This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
Duke basketball is, in a word, detestable. In some more words, it’s a heinous violation of everything I like about college basketball. Coach K brings in a bunch of McDonald’s All-Americans, but instead of setting them loose on the NCAA like my boy Roy Williams at UNC, he turns them into a defensive machine. Had Josh McRoberts attended a high-tempo basketball power like North Carolina, Louisville, or even Memphis, he might have become one of my favorite college hoops players ever. Instead, he went to Duke. The rest is history.
I was reminded of McRoberts while watching this year’s NBA Draft. The deal sending Jerryd Bayless to Portland from the Pacers had already gone down when the electrifying Ric Bucher broke in with a special report. Someone had been added to the Bayless deal! My mind was full of possibilities. Was David Harrison headed to the Blazers, or was Stevey Blake going to add some little-needed whiteness to Indiana? No, the great Josh McRoberts was heading to his home state of Indiana. Woah. How did a former potential number one overall pick become a throw-in for a team trading down on draft day? More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson and Alex Pennycook.
Y’all know the drill by now, so let’s just get right into it:
Who Is the Biggest Sleeper in the Draft?
Alex: Chris Douglas-Roberts – Sleepers are hard to predict at this stage because so much of a players success depends on the situation they land in, but I’ll go with a guy and I can’t understand why he isn’t projected to go higher in the draft and that is CDR. A first team All-American, CDR is a little undersized for an NBA 2-guard, however he is a proven scorer that has a ton of big game experience. Right now a lot of experts have him going to New Orleans which I believe is a perfect fit. The Hornets already have two sharpshooters in Peja and MoPete, and a slashing wing is exactly what they need off the bench.
Stu: If MoPete’s a sharpshooter then Carlos Delfino is this generation’s Larry Bird. The biggest sleeper in this draft? That’s definitely my favorite question to answer – I’ve got a list of sleepers a mile long. Joey Dorsey, George Hill, Shawn James, Ronald Ramon, they’re all there. The biggest sleeper of them all, however, is my main man Roy Hibbert. He’s an absolutely mammoth big guy that can change the game defensively, score the ball down low when he’s asked to, and he has a little bit of a mid-range jumper to boot. A year ago he was considered a lottery pick, and now he’s a late first rounder behind JaVale McGee, DeAndre Jordan, and some French guy who averages five points per game?! After a very stellar season in college? Am I missing something here?
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
A few years ago, the North Carolina Tar Heels won an NCAA National Championship in Men’s Basketball. Four of the Tar Heels – Marvin Williams, Sean May, Ray Felton, and Rashad McCants – left school early after winning a championship. All four of them were drafted in the lottery. Some of them haven’t exactly lit it up in the NBA, but nobody can say that on draft day they thought the four Tar Heels didn’t belong in the lottery. Well, maybe Sean May didn’t belong, but just go with me on this one; I’m on an NBA Draft roll.
Fast forward to present day. Kansas has just won a National Championship, and three of its key players have left Lawrence early and declared for the NBA Draft. Darrell Arthur, Super Mario Indendent Chalmers, and Brandon Rush have all left school after beating Memphis to win it all in March Madness. Will they be greeted with the same enthusiasm as the Tar Heels were in 2005? Not exactly.
You could say that the NBA’s reaction, or at least the typical NBA outsider’s reaction, to the three gentlemen from Kansas has been quite tepid. Darrel Arthur has been plagued by questions about his work ethic, Mario Chalmers has been lost in a sea of point guards, and Brandon Rush’s hair is too goofy to get into the Green Room at MSG. Sorry, but that’s the only legitimate excuse for the lack of love for the swingman from Kansas City.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
This past Monday dozens of NCAA student-athletes made life-altering decisions. Decisions so big that millions of people that these young adults don’t even know could be dramatically affected by them. That’s right, Girls Gone Wild finally started filming the long-awaited “Softball Skanks of the SEC” edition of their landmark series of documentary films. Also, a bunch of dudes decided to either go pro and enter the NBA Entry Draft or stay in school for another year.
Although Girls Gone Wild is kind of a big deal, I’d like to focus on the NBA Draft, which just may be my favorite part of the NBA season. We all know what’s going on at the top of the draft – Mike Beasley and Derrick Rose are battling for the right to be chosen by the Chicago Bulls (it should be Rose). What I’m interested in today is looking at the rest of the draft. Which players not named Beasley or Rose have made good decisions by entering their name into the selection process? Which players should have stayed in school? Who the hell is this guy from Missiouri named Kalen Grimes? Let’s get to the bold headings!
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
There’s been a rash of coaching hires in the NHL recently. The notoriously strict Ron Wilson has moved from San Jose to Toronto, Peter DeBoer has taken over for Jacques Martin in Florida, and some unlucky schmuck has become Brian Murray’s new puppet in Ottawa. Despite the fact that some of these new coaches are being brought on board by potential Stanley Cup contenders (let’s face it, the Leafs are only one playmaker away from making a run), none of them have won a Stanley Cup as a head coach in the NHL. John Tortorella, on the other hand, has won a championship in the NHL. He’s also recently joined the ranks of coaching free agents. Plus he looks like the Fonz. Heeeeeeey.
More after the jump!
This article is a collaboration from Blake Murphy and Stu Wilkinson.
Jerseys are a way of life for a lot of major sports fans. While it is unfortunate that jerseys are sometimes viewed as a dirty or lesser form of clothing, the real sports fan (and classy dresser) knows that a strong jersey collection can make or break a wardrobe. This is no more true than for Stu and myself, who both carefully toe the line of ‘hobosexual’ when in school mode but can also dial it up with some pimpin’ pimpin’ suits when the business-side is occasioned for. With both Stu and myself holding quite a jersey collection already, the idea of a fantasy jersey draft between Alex, Stu and I had been kicked around for some time. Since the site opened, actually. So six months later, here it is, sans one participant – the fantasy jersey draft. It was simple really…name the jerseys you’d want from each category and post a picture. Done. Enjoy. Buy me these for Christmas.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
Soccer Players Dive Slightly More Than The Detroit Red Wings
Sorry to beat on Barbaro here, but as a non-soccer fan writing about soccer I’m required to talk about how much diving there is in the beautiful game. Also, I love complaining about things for which I can’t think of a viable solution. So obviously I’m qualified to go off on a mini-rant about how much flopping there is in soccer.
Now, I’m a member of the “it’s pathetic that Paul Pierce got taken off in a wheelchair” crowd. That moment actually cracks my top three favorite non-soccer embellishments from the past month, a list that carries the same level of prestige as a list of MTV Movie Award nominees. The top three consists of Chris Osgood’s reaction after being hit by Mike Ribiero, Johan Franzen going limp after getting a lovetap from Gary Roberts, and Paul Pierce’s aforementioned wheelchair/magical knee healing device charade. So after I was amazed by Mr. Pierce’s willingness to be rolled off the court during Game 1 of the NBA Finals, I’ve been absolutely astonished by Euro 2008 so far.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
Kids these days. They like their hair flopping all over their eyes, they’re always using this newfangled Facebook gizmo, and they have no love for the most electrifying baseball player of all time, Ken Griffey Junior. When I was a youngster Junior Griffey was my favorite athlete that didn’t play hockey or wrestle professionally, and being third to Theo Fleury and “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels is nothing to sneeze at. Griffey’s influence, along with the World Series coming to Canada in 1992 and 1993, pretty much made me a baseball fan. Nowadays his larger-than-life image from back in the day has been completely deflated because of his injury-plagued tenure in Cincinnati, but I’ll never forget how much I revered him when he was tearing it up in the Kingdome.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
A couple days ago I moved out of the United States. Not in a ‘going on exchange to Europe’ or ‘teaching English in Japan’ way, but in a ‘getting a job at a Canadian insurance company and selling out to the man’ kind of way. Obviously this move made me ponder a lot of things, probably because I’m a very pensive person. I thought about if I’d ever be back to Mug Night at our local watering hole, or if I’d ever make it out to another bonfire at the legendary location known only as The Pipeline. Sadly, neither of those things had anything to do with sports, so I had to scrap the 10,000 word pieces I pumped out on each of them and try to come up with something fresh to satisfy this fine website’s overworked editor.
Something I can write about that is related to my emigration from the United States is, you guessed it, my unavoidable divorce with ESPN due to the move. In Canada there is no ESPN, only TSN, The Score, and Rogers Sportsnet. Sure, some of those networks will occasionally pick up an ESPN broadcast every once and a while, like Sunday Night Baseball or NCAA Basketball Big Monday. TSN even carries Pardon The Interruption all the time (when it’s not curling season), and you can catch a World Series of Poker show whenever you really need to get motivated to stop watching television and get some work done.
All this second-hand ESPN action, however, cannot compare with the dominance of the Worldwide Leader in its domestic market. In Canada you can find a lot of quality programming on a number of different channels, but when I was in Pittsburgh ESPN was pretty much my only source for sports television — Versus and TNT swooped in for the occasional game, but that was it in terms of ESPN’s competition. What did this dominance mean for me, the viewer? Way too much NFL Live, absolutely no hockey coverage, and journalism only one notch above the fact-finding done on the Fox News Channel, another staple of my viewing rotation when I was in the U.S.
Excuse me for one second, but I’m going to have to rip off a quick rant right here.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
Two weeks ago Kris Letang was featured in this space and then immediately afflicted with the infamous Curse of Gary Roberts Wednesday, only seeing the ice for Games 1 and 2 of the Finals before making the joyless trip to Healthy Scratchland. Of course, this turn of events made me swear I wouldn’t throw another Penguin into the GRW mix, but that was before LeMoyne’s own Maxime Talbot slammed home a game tying goal against the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals. With thirty seconds left. In an elimination game.
I’d be lying if I said I liked Mike Therrien’s decision to throw Mad Max on the ice as Pittsburgh’s extra attacker during the last minute of regulation in Game 5. In fact, I recall wondering at the time why the heck Ryan Malone wasn’t on the ice (I didn’t review the videotape after the game, so he actually might have been). I guess my doubting of Therrien is another addition to the growing list of reasons why I’m not exactly a shoe-in for the coaching vacancy in Toronto. Unlike me and many other Pens fans, Coach MT knew that Talbot would be money in the bank in the event of a scramble in front of Chris “Elroy” Osgood. Money in the bank he was, ripping home the tying goal from about one and a half feet out.
More after the jump!
This article has been submitted by Stu Wilkinson.
