6.25.2007

NBA DRAFT BREAKING NEWS

We've decided to live blog the draft. For the last few months, we've been in intense negotiations with Nikoloz Tskitishvili's agent and we've been trying to get him to sit in on the draft with us. We finally brokered a deal and Skeets will be here to give us his vast insight.

Also, to everyone who says that we are giving Simmons a hard time:

1) He asks for it by calling himself the GM of Common Sense. A lot of the statements that we pointed out lacked common sense. Dwight Howard being a bust? Yao being a bust? Joe Forte being good?

2) A lot of people have stated that Simmons has a pretty good track record. Granted that may be true, but a lot of that "good track record" is just the mainstream point of view. If someone can point out some sleepers or unorthodox calls that he's made about the draft, then we'll give you some credit. Otherwise, enjoy your time in hell with ESPN.

3) We've been talking about Ricky Davis for a long time on this blog (just go through the archives). Recently, Simmons has decided to talk about Ricky a little too much for our liking. Stay away from our idol, Simmons. You don't want it with us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sensitive much?

Ok--I'm with you that Simmons could (still) use to be taken down a peg. His Yao bashing kills me in retrospect--almost as much as it annoyed me then. The guy is just the hardest-working star in the NBA. I love seeing Barkley (who hated Yao enough to make the donkey bet with Kenny Smith, etc.) now constantly singing Yao's praises.

Still, Simmons was sort of common-sensical about all three guys that you cite again. Not only is Yao super slow, he faced huge transition problems; can you think of any NBA star who's ever come close? And in 2004, the most recent big men out of high school (Chandler, Curry, Kwame) had all been disappointments on some level, whereas Okafor was proven. Finally, Joe Forte had tons of talent--he was ACC player of the year as a sophomore--it was just his attitude that got him in trouble.

Basically, Simmons played it safe all those times. What he needs to be busted on is the "no balls association" line he's using now, because it's a total departure from his own style.

I'm not going to look through his old draft stuff, but I do remember him getting Charlie Villanueva right--not during the draft, but immediately following, when he said that the negative reaction (the conventional wisdom being that Charlie V was a bust-to-be) would motivate him to be a good player. And what do you know, he was ROY runner-up (and in another, Chris Paul-less year, could have won it).