody else.
But the NBA, oh the NBA is different. It's about the names on the back of the jerseys, not the front. It's always been that way. Wilt, the Pistol, Bird, Magic, MJ ... you root for superstars. And, man, are there plenty of superstars in the NBA right now.
For many years, we didn't know if the NBA could ever recapture its glory years. In the '80s, Bird and Magic dueled as the game's top two players. They lifted the league to a new level, and then passed the baton to Michael Jordan, who took the game into a new stratosphere in the '90s. The glory years. The MJ years. Then he retired. But he came back! And won three more titles to go with his three previous ones. And then he retired. But, unfortunately, he came back again, and wasn't the same player. Ever since, fans have been wondering if the league would ever see a player as good as Jordan.
As I've watched the first few games of this year's NBA playoffs, I'm not convinced that the league doesn't have more great players than ever. There have been some great players in the post-MJ era. Tim Duncan rivals Karl Malone as the greatest power forward ever, even if he's really a center masquerading as a power forward. Shaquille O'Neal won four titles and will go down as one of the top 10 or 15 players ever, even if he had the physical ability to be the greatest center of all-time and didn't fully reach that potential. Kobe Bryant has been a great player, perhaps the closest to MJ in terms of physical skills, even if he has never been as beloved as Jordan.
But I look at the young talent in the NBA right now and think that the next decade could actually be better than anything we've ever seen. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, I'm a LeBron guy. I've followed his career since he first burst onto the scene as a high school sophomore. I began buying into the hype as soon as I watched him play and thought this kid -- who at 16 looked like a 6-8, 235-pound man already -- could become the greatest player of all-time. His skill set is an unbelievable hybrid of Magic Johnson meets Karl Malone. He's 6-foot-8 and somewhere between 250 and 280 pounds, built like a defensive end with the athletic abilities of a running back. He's an athletic freak with a feel for the game very reminiscent of Magic Johnson, and he enjoys passing and playmaking so much that he goes out of his way to get his teammates involved. He'll soon garner his second straight MVP award and, at age 25, could conceivably win the award for the next 5-8 years. I honestly believe, if he stays focused and dialed in during crunch time, he could surpass Jordan as the greatest player of all time.
But LeBron isn't the only great young player. That draft in 2003 also produced Dwyane Wade, who already has won an NBA title with Shaq, and Carmelo Anthony, who is one of the top two pure scorers in the league. Dwight Howard, the No. 1 pick in '04, led the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals last year, and although he still has a lot of growth left in his game, has a chance to be the top center in the game for the next decade.
Deron Williams and Chris Paul went third and fourth to the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Hornets in the '05 draft, and along with Derrick Rose, the top pick in '08, are the point guards of the future in the NBA. Brandon Roy, the sixth pick in '06, looks to be the best player in a weak draft, but if his knees can stay healthy, he has the appearance of a future star for years to come for the Blazers.
Kevin Durant, the second pick in '07, looks like he could develop into the greatest scorer the league has ever seen. At 21, he became the youngest player to lead the league in scoring this year, and he's only going to get better as the leader of an up-and-coming Oklahoma City team. I'm not sure there is a player in the world with a more complete offensive skill set. Durant can simply put the ball in the basket.
And there are several promising rookies from this year in point guards Brandon Jennings, Steph Curry and Tyreke Evans, who joined MJ, LeBron and Oscar Robertson as the only rookies to ever average 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists during their first years in the league.
That's not even counting two No. 1 picks -- '07 top choice Greg Oden and '09 first selection Blake Griffin -- who have earned incomplete grades because of injuries. Even if he ever gets healthy, I'm not sure Oden is ever going to be more than a solid 15-12 center. He's not going to be a perennial all-star or the franchise center many expected, but Griffin has the athleticism and skill set to become a fixture on all-NBA teams at power forward.
With all of these young players, Team USA would appear to be in solid shape for the next two or three Olympic games. How's this for an Olympic roster:
PG Deron Williams
PG Chris Paul
PG Derrick Rose
SG Dwyane Wade
SG Brandon Roy
SG Tyreke Evans
SF Kevin Durant
SF Carmelo Anthony
PF LeBron James
PF Blake Griffin
C Dwight Howard
C Greg Oden
Sure, it's certainly a guard-heavy squad, and it's weak in the post. You could swap out one of the guards (Evans and/or Rose) for a young post player like Andrew Bynum, Al Jefferson or Al Horford. But I think you could win with this team in international competition. You're not going to find a better backcourt with those three point guards, or more prolific scorers from the small forward position. Heck, Durant and Melo might be the two best scorers in the world. LeBron could easily play the 4 in international play and present some very difficult matchups, and Howard should be able to hold his own at the center position.
These days, though, the NBA is a guard's league. More importantly, it's a scorer's league. And there are plenty of young guards and scorers in the league. It's pretty safe to say that the NBa is going to be safe for years to come, and in 20-30 years, fans may be talking about this upcoming decade as the glory years of the NBA as compared to the Bird, Magic and MJ days of the '80s and '90s.
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