Built Ford Tough

I saw the comment about the Bucks promising Sanders that they would pick him a week or so ago, and I posted about it in the Raptors draft thread, but I never really believed it as the poster didn't post a source with it or anything like that, so I never mentioned it in this thread. Chad Ford talked about this in his latest blog, as well as the site that Dash posted. I definitely think that this isn't just a rumor as there seems to be multiple people reporting it. I don't think it is a bad move at all considering the Bucks need for a power forward and the fact that there is a really good chance that guys like Udoh, Patterson and Davis will be off the board when the Bucks pick. They might as well trade down and take Sanders, while hopefully gaining another pick in the process and using it on somebody like Jordan Crawford, Elliot Williams (although there seems to be a lot of interest from Houston and Sacramento in him, James Anderson (if he falls to late 1st round/early 2nd) or some other two guard that can shoot. If Henry is still on the board at 15, I think it would be a mistake trading down to take Sanders though. I think that Henry would be an amazing fit in Milwuakee.

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=16536 Well, ok, it is not a blockbuster. Who do you think the Blazers want at 34 that they don't think will be there at 44? I haven't really heard any rumors about Portland and who they like, but maybe they take a chance on somebody like Jarvis Varnardo, or some other specialist, and hope that their one really strong area will translate to the NBA?

Why would the Clippers draft Aldrich? He makes absolutely no sense for them considering they already have Chris Kaman, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and Craig Smith (is he a free agent), while having absolutely no small forward? The Clippers are going to draft one of Babbitt, Hayward, George or Henry at 8, unless Aminu drops. I would be pretty shocked if they drafted anybody other than a 2/3. As far as Cousins goes, it isn't inconceivable that he falls to Detroit at 7. It sounds like the Wolves are set on Johnson and that the top three picks are going to be Wall, Turner and Favors. So that leaves Sacramento, Golden State and Detroit. Sacramento sounds like they are going to pick him, but they are also really high on Greg Monroe and it wouldn't be a surprise at all if they went with him instead. Golden State may not want a center like him as they continue to play Nellie-ball, and Aminu is an ideal fit in that kind of offense. That leaves him falling to Detroit. I don't think that Cousins will fall past Sacramento, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he did.

From my understanding it will be: Locks John Wall Evan Turner DeMarcus Cousins Derrick Favors Al-Farouq Aminu Greg Monroe Cole Aldrich Paul George Gordan Hayword Wesley Johnson Ekpe Udoh Up in the Air Avery Bradley Ed Davis Eric Bledsoe Xavier Henry Patrick Patterson Luke Babbitt They usually invite around 14 or 15 people, so take your pick of 3 or 4 of Davis, Bradley, Henry, Patterson, Babbitt and Bledsoe for the final 3 spots. Don't hold me to this though as I have no actual fact of who has been invited or who hasn't, but from everything that I have read and my own opinion, I think this is fairly safe assumption to make.

I question the validity of that site. I mean they didn't even bother to edit the thing or something, or they simply don't know that the Heat are picking 18th in the draft and not 19th, like they have written there. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the Raptors draft Patterson though, but I find it fairly hard to believe that they have promised him already, maybe with a later pick, but I don't think they would have promised him at 13 already. I could be wrong though. For what it is worth, DX changed their pick for the Raptors from Bradley to Patterson. I honestly have absolutely no idea what the Raptors are going to do on draft night though. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them take any number of players. Aldrich, Bradley, George, Bledsoe, Udoh, Patterson, Henry and even Orton (although I don't think they will pick him) are all players I can see them drafting, and that doesn't include players like Ed Davis or Al-Farouq Aminu who might drop out the top 10. This is probably the first time since the Arajuo draft that I have literally no sense of who they are going to pick. Couple of new things. Cole Aldrich and Devin Ebanks are coming to Toronto for a 2nd workout tomorrow. According to Chad Ford's latest Insider blog, the Raptors may prefer Bledsoe over Bradley now as well. He also reports that the Raptors are one of the most active teams in trade talks and are looking to move up in the draft, which we already knew. This should be a fairly interesting draft night though. I get the feeling that there is going to be a lot of surprises and could be a fair amount of pick swapping and trades going on.

Why would the Raptors want Williams when they already have Jarrett Jack and Jose Calderon at the point, both of which are of the same caliber as Williams is? Calderon is slightly worse while you can argue that Jack may be the better player all things considered. I am sure that the Raptors are just itching to trade Bosh for Jamison as well. I mean, who wouldn't want to have a starting front court of Andrea Bargnani and Antawn Jamison while paying them a combined $38M to jack up jumpers and get lit up for 30 points a night each? That is a match made in heaven. Varejao and Hickson are decent pieces, but why would the Raptors give the Cavs the best one two punch in the NBA so that they could acquire Anderson Varejao and JJ Hickson? Neither of them are worth it considering they have no fear of Bosh signing outright with the Cavs as all they could offer is the MLE. And who exactly are these other pieces that the Cavs can offer? Jamario Moon? Been there, done that. Anthony Parker? Great role player during his time, but that ship has sailed. Daniel Gibson? Right, just what the Raptors need, another one dimension no defense shooter. Delonte West? Umm, no thanks. So yeah, I don't know what else to say other than... LMFAO! EDIT: Don't get me wrong, the Cavs are a good team, but that is because of the fact that these players all compliment each other so well and are basically perfect fits next to LeBron in their own ways (shooting, finishing ability, defense etc...). Take them away from that near perfect situation that they are in and put them somewhere else and they won't look nearly as good.

I love how he is getting crap for saying that he wants to be the center piece of a team. The guy is a 26 year old 22/10 power forward who is entering into the prime of his career. Sure, he will realistically never be the best player on a championship team, but what do you want him to say? "I'm not good enough to lead a team anywhere so I am going to ride LeBron's or Dwyane's coattails"? So can somebody explain to me why it is wrong for Bosh to strive to be the best player on a championship team? Worst case scenario for Bosh is that he is unable to lead a team anywhere and gets traded to a team and provides the KG/Gasol role. How can you hate on a guy for wanting to lead a team to a championship though? Its not like this is some scrub talking or anything like that either as Bosh is a top 15 player in the NBA and arguably top 3 ast his own position. I don't think that a team with Bosh as the best player will ever win a championship either, but to hate on him for striving to be that player? That is just hilarious. I would much rather have a player who isn't confident in himself.

If it meant dumping Jose Calderon's contract on the Cavs, then yeah, they were interested. I highly doubt that the Raptors would be interested in Mo Williams if the trade didn't involve one of their bad contracts, so Calderon or Turkoglu, and since Williams is also a PG, it would make no sense to trade Turkoglu for him and have Calderon, Jack and Williams on the team. Obviously this is just speculation on my part as I am no more informed than anybody who reads Raptor rumours, watches their TV shots/interviews and things like that, but I imagine part of the aura surrounding Williams was dumping Calderon's contract on the Cavs. I don't see why they make a trade for him if they aren't moving Calderon though. As far as Bosh is concerned though, Cleveland is honestly one of the few teams that I wouldn't even bother signing and trading Bosh to if I was Colangelo. It may be because I don't think Hickson is ever going to be anything other than an energy big and think that without a playmaker like LeBron he wouldn't contribute much of anything. Any pick that they could offer would be at best the 27th overall or something, and I would not be interested in abosrbing a contract like the ones that Mo Williams or Antawn Jamison have in order to make the trade work. I would honestly rather simply sign and trade him to New York or some place with cap room for a massive TPE instead of taking on Cleveland's spare parts. Nothing against Cleveland but the only interesting thing that they have on their roster is LeBron James, and maybe, Anderson Varejao, but in the words of Chris Bosh, Varejao would be an addition, not a center piece. A trade with Varejao as the center piece wouldn't interest me at all.

I think that Patrick Patterson would be a real nice fit with the Bucks. Patterson isn't nearly as undersized as people had originally thought and his size was supposed to be the biggest knock on him as a player. He was too small for the 4 and doesn't have the skill set to play the 3. With that not being an issue, it doesn't surprise me that he has went from being projected in the 20-26 range to being considered in the lottery now. He may not have the upside as some of the other players in this draft, but I don't think you have to worry for a second about him being a bust. Best case scenario he is a solid role player power forward and worst case scenario I think he is a good 7th or 8th man off of the bench good for 20-25 minutes a night. He showed this past season at Kentucky that he is all about the team and will do whatever it takes to win as he completely adjusted his game and took a lesser role on the team when Wall, Cousins and Bledsoe came to the team. I also think that him and Bogut would compliment each other nicely. Patterson is more than capable of playing outside of the paint and can definitely knock down mid range jumpers. With Bogut's post game and great passing out of the post, it will create some nice opportunities for Patterson, and with Patterson's ability to hit mid range shots, it will open things up for Bogut down low. Bogut's length and shot blocking will help compensate for any lack of size that Patterson may give up on the defensive end as well. Throw in Xavier Henry and Paul George as players who make a lot of sense for the Bucks as well, assuming that one of them fall. Out of the three that I mentioned, I would imagine that at least one of them falls to the Bucks though.

So I was unable to watch Italy's first game as I was at school, and now I have to wake up at 7AM on the only day that I have to sleep in to watch them? Oh well, looks like I'll be waking up at 7 tomorrow morning as I'm not sure if I will even be able to watch another game of theirs all tournament long.

You are dead to me!

The only complaint that I had in regards to the reffing was that in the 4th quarter they basically decided that they were going to ref the game completely different than they did through the first three quarters. There weren't many bad calls on the Celtics as the large majority of the fouls that they committed were legitimate fouls, it is just the refs started calling the game a lot tighter in the 4th quarter than they did the previous three. The only thing that I would say was a bad call was when Gasol "blocked" Garnett on one end of the floor (the block itself was debatable as I can see the argument either way) with no foul called but on the very next possession they called Garnett for a foul on what was basically the same exact play. Other than that though, I don't think you can say that the Celtics fouls weren't fouls by definition, it is just that the refs let a lot of similar stuff go earlier in the game. The fouls aren't what lost the Celtics the game though. It was their inability to do anything offensively in the 4th quarter. They basically stopped moving and ran iso after iso, which completely shocked me considering the fact that ball movement was the key to their offensive success all game long and, really, all series long. Whenever they did a good job of moving the ball and moving without the ball, they were getting very good looks at the basket, but when they started to run nothing but isolations and clear outs for anybody other than Garnett, who did a great job I thought in this situations when Gasol was matched up with him, their offense faltered. Credit the Lakers defense for this as last nights game was definitely the best defense that I have seen the Kobe and Gasol led Lakers play over the past 3 seasons. They did a fantastic job on the Celtics last night. One thing in response to kingfish's post though. Lets not re-write history here. There were plenty of people who complained about the free throw discrepancy during that game. I didn't post on OTR back then, so I don't know exactly what the response was on here, but the two message boards that I posted on then had an absurd amount of people talking about the lopsided free throws and complainig about it. OTR may not have had a problem with it, and that wouldn't surprise at all, but there were plenty of people that had a problem with the vast difference in free throws during that game. As for the actual topic at hand (Sheed going to the refs locker room) nobody really knows if Sheed was actually going in there to be confrontational or what. Judging from Sheed's past it is a safe assumption to make, but from what I have read and heard, it really didn't sound like he was trying to cause any trouble. It sounded to me like this was his last NBA game that he will ever play in and he wanted to say a few words. I could be wrong though, and I am sure we will never actually know the true intentions unless somebody comes outright and says it.

Sort of like this one? Knocked out in the 2nd round is just as good as winning an NBA Championship? Really? Winning 47 games in 94-95 where Jordan played 17 games and then winning 72 games in Jordan's first full season back are the same? Or was it the addition of Rodman that was the only reason why the Bulls had a 25 game improvement? And what has Kobe done without a great forward/center in his career? Missed the playoffs once and had two first round exits. The Lakers get Gasol and what happens? Three Finals trips and two NBA Championships. Whatever though, Kobe and Jordan arguments are worse than Kobe and LeBron arguments. You can argue that Kobe is more skilled but Kobe is not the greater player than Jordan, at least not yet. That is all I am going to say because arguments like these are completely pointless.

Stay classy...

I think it is pretty fitting how this game went down for the Lakers though. The entire series, outside of Game 1, Kobe had to play lights out basketball for the lakers to be close. Gasol was good, but nothing speical, Odom was invisible, Artest struggled offensively and was inconsistent defensively and their bench gave them nothing. In this game, outside of rebounding, he was basically awful, but the rest of the team really stepped up, especially Artest and, in the 4th, Gasol. As an impartial viewer who really didn't care who won and was just hoping for a great series, I think it is safe to say that I got what I wanted from this series. Congrats to the Lakers and their fans.

Too bad it was traveling. :glasses: Not that you can blame the refs though considering that would be virtually impossible of a call to make full speed. And two huge threes from Wallace and Artest. And now Allen drills one, haha.

Celtics have been just terrible on the offensive end of the floor in this quarter. This is why they needed to put seperation between theirselves and the Lakers during the third quarter. You could just see this coming from the minute the game started.

Does anybody want to win this game? The Celtics have completely stopped doing anything on offense, the Lakers are bricking free throw after free throw and nobody is taking advantage of the other teams struggles. Garnett has played a great game tonight though. I've been really impressed with him. He clearly doesn't have the quickness and athleticism that he used to have, but he is still a very effective player when he is playing like this.

Why do the Lakers bigs insist on fronting in the post? You would think that after they have constantly been getting burned by fronting that they would adjust either by stop fronting or putting pressue on the ball. I just don't understand why they continue to front without making any adjustments.

Celtics need to stop running Pierce isolations if they want to wint his game. Artest is playing way too good of defense to continue running those. Not only is Pierce not getting anything, it has completely stagnated their offense and the Celtics are at their best when they have moving on offense. Should be a fun 4th quarter.

Apperantly the deal is dead, according to that same poster over on RealGM.

Kobe is struggling with his shot, but you have to give a lot of credit to the Celtics defense, especially Ray Allen who has done as good of a job as the primary defender on Kobe as you could ask for. He has struggled with his shot yet again, but he has more than made up for it with his outstanding defense on Kobe. I would still be uncomfortable if I was Rivers though. You can't help but get the feeling that this will be the type of game where the Lakers just hang around all game long and come through late. And yes! Scal is back baby!

I loved watchng Scal on that 2nd last possession of the game. Completely locked down Odom. On a serious note, this has been a great game. Low scoring and a lot of easy looks have been missed for both teams, but the defensive intensity on both sides of the ball has been top notch. Both the Lakers and Celtics have been playing superb defense which has resulted in the low scoring. One thing that would worry me if I was Doc Rivers is that the Celtics are only up by 6 despite the fact that Kobe and are shootinig a combined 6-26 from the field. The Lakers have managed to make up for it through offensive rebounding and the play of Ron Artest in the 2nd, but you can't expect both Kobe and gasol to continue this kind of poor shooting from the field. If even one of them gets going and the Celtics continue to give up so many second chance opportunities, I can't see the Celtics being able to win this game. Sheed has played really well today though. He has done a good job of keeping his composure and has been fairly effective in the post on offense. He has done a great job defending Gasol as well. He can have such a huge impact defensively when he actually has his head on straight. The only thing that he needs to improve on is reboundning, but it is pretty hard to keep odom, Gasol and Bynum off of the glass when you are giving up so much size and length. Anyways, very entertaining first half. I still think that the Lakers are in a great position though. You can't expect both Kobe and Gasol to struggle like this and I don't see the Celtics being able to keep the Lakers off of the offensive glass without Perkins.

You could make the argument that Odom was the one who initiated the contact/tie up on the play and if you want to call a foul on that play the foul should've been called on Odom and not Garnett. I wouldn't say that it was a terrible call but you can argue that it should've been called on Odom instead of KG. However, KG got away with one earlier in the quarter on a similar play where I thought he clearled committed a foul so it basically evened out. EDIT: When there were all of those people diving on the floor around Bynum, did anybody else have a feeling that something would happen to Bynum?

Are you kidding me? I thought that was awesome, and I'm not usually one to like corny stuff like that. And if the Celtics don't start doing a better jof on the defensive glass, this game is going to get out of hand. They are just lucky that the Lakers have only made 6 of their 22 field goal attempts. I don't think you can expect poor shooting like that all game long, especially if all of these shots are right around the rim. Pierce has done a nice job of helping on Gasol so far in the first. Great job of drawing the charge on Pierce.