Monday 2 July 2007

NBA Drafts


Oh it's the time again to go harvesting and let's see who's basket is full and who has the tares and chaff while the others take the ripe fruit.
NBA Drafting time :
OK for the uninformed 'The Draft' is when the NBA teams which number thirty (30)recruit the raw talent from college basketball (US), and of late top European basketball leagues and Chinese too.
The 30 teams are divided into two conferences; Eastern and Western which are further divided into divisions; with
Atlantic,
Central and
SouthEast making the Eastern Conference while the
SouthWest,
NorthWest and
Pacific make the Western Conference. Each division has 5 teams.
Back to the NBA Draft, the recruitment follows a pattern where the lowly performing teams in the conferences are given the chance to take the pick of the best players from the talents described from leagues in US College, Americas,European and Asian basketball talents.
This year Portland, Seattle,Atlanta,Memphis and Boston got the chance to take their pick, and they did make it good.
The following is a list of the top 14 picks for the 2007-8 season;
1. Portland Trailblazers -- Greg Oden
2. Seattle Supersonics -- Kevin Durant
3. Atlanta Hawks -- Al Horford
4. Memphis Grizzlies -- Mike Conley Jr.
5. Seattle Supersonics -- Jeff Green
6. Milwaukee Bucks -- Yi Jianlian
7. Minnesota Timberwolves -- Corey Brewer
8. Golden State Warriors -- Brandan Wright
9. Chicago Bulls -- Joakim Noah
10. Sacramento Kings -- Spencer Hawes
11. Atlanta Hawks -- Acie Law
12. Philadelphia 76ers -- Thaddeus Young
13. New Orleans Hornets -- Julian Wright
14. Los Angeles Clippers -- Al Thornton

The interesting bit for me is that most of the picks will end up playing for more than 1-2 teams before really standing out on their own and even winning the NBA Play-off Championship ring. Already 10 players have been traded to other teams even before bouncing the ball ....see sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2007/index
The other bit is that enough of the guys are 'big men'-players playing in the center position,power and shooting forwards-well does this mean the game will in future be won in the paint ? All the same, it was a nice mix of Americans, Europeans(at least 15) and Asians(at least 5){ too bad Africans are only drafted by virtue of being naturalised Americans or otherwise EXCEPT for some Cameroonian ,Congo-formerly Zaire,Egypt & Central African drafted in 2005, can't we get our act together man ?}
Well for those interested check out the following link for more details
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2007/index

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