Maddux Sports Blog

I ended up watching most of the game between the Rays and the Blue Jays tonight. That might seem a bit obscure to some, but living in Canada I can watch pretty much every Jays game, and pretty much nothing from any other team. That was pretty fun in 1992 and 1993, but it has been kind of annoying for the last decade or so. Nonetheless, it was very interesting to watch the Rays in action, and they played a heck of a game in what was, for seven innings at least, a heck of a pitcher’s duel. The Rays ended up winning 3-0, but as I was watching it two things firmly established themselves in my mind:

1. I really, really like Matt Garza. The Tampa Bay starter had a complete game shutout, and he was never not in control. Shutting down the Toronto lineup isn’t as impressive as shutting down pretty much any other lineup, but it still counts. His win tonight moves him to 9-6 on the year. Unfortunately, the team is just 10-10 when he starts, and he is the only one of the five main starters for the team, impressively, who hasn’t been profitable on the year. He’s not that far off, though - he’s lost less than two units on the year, so he can turn things around on the year without too much trouble. He’s not the most consistent pitcher, either. Yet. He’s only 24 and in his third year, and he is clearly significantly better this year than he was with the Twins. He showed impressive maturity today, and I really got the sense that he is the kind of guy who is just building to a higher level. I don’t ever think he’ll be an ace, but he strikes me as a second or third starter type who could have a 12 or 15 year career. I like Delmon Young just fine, but I think that trading him for Garza is going to turn out to be a very nice deal for the Rays. Tonight’s game is an example of where a guy like Garza is a gem. He was up against Roy Halladay, so he was a juicy +141 underdog. That fits the public’s impression of him versus an ace, but given his skill and the play of his team it was a price just loaded with potential.

2. Strangely, I lost a bit of respect for Lou Piniella tonight. Lou is doing a solid job with the Cubs this year (though he should be doing a bit better given his roster and their talent advantage). He was a total and utter waste of oxygen in Tampa, though, Granted, this team is older and more experienced than the one he was at the helm of. On the other hand, though, Lou looked like he was mailing it in for much of his time in Florida and he got absolutely no more out of the talent he had than he could of with a minimum of effort. I guess what I’m saying is that I am not nearly as convinced that Piniella is a genius as I am supposed to be. On the other hand, I caught the last couple of innings of the Cards’ win over the Braves tonight. He’s had his troubles in the last couple of years, but I still think that if I was starting a team from scratch I would unquestionably have Tony LaRussa at the helm.

A couple of other brief thoughts from the night:

1. The Angels are obviously pretty serious about things this year. I like Mark Teixera as a player, and I think that he is an upgrade over Casey Kotchman, but I’m not sure he is enough of one to warrant the move. His biggest advantage is that he is a switch hitter, and he has decent power. Kotchman is a nice player, though, and he’s younger and cheaper. This will be a good deal for the Angels if they do well in the postseason, but it also has the real potential to be a good one for the Braves. The problem I have with it for the Angels, though, is that they have already pretty much totally wrapped up their division, so this deal will only pay off (or not) in October. I’d like it better if they had given up a player like Kotchman for a gain that would have been realized for three months.

2. I know I said I was done talking about basketball, but the news that broke as I am writing this is too much to pass up on. The Kings have traded Ron Artest to Houston for Bobby Jackson, a first rounder next year, and the rights to Donte Green. This is a very interesting deal. If Artest can be a good citizen in Houston then he will be a great addition. My only concern is that there are several egos on the team already, so it won’t be a seamless transition. Still, a decent risk for a team that was fairly competitive already. On the other hand, I love what the Kings got for Artest. It’s tough to get good value for a player when he has some obvious issues, and when everyone else in the world knows that you want to get rid of him. Jackson is a decent veteran presence. The draft pick could turn into a contributor. Green is a wildly talented guy. He’s far from a lock, but he is packed with upside. Good value given the circumstances.

With the obvious exception of the Olympics, the time has come for me to forget about basketball for a while and immerse myself fully into football. I generally don’t pay that much attention to the start of the NBA season, pay more attention to the hard court when the college season starts, and really get into basketball fully once college football ends and the NFL winds towards the less interesting (in my opinion) later rounds of the playoffs. Before I say goodbye, though, there were a couple of moves today that caught my attention and will factor into betting decisions down the road.

1. Renaldo Balkman traded to the Nuggets. I love this deal. Balkman has done virtually nothing of note on the scoresheet in his career, but he has talent that hasn’t been recognized or exploited by the ridiculous circus that the Knicks organization has become. He’ll likely welcome the move, and the more free flowing Denver offense will give him room to move, and the absence of a defensive presence on the team should give him a niche. Denver gave up nothing of note for Balkman, so I have a serious suspicion that this move is going to look like a steal down the road. Balkman won’t be an all-star, but he’ll be a totally different player than people have thought he is up to now.

2. Ricky Davis signed with the Clippers in a multi-year deal. Remember when Ricky Davis used to be good? Now he’s just a space filler as far as I am concerned. He had solid numbers with Miami last year, but nothing that happened in Miami last year means anything. Davis is on the decline, and this is yet another move that will tie up salary cap space and ensure that this team is just barely average.

3. Andris Biedrins re-signed with the Warriors for six years and $62 million. I am torn on this deal. Biedrins is a solid player who won’t disappoint. On the other hand, the team has now committed almost $130 million and six years to Biedrins and Monta Ellis. That will be a great move if both players put together solid careers and continue on their current trajectories. That amount of money takes a way a lot of flexibility, though, and I am not convinced that this team has enough going forward to be competitive (a point guard of note, for example). I can’t be hugely critical of this deal or the Ellis one, but it might not work out. Either way, I’m pretty sure that I won’t spend a lot of time betting on this team next year.

That’s it for now. Unless something earth shattering happens, I will touch on the NBA only in passing for a few months. The NBA have a good relationship, but we need time apart to remember what we miss about each other.

We learned  couple of things from the Home Run Derby tonight - it can incredibly entertaining, and the overall format is flawed. Watching Josh Hamilton’s tour de force was one of the coolest things I have done in a long while. The problem, though, is that no one cared about the result after that all happened. Justin Morneau is a fellow Canadian, and I am proud of him for coming through, but he didn’t deserve to win, and no one cares that he does. Instead of making it a three round contest like it is which just tires out batters and pitchers and rarely builds to a dramatic finish, it is time they tweak it a bit. They should invite a few more guys to participate, give each guy a few more outs, and just have one round. It didn’t matter what happened after Hamilton did his thing, so the format should be such that he didn’t have to do anything. The way it is now, Morneau hit fewer home runs in three rounds than Hamilton did in one, and he still won.

Interesting news out of Indianapolis today - Peyton Manning had knee surgery to remove an inflamed bursa sac. He’s been trying to recover since February, but surgery finally became the best option. He is expected back at his best in four to six weeks, and his consecutive game streak shouldn’t be threatened. It is amazing how some guys operate under the microscope while other mega-stars can totally elude scrutiny. Obviously being in Indianapolis has something to do with it - we know nothing about what Manning does when he isn’t on the field, and we knew nothing about Marvin Harrison until his alleged shooting incident in the spring (which has conveniently seemed to have gone away).

Again, I must qualify this next story by saying that summer league basketball is virtually meaningless. That being said, a couple of interesting performances came out in the first game for Minnesota and Dallas. The T-Wolves cruised to an easy win on the strength of an impressive showing by Kevin Love. The start was rocky, but he ended up with 18 points and 13 rebounds. I have reasonably high hopes that he will exceed expectations as a pro, so this was a good start. The other one to note was Dallas’ Shan Foster. The former Vanderbilt star had 17 points. Foster didn’t get the respect I think he deserved in the draft. He’s a bit one-dimensional, but he just knows how to score. He joins DeAndre Jordan and Chris Douglas-Roberts as guys who could wind up being major steals in the second round.

Strange story from the Islanders’ camp. They fired Ted Nolan today after two years as coach, citing differing philosophies between coach and management. Nolan was out of coaching for about a decade after winning coach of the year in Buffalo. He reportedly feuded with his goalie there, and many say he got his GM fired as well. In New York he got more out of the team than they deserved with the talent they had, but he reportedly feuded with his goaltender, and he obviously couldn’t get along with his GM. It will be very interesting to see if he will get another job, or if the emerging pattern will put him squarely back on the black list. Things must have been pretty bleak if they warranted his firing this long after the season ended, and this close to rookie camps and, as hard as it is to believe, the start of training camp. The new staff will be starting from behind.

Jeff Borris, the agent for Barry Bonds, says his client has not received a single offer from a team looking for his services, and that the prospects look bleak for him to play this year. I hate when bad things happen to good people.

Elton Brand is taking, to me, a surprising amount of abuse from pockets of the media regarding his decision to jump to the Sixers after opting out from his contract with the Clippers. Sure, he initially said he was intending to re-sign, but I don’t think he can be blamed in the slightest for what he has done. Here are five good reasons:

1. He made more money. Not a ton more, but Philly was willing to pay more than the Clippers. As we hear until we are sick of it, sports are a business now.

2. He moved to the East. The East is rapidly improving, they have had a strong offseason in many cases, and they win more than their share of titles, but it is still the poor cousin of the NBA. The West is ridiculously deep and tough. Even with Baron Davis and Brand the Clippers were far from a lock to make the playoffs. The Sixers are already a playoff team, and Brand has a chance to be very competitive in a conference with more room to grow. Jumping at the opportunity to move was the smart thing to do.

3. Baron Davis did the same thing. I am somehow supposed to feel sorry for the Clippers even though they did the exact same thing to Golden State as Philly did to them - poach away an opting out player who said he was going to return. Karma. Irony. Hilarious.

4. He joined a better team. Philly has a younger core, but as long as they re-sign Andre Iguodala they have more talent, more potential, and are a better fit for Brand’s talents than the Clippers were. If you were to have listed the attributes of the payer that the Sixers needed to complete their puzzle you would have ended up with pretty much exactly what Brand has to offer. The Clippers added Davis, but they also lost Carey Maggette, and didn’t have a way to replace his scoring. Brand should be praised for his hunger to win.

5. He owes the Clippers nothing. Brand played for the Clippers for seven years. He was mostly a model citizen and was the face of the sad organization. Over that time the team mostly floundered. They made one playoff run of significance, and even then making the second round of the playoffs was seen as a huge upset. Brand has been living in basketball purgatory, and he has just taken it. He hasn’t pouted, driven drunk, done drugs, or shot a stripper. He’s just kept his head down, played at a high level, and gone about his business. This guy needs and deserves a change of scenery. After all he has been through in L.A. I think he can be forgiven for not believing that the next next coming of the Clippers is for real. The Clippers were not just one player away. Anyone who says otherwise is writing from atop a high ivory tower.

Needless to say, I am in Brand’s corner on this one. I already liked the Sixers quite a bit - they are fun to watch and were profitable ATS last year. This just makes them more interesting, and is yet another great storyline to follow in the East. Just think about it - Boston should be about as good as they were. Detroit should too. Orlando is retooling a bit and will be better defensively. The Bulls, Heat, and Sixers should be significantly better. So should Milwaukee and Toronto. The Wizards did what they thought they had to do. So did New Jersey and Indiana. Even some of the perennial cellar dwellers are rising - Memphis is being aggressive, Atlanta showed signs of life last year, and the Kinicks, well, at least they got rid of Isiah Thomas. The West may still be better, but the East is certainly more fascinating.

I’ve got a summer cold - the worst punishment for past sins imaginable. It’s a doozy, too. Given that, I’d love to be catty and dismissive to a few teams or players to make myself feel better. Sadly, though, there are a couple of big stories tonight that I really like and am quite enthusiastic about. That’s no fun.

1. Cubs acquire Rich Harden. This is a great move. The Sabathia trade gave the Brewers a clear pitching edge in the division, but the Cubs took immediate and decisive steps to restore the balance of power. Zambrano and Harden may not be quite as good as Sheets and Sabathia, but they are pretty darned close. Better yet, Harden has an option for next year that the Cubs are very likely to exercise, so this isn’t just a short-term fix. On top of it all, the Cubs also got Chad Gaudin in the deal. He’s not a superstar by any means, but he’s a solid arm that can start or eat up innings in the pen. Piniella had him in Tampa bay, so he knows what he has and it’s a good sign that he obviously wanted him again. As good as all that is, I like it for Oakland, too. They got younger, but they didn’t give Harden away. They got some solid assets back, and they saved themselves from having to make a tough decision about Harden - an obviously talented pitcher with some injury problems - down the road. Stability is a big part of the Billy Beane system, and this move buys future stability at a fair price. The biggest impact of this deal, though, is the message it sends to the Cubs and their fans - this is the year.

2. Elton Brand reportedly has a deal with the Sixers. I like this one for a lot of reasons. From a karma perspective, I have to say that this one sits really well with me. Baron Davis lied to the fans in Golden State who had been nothing but good to him when he opted out and bolted to the Clippers. Proximity to Hollywood was the big draw it seems, but obviously playing with Brand was a big motivation as well. Because of Davis’ deal, though, the Clippers didn’t have the cap space to match the Philly offer. I especially love this move from the Philly perspective. The Sixers hosted the first NBA regular season game I ever saw live, so I have always had a soft spot for them. They were so impressive as serious underdogs against the Celtics in the playoffs, and they have a very good core of young players - Iguodala, Miller, Young, and rookie Speights. Brand gives them an interior presence they needed badly, and it gives him a system and a team that he can help lift to the next level. He never had that in L.A., and this team is better in my mind than the Clippers would have been with him and Davis. Despite the continued strength at the top, the East is wildly competitive, and this move makes the Sixers as good as any non-elite team in the conference. That had to factor significantly into Brand’s decision.

A couple other quick things:

I really don’t care about summer league basketball at all, but I do take good things from the play of Michael Beasley so far. He came out against the Bulls and absolutely ripped them up. The next day against the Nets he was terrible 1-for-13 from the floor. That’s rough, but he had the right attitude about it in the post-game meetings with the press - he wasn’t worried about it because bad games happen and, more importantly, the team won. He’s doing this all with a fractured sternum, so I can’t really think of any reason why the Heat would be anything but thrilled by their pick.

O.J. Mayo and Joe Alexander both signed today. I’m very happy to see that teams are getting their players on board quickly.

This is shaping up to be a strange day full of somewhat surprising news. Only one item is truly shocking, but all are of interest.

First, the shocking one. Baron Davis is a Clipper. Huh? After saying repeatedly that he wasn’t going to opt out of the final year of his contract in Golden State that’s exactly what he did. The only theory that I can say makes sense is that his agent told him that the L.A. team that plays in the Staples Center wanted him, and he signed before he did more digging. Why else would he go to the Clippers at this point in his career. He is an elite player, but he’s not a youngster anymore, and he doesn’t really have the luxury of time to build a contender. And there is a lot of building to do in L.A. - especially sine Elton Brand and Corey Maggette opted out this week. Brand may be back, but that’s not certain. In Golden Sate he had a team that was returning its core and had won 48 games last year. They were in trouble because they were in the very tough West, but so are the Clippers. This is a step back. A giant one. Davis is in the movie business, and he is from So Cal, but I honestly don’t understand why the lure of home would be this strong. It says pretty strongly to me that winning isn’t as important to Davis as I thought it was. He traded proximity to the film business for 25 fewer wins last year, and he has joined one of the worst run teams in existence.

Now the one that is totally ridiculous but not at all surprising. Brett Favre has reportedly told the Packers that he has the itch to play this year. Shocking. Not surprisingly, the Packers only comment was to say that they don’t have a comment. The fact that Favre didn’t see this coming means that he has the self awareness of a mosquito. Favre has to realize that the Pack moved on because he told them to move on. I suspect he will spend the season in Mississippi, but it would be kinda fun to see him in a different uniform. How about going to Minnesota for one year to lead his new team past his former team? Or maybe to Kansas City - they need a QB, but since they have no one to protect him and no one to throw to that seems unlikely. I guess the thing is that I don’t really care, and I really hope that this isn’t the beginning of another annual installment of the Favre soap opera.

Finally, kudos to the Pittsburgh Penguins. They sounded like they were going to make a serious mistake, but they avoided doing so. They were reportedly shopping Evgeni Malkin so that they could sign Marian Hossa, but ultimately they let Hossa go and extended Malkin for five more years. This is absolutely the right decision. Malkin is younger, he has more upside, and he showed by how he stepped up when Sidney Crosby was injured that he is a real player. Hossa has been on two teams that couldn’t win, and the fact that Pittsburgh made the final with him has as much to do with the rest of the team as him. Malkin had a lousy Stanley Cup final, but he will only learn from that, and he is going to get better. You can’t say the same about Hossa - what you see is what you get. Malkin has had trouble with the coaching staff reportedly, but that can be dealt with as it needs to be. They weren’t going to get good value by dealing Malkin, so this was the right move, and a positive move for the future. On the other side, Hossa took a surprising risk. He signed for one year with the Red Wings, the team that beat him in the Stanley Cup finals, and he signed for $7.4 million. It makes sense in the sense that the Wings probably have another deep run in them, but they couldn’t afford to sign him long term because of the other players they will have to pay starting next year, so this was the only way he could sign wit the team. If he has a good year then it will work out for him because he will be able to sign a rich long term deal with another team next year. It’s a huge gamble, though. More money and a longer term were on the table from several teams, so if he has a bad year this year or he gets hurt then it will cost him a fortune. In balance, though, I like the move - it shows that Hossa is hungry to win, and that makes me respect him more as a player than I previously have.

Finally, here’s something that you don’t see every day - Mats Sundin was offered a two year contract to be the highest paid player in the NHL, and it appears that  he has passed on it. Vancouver was the team that offered him the preposterous contract, and Montreal and Toronto were among the teams that were also interested. He says that he wants time to think on it, and that that may take several weeks. That seems to sound like he may retire or play in Europe. That’s not surprising given that he is 37, but it is surprising in that the delay almost certainly means that the big deals won’t be on the table any more if and when he does want to return. The move makes sense on some levels, but it’s not every day that you see a player turn down an obscene amount of money.

The NBA draft is over and it is pretty much time for us all to move on from that and from draft fascination for another year. Before I do that, though, there is one last thing that I want to touch on - a personal pet peeve. The second round of the NBA draft is ridiculous. A total waste of time. It should be eliminated immediately.

The contracts in the second round aren’t guaranteed. That means that one of three things happen. It’s not rare for a guy to find himself a roster spot, and even to become a contributing player. About as often, though, a guy isn’t good enough, or he isn’t given a chance, and he’s a free agent before the season even starts. The third and most annoying possibility is that a team picks a European project and stashes him in Europe forever. None of those are particularly interesting, none add a lot to the league, and there is a better way to accomplish all of it. Free agency. If a player doesn’t get picked in the first round then they should become free agents immediately. There are a pile of good reasons for this, but here are five for now:

1. Keep more kids in school - The second round acts as a safety net for too many marginal players. They think that they have a shot at making the first round and they know that they will make the second if they don’t, so they leave school early. If nothing else they earn themselves a spot at a training camp. If you took away that safety net then more kids would be more inclined to stay in school longer and college basketball would benefit.

2. Help kids who are good enough to come out - A player picked in the second round really is a second rate citizen. Free agency would help their causes. Currently they don’t get anything at all unless they make the team. Under free agency, players that were good enough to contribute to a team would be in a position to negotiate a contract with some form of guarantee in it.

3. Free agency would create more interest for fans - The second round creates pretty much no buzz. In fact, people seem to dismiss players in the second round because they know the reality of their position. If unpicked players became free agents as soon as the first round ended then there could be a signing frenzy for the players much like there is after the NFL draft. Properly promoted, that could be far more interesting than the current situation.

4. European players could be brought over when they are ready to play - It would make for a much more interesting situation if European players were free agents until they decided to come over and play in the NBA. That would make their eventual acquisition more competitive, and it would make European scouting a much more precise science, and therefore one with higher stakes.

5. Teams don’t care - Just look at the number of trades made this year in which a team traded several second round picks down the road for something now. That shows how much value teams think that the picks have - not much. The NBA was improved by cutting the draft down to two spots, and it would be further helped by this additional cuts.

The NBA Draft has arrived. It is the last of the four major drafts that fall in an unofficial two month draft season. It seems like what I should do is to make a mock draft, but that’s pretty much a waste of time - I stand no chance of being right, and there have already been trades, and there will likely be more, that make an accurate prediction of what will happen practically impossible. Instead, I’ll just look at a few notes:

1. If the Bulls do as expected they will pick Derrick Rose first. That’s going to go very well for them. I think that Rose is a special player who will soon be a superstar.

2. I think that Pat Riley must be on drugs. I can understand his desire to find a point guard to compliment Dwyane Wade, but I really don’t understand why you would pass up on Michael Beasley in the pursuit of that. Beasley is a scoring machine with a surprisingly well rounded game, and I don’t see why a team wouldn’t want that. If Riley truly decides he doesn’t want to take Beasley then I hope he trades down and gets a good package, because sticking in two and picking Mayo or Bayless would be monumentally stupid (and I like both players).

3. The best rumor I have heard all week is that Kevin Durant is pushing the Sonics to trade up and pick Beasley. He and Beasley have been friends for years, and they w ould love to play together. Wow. That would be scary to watch. My guess s that David Stern would be pretty excited by that move as well.

4. I think that Eric Gordon is eventually going to be looked at as the bargain of this draft. My guess is that the earliest he wil go is sixth to the Knicks, but if he hadn’t tailed off at the end of the season in Indiana then he would have likely been in the top three. I don’t thing you can blame him for how he finished the season given the mess that that team was, and when you watched him earlier in the year it took about three seconds to realize that you were watching greatness. He’s going to get picked behind a couple of guys who aren’t nearly as good as he is.

5. If Jerryd Bayless doesn’t end up being Miami’s pick then there is a chance that he could fall to the bottom of the lottery. That would be a major steal. I think Bayless is raw, and I am not convinced that he will end up as a full-time point guard in the pros, but the guy is so freakishly athletic it is sick. Other guys have been athletic freaks and haven’t worked out yet - paging Tyrus Thomas - but Bayless adds two more things to the mix - an impressive shooting touch, and a good game sense.

6. There are good draft classes and bad ones - this is going to be looked back upon as an impressive one, I think.

7. Likely lottery picks that don’t float my boat - Brooks Lopez (overvalued because of his height), Russell Westbrook (can”t always trust his decision making), Joe Alexander (great college story, not positive it will continue in the big time), and D.J. Augustin (thought long and hard about going back to school - he should have).

8. Best player in the bottom half of the first round? Chris Douglas-Roberts. I have a serious man-crush on the way this guy plays basketball.

9. The Knicks apparently want to move down, and they are dangling David Lee as part of a package to do so. If I was a team looking to move up I would be all over that. Lee has been pretty good in New York, and he has never been used as well as he could or should be. He’s full of upside. He’ll also be pretty happy to get out of New York because it has been a circus since he has been there, and it won’t get any better for him under Mike D’Antoni.

10. If Roy Hibbert becomes an impact pro I will eat my shirt.

11. Assuming the trade goes through, the Raptors made a heck of a trade to get Jermaine O’Neal for T.J. Ford. Ford hadn’t worked out, and if O’Neal is healthy again he could give Toronto just what they need to compete. Chris Bosh has to be a pretty happy guy right now.

I’m not an American, but my Canadian basketball team didn’t make the Olympics (it’s hard to do when Steve Nash is your only decent player and he isn’t playing on the national team any more), so when it comes to Beijing I will have to make due with cheering for the Americans. As a bandwagon fan, then, I have to say this - if the team doesn’t win the gold medal they should all retire from basketball immediately. This team is ridiculously dominant. I know that the world is catching up with them (or has mostly caught up), but it is completely impossible for a team to be as deep as the one just announced as the next version of the Dream Team.

To see how good this team is, just look at point guard. Jason Kidd will be the presumed starter. If he doesn’t get the nod, or he gets tired or is ineffective, then the backups are Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Any one of those three is as good as any point guard in the league, and likely the world. Other teams will be able to match them with a starter (maybe), but it is impossible for any team to go two deep with the Americans, never mind three deep.

The same is true everywhere else, too. Need scoring? Kobe, Lebron, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony. Those are pretty much the four purest scorers in the league (other than Allen Iverson, and he’d be on this team if I picked it), and they are all on the same side. Need shooting? Michael Redd. Defense? Tayshaun Prince, or Carlos Boozer. Inside touch? Few better than Chris Bosh. Rebounding? Dwight Howard is the best there is right now. This team is ridiculous.

There won’t be any value in this team, but I don’t suspect that there will be any in betting against them, either.

I was almost right about the NBA Championship. I thought it would end in six, and I thought it would be pretty one-sided along the way. The only problem is that I thought that the Lakers would be the ones singing that famous Queen song when it was all over.

No one can second guess the Celtics or take anything away from them after that game six performance. To win at home is one thing, but to do it by 39 against one of the best offenses in the league, and certainly the best player in the league, is unbelievable. I didn’t give the Celtics much credit, and certainly not enough. I guess Danny Ainge is more than just a bad second baseman for the Blue Jays after all.

I also have to give a giant mea culpa to Kevin Garnett. He played well all year, but he showed a killer spirit that I didn’t think he had in this series. Maybe Flip Saunders was the problem in Minny after all. I also thought that Garnett at least shared the blame.

A few things strike me as particularly interesting here. First, going from worst to first in a salary cap era is even more remarkable than it would normally be. Second, I guess defense really does win championships. One of these times I guess I will have to start believing that. Third, here’s an incredible stat - the Lakers were 10-4-1 against the spread in the first three rounds of the playoffs, but Boston covered all six games in the finals. That’s dominance. It also shows that the public just can’t get over their love affair with the Lakers.

As much as I don’t love the Celtics, I have to admit that seeing Kevin Garnett hug Bill Russell after the game was pretty darned cool.

See you next year, NBA. Or in a week or so for the draft.

Is it just me, or does it seem a bit crazy that we are almost a week into June and there is still another series to play? Basketball and summer should not be sharing space. Thankfully, I don’t see this series taking up as much time as it should. Pretty much every major or minor media outlet I have seen in the last couple of days has tabbed the Lakers to win, and most have them doing it in five or six games. Normally I like to be a bit of a contrarian, but I just can’t do it here. I think the Lakers are going to win, and I think they will do it convincingly.

My reasons aren’t particularly profound. Kobe Bryant is so hungry and determined that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that he eats live kittens for breakfast. Phil Jackson makes Kobe look like a pacifist. Those two guys know how to win, and they are both pretty desperate for that feeling. On the other side you have a team led by a guy, Kevin Garnett, that has made a career out of early playoff exits and a coach who has never before made it out of the first round. On that basis alone I’d take the Lakers. I also don’t think that the Celtics have seen many offenses like the Lakers have (because there aren’t many), and I’m not convinced that they can effectively contain it. The Lakers have a habit of turning games into shootouts, and I don’t see how Boston is going to keep up if that happens. I’m a little nervous because it seems so clear and that is never a good thing, but I’m still going to stick with it.

There is one interesting anomaly in it all. The Lakers are pretty much universally backed, yet the Celtics are favored in the first game. It’s only 2.5 points so it isn’t overwhelming, but what is interesting is that about 60 percent of bettors are on the Celtics. That means that most people think that the Lakers will win and they will do it in less than seven, but they won’t win game one. Sometimes bettors don’t make a lot of sense when you look too closely.

A couple of things have me scratching  my head this morning.

First, the Bulls are reportedly about to hire Doug Collins as their next coach. Huh? With the first pick in the draft and a pretty decent existing lineup the best you could do is pull a guy off the scrap heap? Surely the lure of coaching Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose would have been enough to hire someone who is, well, good. Collins has already been a coach for the Bulls, and not a particularly good one. He’s also been at the helm for the Pistons and he wasn’t very good there, either. Finally, he was reunited with Michael Jordan with the Wizards. How can we possibly forget what a rousing and inspiring success that whole era was? Overall, he has a decent but not overwhelming regular season record of 332-287, but it’s in the playoffs that he has shown hs true incompetence - 15-23. He didn’t manage to get anything done with the Bulls in the playoffs, but soon after he left the team won three in a row. This move is totally without logic for the Bulls management team. Or maybe not. This must be what they are thinking - Collins hired Phil Jackson as an assistant, and when Collins was fired for being inept Jackson took the helm and won six titles in nine years. Maybe management sees this as the easiest way to identify the next Phil Jackson. That’s the only thing that makes sense, because as a coach Collins make a decent broadcaster. I wrote earlier that I was very optimistic about the Bulls next year because of the first pick and their other tools. A lot of that optimistic will drain away if they go through with this ridiculous hire. It’s not just his record that makes it ridiculous, though. They fired Scott Skiles because he was loud and fiery and it wasn’t working for the players anymore. The mogical thing, then, is to bring in a guy who is loud and fiery and shouts at his players. That’s the ticket. If I was a Bulls season ticket holder I’d be on the phone to cancel them as soon as they hired this goof. I suspect that I would have to wait on hold for a while.

The other thing that I don’t understand at all is why James Blake insists on sucking at the French Open. He was favored at -240 to win his second round match today against Ernests Gulbis, a 19 year old Latvian who is ranked 80th in the world and has only played in four previous grand slams. Not only did Blake lose the match, but he lost it in four sets. The first set went to a tiebreaker, but Gulbis dominated it. Blake fought back to take the second set, but then he folded. He looked confused, and he wasn’t playing his typical game. This is very frustrating. Blake is the 8th ranked player in the world. He’s not a clay specialist (the fact that Americans have a mental block against clay is another entirely different, though equally ridiculous, issue that I won’t deal with here), but he has had some success on clay both in the past and this year. He made the finals in clay in Houston this year. He made the quarters in the Rome Masters before losing to Stanislas Wawrinka, who went on to make the final and take a set off of Novak Djokovic. Blake has better surfaces, but the 8th ranked player in the world should be able to win their second round match in a major against an outmatched opponent on any surface. Period. Further, we should be able to trust an American ranked in the top ten to come through as a -240 favorite. Blake is an immensely talented player, but he really needs to get his head together before his window closes completely.

Here are two things that I’m thinking about concerning the conference finals.

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Well, I know one thing with more certainty than I did a couple of hours ago - I like the Bulls next year. I liked them anyway - they were going to have a much better coach (presumably), and they have the talent to be reasonably competitive if they are healthy. Don’t forget, at the start of the season they thought that they were just one player - Kobe Bryant - away. This year was a disaster, but it worked out just fine for them in the end. Against massive odds (just a 1.7 percent chance) they won the draft lottery, and they will have the top pick in the draft. They have three choices. They can adjust their perception of Kirk Hinrich and pick Derrick Rose to run the point. They can throw Michael Beasley into their front court and immediately improve their offense quite significantly. Or, they can trade the pick away.

Any of those choices are possible, but if I were a betting man (and I am), I would lean towards Beasley as the most likely, and the trade as the least likely. Beasley would add an instant inside scoring presence, and he would free up the rest of the talented but troubled group of forwards to play more up to their ability because they won’t have as much pressure to score. Luol Deng would especially benefit from having less of a starring role.

If that happens then Rose would head to Miami. That could be very interesting. Dwyane Wade has never had a truly elite point guard to play with. If Shawn Marion could get along with this freakish point guard better than he did with the last one he played with then he could benefit significantly as well. This is another team that could get better pretty quickly. Both Utah and New Orleans got much better fast when they got their young point guards, and neither team had stars of the caliber of Marion or Wade.

I won’t go into as much detail, but the players would fit in just fine if they went in the opposite order as well. This is when the draft is at it’s best - both of these teams were worse than they should be, and both will be significantly improved next year thanks to their pick. Given that they play in the joke of a conference that is the East it wouldn’t be particularly surprising to see either make the playoffs as soon as next year if their new player fits in nicely and adjusts quickly. In fact, I expect it from the Bulls.

The most entertaining aspect to this draft? Definitely the Mike D’Antoni factor. He seems to have screwed over Chicago when he took the New York job, and now Chicago and not the Knicks have a shot at the player he most covets.

This season isn’t over yet, so it is way too early to be thinking seriously about next year’s NBA season. The hiring of Mike D’Antoni by the Knicks is so interesting in so many ways, though, that it is worth looking ahead for a bit.

The first place to start is the money. The Knicks clearly make way too much of it. They will be paying D’Antoni $6 million a year for four years. That’s on top of almost $50 million in dead money that they have paid or will pay Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas to not coach. Imagine what a competent, reasonably managed team could do with all of that cash.

There are some reasons to like this hire. The guy has averaged 58 wins a year for four years, so he can obviously coach. His style is great to watch, and offensive players who fit in love it, so the team shouldn’t struggle to bring in players when they have space for them. Combined with Donnie Walsh, D’Antoni finally represents a much-needed new era of good management.

That paints a pretty picture, but reality is far more bleak. D’Antoni’s success was largely fueled by the fact that Steve Nash is a hall-of-fame lock. Now he has to work with Nate Robertson and Jamal Crawford. That’s like trading a Porsche for a Pinto. This could all change if they get lucky and land Derrick Rose of Jerryd Bayless in the draft, but for now there just isn’t a floor general with the skill and basketball IQ to make D’Antoni’s system work. D’Antoni is fiercely proud of his system - he wouldn’t change even a bit in Phoenix even though that meant his departure - so it seems unlikely that he would adapt to his team. That means it could be a long year.

Zach Randolf and Eddy Curry ensure that the Knicks have no payroll flexibility, and that they won’t have the speed and creativity to make D’Antoni’s system work. Walsh will have to work miracles to get rid of them. There won’t be any real salary cap space clearing up any time soon, so D’Antoni will have to find patience he hasn’t had to show.

The Knicks haven’t known the meaning of the word defense since Jeff Van Gundy left the team. They’ve also only made the playoffs once since he left in 2002, and that was without a winning record. With that in mind it doesn’t necessarily make sense to look to D’Antoni as the solution to the woes.

Back to the money for a second. The fact that D’Antoni went to New York instead of Chicago even though the Bulls have a much more talented roster full of players that are much more suited to his style is a clear sign that the coach made a money-driven decision. That’s fine, but it is tough to believe that his motivation and inspiration will be all that it could be if (wen) the road is rough because he was looking to get away from Steve Kerr and bit into the shiniest apple.

I think that D’Antoni is a wildly talented coach, and I am not willing to count out his chances of winning in New York entirely. I just sure won’t be in a real hurry to bet on him next year until he gives me a reason to. That being said, the Knocks are instantly about 112 times better with him at the helm instead of the Thomas train wreck.