Draft Heist

The NFL draft is now in the books. It was a major event like every NFL event tends to be these days. They moved it from the weekend to a Thursday kickoff a few years back. I don't know why, but should be for money and prime-time viewership or something like that. I have not really kept up with it that closely ever since it moved to Thursdays - I liked round 1 better on Saturdays. But I did catch some of it this year. The first big news was the Niners swapping their 3rd pick for the Bears 2nd pick plus a bunch of extra assets. The Bears then took North Carolina QB Mitchell Trubisky. The experts say he is a very inexperienced QB and a shaky pick at best. The fact that Bears traded up to get him makes it worse. But the real head-scratcher was them moving up just one spot to get him ahead of the Niners. That makes no sense unless there were other teams trying to trade with the Niners for him and undercut the Bears. Supposedly that was not the case at all and the Bears seem to have successfully bargained and negotiated with and against themselves. If the team right ahead of you is willing to trade that pick, that means they are not interested in the player you want at that spot. If they were, they wouldn't be trading that pick with you and willingly losing that guy to you.

So instead of rolling the dice, calling the Niners bluff, sticking with the 3rd spot, and picking their guy, they gave up a lot of assets to get to 2 from 3. Worst case, you won't get Trubisky and have to settle for another QB at 3. It's not like you are losing out on a consensus number 1 QB like a Peyton Manning or an Andrew Luck. Believe me, if it was Andrew Luck, Niners would have been trading up to 1 instead of dropping down to 3. The irony is, the 2 teams ahead of the Bears were probably the only teams that needed a QB worse than the Bears. Still, neither cared about Trubisky and the Bears went after him like he is Tom Brady and Cam Newton rolled into one. On the flip side, the QB position is the most important one on the field and I guess you go after the one you like at all costs. May be the Bears know something the rest of us don't. They may not deserve credit for being smart with this pick, but kudos to them for being brave. It was a great start to the draft providing folks like me on the couch a nice chuckle. Good luck to Trubisky and the Bears. After all, he can't be much worse than Jay Cutler, another QB the Bears gave a lot to acquire back in the day. I was driving from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois for work around that time and I still remember how excited the Bears faithful sounded on the radio the entire drive about Cutler.

The Niners under the rookie GM John Lynch deserve a lot credit for that Bears heist. He then used some of the assets at his disposal to trade back in to the later stages of the first round to get Alabama's Reuben Foster, who was free-falling due to off-field issues. The fact that Lynch was considering Foster even at 2 or 3 tells you how highly he thought of him. Lynch was supposedly talking trade with every team from pick 12 or 13 once Faster started to slide. Niners finally got him at 31 just as the Saints were calling Foster to inform him that they are going to pick him at 32. Little did they know the Niners stepped in ahead of them to take Foster. Great rookie draft for Lynch and I will give him a high grade overall. The third round QB pick of Iowa's C.J. Beathard was questionable. But you could tell that was coach Kyle Shanahan's choice. You have to trust his offensive instincts and hope Kyle is right for Lynch's sake. The Arizona Cardinals did good with their picks too. I like how they focussed their high value picks on defense. It was a surprise that they did not draft a QB though they can use one and they also hinted all along they would draft one. The consensus grade for them seems to be hovering around a B. I give them A+ for the names they drafted. You can't go wrong with a Budda and a Haason.

In the NBA playoffs, the first round had lesser drama than I expected. Houston dispatched Oklahoma rather easily and only the Clippers-Jazz went to a game 7. Not sure why though. Once Blake Griffin was hurt, Jazz should have run the Clips off the joint. They did not, but they won games 5 and 7 on the road to put the Clippers to bed. The Jazz have to play a lot better against he Warriors if they want to be a legitimate threat. They have some pieces that can cause the dubs some discomfort. But they can't play young like they did against the Clips. It looks like we are headed towards a Rockets-Warriors western conference finals anyways. I doubt if the Spurs can beat the Rockets. The Rockets are the kind of team that the Spurs can totally handle in the past. But this Spurs team is not in the same class anymore. They have the coach, experience, championship respect, and pedigree. But they don't have the same players on the floor. There is only so much Kwahi can do on both ends of the floor and they need to resurrect a versions of LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol from 3 years back to fortify this roster. The Rockets should have enough firepower to beat the Spurs 4 out of 7 times and if the Rockets want to show us that they can threaten the Warriors for real, they have to dispatch the Spurs in 5 or 6 games.  If Houston makes it, the Warriors would have missed the Clippers and the Spurs entirely in the last 3 playoffs.  No big deal and definitely not the dubs' fault, but it is an amazing and a very unlikely coincidence in the West.

The big NBA story this off-season  is going to be about what happens to the Clippers with the pending free agencies of CP3, Blake, and Redick among others. "Blow them up" seems to be the consensus, but I am torn. I am always wary of blowing a good team up when their stars are still young. Sure, this group is not able to get over the hump. Actually, they don't even seem to be able to get to the hump to try and get over it. So may be they have to rebuild. But then again, how easy is it to find players like Chris Paul and Blake Griffin again? Let me tell you that it's real hard. Those kinds of players don't grow on trees. I never understood how blowing up a team with such players who get your team to the top half of the Western Conference every year is going to help. I would tweak it rather than blow it up. Thats what they may do anyways and it does make sense in one respect. Blake seems to be injury-prone and may be you don't want to back up the Brinks truck for him. If you can swap him for some younger assets, may be reloading around CP3 and that younger asset is the way to go. Of course, that may not be ideal for CP3 personally and he may want to go somewhere he can win right away. In that case, may be blowing this up and rebuilding might be a necessary evil and thats probably where the media is coming from in the first place with that take. If I was Clippers owner Steve Balmer, I will try to keep CP3, trade Blake and go from there. Lets see what the crazy maverick does.

Body Blows in the NBA

One of my buddies calls basketball a deceptively dangerous sport that's more brutal on our bodies than most other sports. He is somebody who played both tackle football and basketball and I have to respect his opinion. The last couple of days in the NBA playoffs are indeed proving him right. Freak injuries to various parts of the body have taken out 3 out of the top 10 talents in the league. First, Curry slipped on a sweat spot on the floor and twisted and banged his right knee on the floor. This was in game 4 when he had just came back from an ankle issue after a 2 game break. He is now out for at least 2 weeks with a grade 1 MCL sprain. For a 12 hour period on Monday after this news came out, the Clippers suddenly looked like a legitimate contender and the biggest beneficiary of the dubs' misfortune. Warrior fans spent all day debating if the dubs can beat the Clips without Curry. The Warriors probably can't handle the Spurs or the Cavs without Curry, but they definitely had a shot against the Clippers especially with home court. Part of me was excited to see them duke it out with the Clips without Curry. Clippers can win it, but I think these dubs would drag them to 7 games. The  fans wanted the Clippers-Blazers series to go 7 games because that would give Curry more time to recover. He is probably looking at a return for game 4 or 5 in the next round if the recovery goes per plan.

But late Monday night, the Clippers' world turned upside down. They lost their leader Chris Paul to a freak injury and a broken hand when it got stuck in the opponent's jersey. Blake Griffin then followed him out with a quad injury. Bye bye season for the Clippers. Now the Dubs fans are rooting for a Clippers to win another game so the Blazers get extended to 7. It's probably going to be Warriors-Blazers in the next round. That won't be easy, but it's not the same as facing a fully-loaded Clippers team. So it looks like even when they lose Curry for a couple of weeks, the Warriors get a lucky break in the form of a suddenly depleted Clippers team. Their path to San Antonio looks much better now especially given the way they dispatched the Rockets tonight by 33 points to take that series in 5. The Blazers back-court will be a load to handle, but the dubs have to be favored in that series even without Curry. In fact, it probably gives the Warriors more time to rest Curry. Vegas agrees as the Warriors dropped behind the Spurs as a favorite right after Curry's injury. But they were bumped ahead of the Spurs again when CP3 and Blake got hurt. The expectation is, Curry will be back for the Spurs series anyways and the upcoming round got a lot easier for the dubs with the unfortunate Clipper injuries.

If you include Avery Bradley, round 1 of these playoffs has taken down 4 key players in brutal and weird injuries. This round is beginning to wind down in a hurry though. The elite teams are already resting as we speak. Cavs and Spurs swept their way out of round 1 and the dubs and Thunder wrapped it up in 5 games. With today's surprising road win for Charlotte and the sadly predictable road win for Portland, those 2 series should be wrapped up in 6 as well. That leaves the Celtics-Hawks and Pacers-Raptors series as the possible 7-game thrillers. The East has 4 playoff teams with an identical 48-34 record and not surprisingly, the Eastern match-ups have been more competitive in round 1. The Hawks and Celtics continue their series tomorrow in Boston. The Celts should win this one to force game 7, but we all know the real winner tomorrow will be the NFL. The draft is here and let's get ready to welcome the next set of millionaire celebrities into our televisions. It's going to be interesting with all the late movement at the top of the draft. We will have 2 QBs go back-to-back at the top like Winston and Mariota last year. These 2 kids will join a few infamous QB pairs like Bledsoe-Mirer, Manning-Leaf, Couch-McNabb, and Luck-RG-III. Of course the jury is still out on Winston-Mariota and hope they and the kids coming in tomorrow don't stick to this one good, one bust trend with these pairs.

There are a couple of interesting reads in the NBA that I would like to recommend. If you have some time to kill, I strongly recommend Sam Hinkie's leaked 13-page resignation letter to the Philadelphia 76'ers (http://espn.go.com/pdf/2016/0406/nba_hinkie_redact.pdf). The other article of interest is about the evolving role of point guards in the NBA (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2016/04/15/its-a-point-guards-game/). This article is especially sweet for us Suns fans as Jerry Colangelo was instrumental in some of those successful rule changes when he was the Suns owner. And coincidentally, Steve Nash and the Suns were also the first team to show the world how to play a fun, winning brand of basketball by exploiting those rules and start a trend that has changed the game forever and for the better.

Silver Hammer

NBA commissioner Adam Silver brought down the hammer hard this week on psycho Donald Sterling. It was one of those rare situations where nobody- even the ones most offended by Sterling's stupid utterances, could ask for more than what Adam handed down in terms of a punishment. He suspended him for life, fined him the maximum allowable 2.5 million dollars, and vowed to force him to sell his team. He showed no pity. He is being universally praised by the media and, most importantly, the NBA players who are his employees. A defining moment for Silver who has been the commish for just a few months and he might very well be remembered for this decision the rest of his tenure. It was the right decision morally and from a business perspective as well. It would have been perceived as too harsh in some circles if not for that fact that Sterling is a repeat offender who has just been dodging this for a long, long time. Some of the stuff Sterling has done in the past with his real-estate projects with respect to housing discrimination is shocking and much more offensive than what he said on this recording.  He finally got caught though everybody already knew he was a racist and a nut-job. He has zero apologists and that tells you all you need to know about this guy.

Some callers on sports radio and even Mark Cuban the day before the verdict were worried about this leading us down a slippery slope. How much can the NBA get involved with moral and social judgements? Sterling didn't break any laws and he does have his freedom of speech, especially inside the walls of his house. Ironically, the only illegal activity here might have been the recording that was leaked to TMZ if Sterling didn't know he was being taped. Also, there is the concern about where does the NBA stop now? What happens if another owner makes a homophobic comment for instance? This was Cuban's concern though he fully supported Silver after the verdict. What these arguments are missing is that this is not a legal or moral decision as much as it is a business decision. Nobody can put Sterling in jail for what he said and he has every right to free speech. But owning a NBA franchise is a privilege and not a constitutional right. Businesses always have bylaws and contracts which lets them fire people if they start hurting their business. This is exactly what happened here. People get fired across America for incompetence everyday. Employees, who have never done anything illegal ever in their life, routinely lose their job at IBM or Microsoft or Citibank. So NBA has every right to take action against it's people if they hurt business in any way, shape, or form.

Sterling will go to court and might even win, but NBA absolutely did the right thing for itself here. Sterling deserves to be "fired" for both incompetence and unacceptable behavior. It was in the NBA's best interest to punish him. A business has many stakeholders and one of the most important ones are the employees, though they are often ignored in corporate America. The NBA players are the employees here, albeit well-paid ones. The players are predominantly black and were really irate at Sterling to the point the specter of a playoff boycott was a realistic possibility. That would have been unprecedented and amazing and I almost wish it had happened just for the shock value. Commish Silver had to do the right thing to please his employees because they are important in any business, but even more so in a sports league where they are the product. Does that mean Silver doesn't deserve any credit for taking a moral stand? Of course he does because he took a difficult decision which was also morally right. And even making the right decision from a purely business perspective is leadership and deserves a lot of credit.

As for the slippery slope argument, I don't see one. We can sit here and pretend like there are no double standards and unfairness in the world, but we all know that's a lie. A few years back, Roger Clemens, made a racist and inappropriate joke about Koreans and Japanese in America when Korea and  Japan played each other in the World Baseball classic. Nobody cared or even criticized him. If anybody had made a similar joke about blacks, they would have been roasted over the coals. I was really upset at his comments, but at the same time, I do understand that Koreans don't have the same numbers, cultural relevance, or historic baggage as blacks do in America. So of course the reactions were different and Clemens got off easy. Thats life. Let's say another NBA owner comes out tomorrow and says something inappropriate about gays or women or Belgians, what does the Commish do? I strongly believe the Commish will do what his business needs dictate and nothing more or less.

First of all, his players may get upset with that, but not to the same extent as with Sterling because few of them are gay, there are probably a couple of Belgians, and definitely no women. Offending blacks is a lot more personal for the NBA players than any of the above. As for the customers, offending women would be the hardest to deal with for the league, followed by gays, and last and of course the least, Belgians. And the owner who is doing the offending probably doesn't have the same rap-sheet as Sterling. My point here is, there are too many variables here and the Commish does not owe the same punishment to every other owner or offender. That would be morally consistent, but there are enough excuses to not do that if the Commish or the other owners don't want to. I would like him to do the morally right thing, but I know enough about life to realize each situation will be treated on it's own merit and there will be double standards. The bottom-line is, we now have a Commish who has shown us he can be strong, he can lead, and he can stand on the side of the good. Kudos to Adam Silver for starting his tenure with a bang.  We can all now get back to the first round playoff games, which have been epic. Sterling's stupidity distracted all of us for a few days. Commish's swift and strong action has put the focus squarely back on the games, where it belongs.