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.

End of an era

Over-paid athletes with long-term contracts and leagues that are more worried about television contracts than the sport itself define the sports world today. This era is not exactly known for loyalty, longevity, commitment, toughness or old-school work ethic. A singular exception to this rule was Jerry Sloan, the now former head coach of Utah. He was a head coach at one place for 23 years - which is equivalent to 25 dog years, which is about 120 human years. He was the longest tenured coach in all of US professional sports. It’s almost impossible to enjoy such long tenures at this day and age and NBA is especially notorious when it comes to hiring and firing head coaches.

High salaries, unrealistic expectations and a general cultural shift towards instant gratification are all challenges to extended tenures for these high-profile coaches, GM and even superstars. But Jerry Sloan survived all of that and more. He also survived the retirement of two Hall of Famers – Karl Malone and John Stockton. He was able to do his thing for 23 years due of several reasons, but primarily because he was a great coach. He was one of the best at his craft even though his style is old school and several modern day athletes definitely didn’t enjoy it. Case in point – Deron Williams. Sloan and D-Will have clashed often and recently during the halftime of a loss to the Chicago Bulls. This incident is rumored to have pushed Sloan over the edge.

Williams is a talented and hard working guard who doesn’t have a reputation of being a cancer or even a bad seed. But I can easily see how Sloan and him clashed over stuff. That’s going to happen in any high-stakes environment like the NBA. But whether or not that caused his exit, only Sloan knows. The theory is that the ownership was getting more and more friendly to Deron’s position and Sloan felt like his authority was being compromised. He apparently told them that if this is how they want to run their franchise, he doesn’t want any role in it and walked away. This is probably what happened because I can’t imagine Sloan quitting in the middle of the season without a strong trigger like that. Sloan is one of the toughest SOB and he is definitely not a quitter. He is not going to be pushed out by a kid like D-Will after 23 years at the helm. He has seen it all and handled every conceivable situation. So the only plausible explanation for him exiting like this is that he thought the front office was not behind him this time.

This actually means the front office is probably more responsible for him leaving than Deron Williams, though this will probably stick to Deron. It will be interesting to see how the Jazz faithful responds to D-Will now. They are a nice, well-behaved, religious fan-base and you could say that’s one of the reasons why Sloan even survived 23 years. But they may still turn on D-Will, especially if Utah starts losing a lot. I think that won’t happen because the team is loaded with talent and the new coach Tyronne Corbin might open it up and make it more fun for Williams and the team. While Sloan was a great coach and preached fundamentals, toughness and defense like no other, he did not often tweak his style to suit his talent. It was always the other way around with Sloan. The talent on the roster had to get on with the proven program or sit on the bench. If Ty Corbin finds a middle ground between the rigidity of a great system and the versatility of the phenomenal talent at hand, Jazz could have a great rest of the season.

As for Jerry Slaon, he should be retired for good at this stage. He is 68 years old and I can’t imagine him coaching anywhere else. That’s probably a good thing because this way, he would always be remembered as a Utah Jazz and we don’t have to deal with things like him coming into town as a visiting head coach. I can definitely see him in a television role, but I am not sure if he wants that. In any case, this was a shocking culmination to a recent spate of long tenured coaches retiring, resigning or getting fired. First, it was Atlanta’s Bobby Cox retiring after 21 years as the manager of the Braves and the longest tenured manager in MLB. Then it was Jeff Fisher getting out of Tennessee in a surprising move after 17 years at the helm and the NFL lost it’s longest tenured coach. Now it’s Sloan who was the leader in the NBA and all of sports - all 3 changes happening in a 5-month spam. As of today, the NFL honor belongs to Andy Reid, Greg Popovich leads the NBA in terms of tenure and the longest tenured coach in all of sports now is MLB’s Tony LaRussa. Not bad replacements, but it’s still a sad day in sports and an end of a glorious era. We will all miss Jerry Sloan.