Has some Kings bits in it....
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/story/13132376p-13976475c.html
NBA beat: Draft is a roll of dice
Executives say free agency and trades are safer transactions.
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, June 26, 2005
It has become the most overrated aspect to building an NBA team.
The draft.
NBA front-office men will tell you the better fix is through free agency and trades. Some No. 1 picks pan out beautifully, of course, with talent and luck rolled into one.
The Los Angeles Lakers had both in forming their 1980s dynasty, with earlier trades landing them the picks they used to draft Magic Johnson in 1979 and James Worthy in 1982.
The San Antonio Spurs twice landed the No. 1 pick and took David Robinson and Tim Duncan. Total tally: three NBA championships.
The Detroit Pistons were primarily built through trades for Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Richard Hamilton and Chauncey Billups. The Pistons did draft Tayshaun Prince, and he has been gold. They also drafted Darko Milicic, and so far, he has been fool's gold.
The Kings, you know their story. Of their starting playoff lineup last month, only Peja Stojakovic was a draftee, with Mike Bibby, Kenny Thomas, Cuttino Mobley and Brad Miller climbing aboard via trades.
But the draft is still there, still necessary, still very much a crap shoot with nervously spent millions of dollars hanging in the balance.
Tuesday will mark the 20th lottery draft, and there doesn't appear to be a franchise, must-have talent on the board. There isn't a Shaquille O'Neal, Magic, Worthy, Duncan, Robinson or LeBron James in the mix.
Marvin Williams might be a top-three pick, and he didn't even start for NCAA champion North Carolina.
The league's forever fascination with big men and the Milwaukee Bucks' desperate need for any semblance of inside bulk probably means Utah's Andrew Bogut will go No. 1. That he has already been in Milwaukee, visiting schools and signing autographs, means he's that much closer to being a Buck with a ton of bucks.
But will he be a Patrick Ewing? A Vlade Divac? Or a clunker mixture of Joe Kleine and Jon Koncak? One NBA front-office executive said this draft reminds him of the 1989 haul, one of the poorest in league history, if not the worst for all the lottery seasons.
Pervis Ellison went No. 1 to the Kings. Enough said. Danny Ferry went second, Sean Elliott third, Glen Rice fourth, and then it was a who's-who list of busts that included J.R. Reid, Stacey King, George McCloud, Randy White and Tom Hammonds.
Big-time busts
In the old days - OK, 1986 - some teams were so determined to fill a roster void that they ignored warning signs, even if they were red flags draped over their laps.
The poster child for that problem is Chris Washburn, the third pick in the 1986 draft.
Washburn had it all - size, skills, athleticism - but no common sense. He was an academic disaster at North Carolina State, and he had run afoul with the law when he wasn't attending class.
Yet the Golden State Warriors wanted him. When then-Warriors coach George Karl called his old North Carolina mentor for advice, Dean Smith urged him not to draft Washburn.
Karl said he had to.
"I then heard coach Smith get physically ill over the phone," Karl would say years later.
Other big-man draft duds include:
* LaRue Martin, No. 1 in 1972: Instead of picking Bob McAdoo or Julius Erving, the Portland Trail Blazers went with a nice guy who would later be known as "LaRue Who?" He simply wasn't geared for the NBA and averaged 5.3 points in four seasons.
* Sam Bowie, No. 2 in 1984: Who needs Michael Jordan? Bad move based on bad wheels. Bowie had foot problems in college, and he never amounted to anything for the Blazers.
* William Bedford, No. 6 in 1986: He had trouble dripping off him from his Memphis State days, but the Phoenix Suns still took a chance. He flopped.
* Shawn Bradley, No. 2 in 1993: Tall as the rafters at 7-foot-6 but really just the tallest stiff alive. In negotiating a buyout with the Dallas Mavericks last week, he's doing the entire NBA a favor.
* Benoit Benjamin, No. 3 in 1985: He was so bad, so soft, so overrated that you wondered if "Bust" was what he named his first child. For the Los Angeles Clippers, it didn't matter. They drew busts to their corner regularly.
'Big Shot Bob'
Larry Brown talks about how he really could have used Bibby during the U.S. Olympic team's doomed bid last summer.
What about Spurs forward Robert Horry? You don't think the man would hit some three-pointers in that field?
Horry, of course, was Horry again in the Finals, earning his sixth NBA ring to go with two as a Houston Rocket and three as a Laker. His Game 5-winning shot this season inched the Spurs that much closer to the title, and he drew a charge late in Game 7 to help seal it.
Horry hasn't been to an All-Star Game during his 13-year career. He hasn't always been a starter. He will never be a Hall of Famer, but he's an all-time playoff great who still marvels at what he does. And he'll always be booed now in Detroit, just as in Sacramento.
In a story last fall, The Bee listed Horry's 2002 Western Conference Finals buzzer-beater in Game 4 against the Kings (thus tying the series) as the No. 1 dramatic moment in the team's Sacramento history. Horry revels in that, and on a visit to Arco Arena later this season, he said he was delighted to be No. 1 "on the Kings' 20 Most Drastic Moments." Close enough.
Baseline jumpers
With Shawn Bradley on his way to sore-kneed retirement, will we ever see a big man get posterized quite as often? Chris Webber said he knew his knees were bad when he could no longer sky over Mount Bradley.
* Gary Payton on the teams he'd like to play for next season, in order: Boston, Sacramento and Phoenix. The teams would have welcomed the old Payton. Now, they worry that Payton is just old.
* Tim Duncan's legacy is set. He survived a brutish Finals series, had his shot blocked 17 times, yet still hoisted the goods. Do his three Finals MVPs make him the best player of his era, even above Shaquille O'Neal?
* Terry Porter found out just how cutthroat his profession can be. He was axed as Milwaukee coach days before the draft and, perhaps, too late to get any other coaching offers.
* Jack Ramsay has been brilliant in every basketball duty, from GM of the legendary 1967 76ers to coach of Portland's NBA title team in 1977 to his radio work now, including saying that the inbound guy, Robert Horry in the closing seconds of Game 5, is the most "feared guy." Horry came through.
* Alonzo Mourning says he wants to be more of a factor next season for the Heat, or he may retire. Advice: Make him a factor.
* PinnacleSports.com has the Spurs as 5-2 favorites to win the title next season, followed by the Miami Heat at 11-2, the Detroit Pistons 7-1, the Phoenix Suns 8-1, with the Kings and Seattle SuperSonics at 40-1. * Under the new collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the players, teams are allowed to place one player on waivers in order to gain relief from the luxury tax. However, the salaries would still count against the salary cap and the players would still get paid. Players like Dallas' Michael Finley and New York's Allan Houston might be among the first to get jettisoned.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/story/13132376p-13976475c.html
NBA beat: Draft is a roll of dice
Executives say free agency and trades are safer transactions.
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, June 26, 2005
It has become the most overrated aspect to building an NBA team.
The draft.
NBA front-office men will tell you the better fix is through free agency and trades. Some No. 1 picks pan out beautifully, of course, with talent and luck rolled into one.
The Los Angeles Lakers had both in forming their 1980s dynasty, with earlier trades landing them the picks they used to draft Magic Johnson in 1979 and James Worthy in 1982.
The San Antonio Spurs twice landed the No. 1 pick and took David Robinson and Tim Duncan. Total tally: three NBA championships.
The Detroit Pistons were primarily built through trades for Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Richard Hamilton and Chauncey Billups. The Pistons did draft Tayshaun Prince, and he has been gold. They also drafted Darko Milicic, and so far, he has been fool's gold.
The Kings, you know their story. Of their starting playoff lineup last month, only Peja Stojakovic was a draftee, with Mike Bibby, Kenny Thomas, Cuttino Mobley and Brad Miller climbing aboard via trades.
But the draft is still there, still necessary, still very much a crap shoot with nervously spent millions of dollars hanging in the balance.
Tuesday will mark the 20th lottery draft, and there doesn't appear to be a franchise, must-have talent on the board. There isn't a Shaquille O'Neal, Magic, Worthy, Duncan, Robinson or LeBron James in the mix.
Marvin Williams might be a top-three pick, and he didn't even start for NCAA champion North Carolina.
The league's forever fascination with big men and the Milwaukee Bucks' desperate need for any semblance of inside bulk probably means Utah's Andrew Bogut will go No. 1. That he has already been in Milwaukee, visiting schools and signing autographs, means he's that much closer to being a Buck with a ton of bucks.
But will he be a Patrick Ewing? A Vlade Divac? Or a clunker mixture of Joe Kleine and Jon Koncak? One NBA front-office executive said this draft reminds him of the 1989 haul, one of the poorest in league history, if not the worst for all the lottery seasons.
Pervis Ellison went No. 1 to the Kings. Enough said. Danny Ferry went second, Sean Elliott third, Glen Rice fourth, and then it was a who's-who list of busts that included J.R. Reid, Stacey King, George McCloud, Randy White and Tom Hammonds.
Big-time busts
In the old days - OK, 1986 - some teams were so determined to fill a roster void that they ignored warning signs, even if they were red flags draped over their laps.
The poster child for that problem is Chris Washburn, the third pick in the 1986 draft.
Washburn had it all - size, skills, athleticism - but no common sense. He was an academic disaster at North Carolina State, and he had run afoul with the law when he wasn't attending class.
Yet the Golden State Warriors wanted him. When then-Warriors coach George Karl called his old North Carolina mentor for advice, Dean Smith urged him not to draft Washburn.
Karl said he had to.
"I then heard coach Smith get physically ill over the phone," Karl would say years later.
Other big-man draft duds include:
* LaRue Martin, No. 1 in 1972: Instead of picking Bob McAdoo or Julius Erving, the Portland Trail Blazers went with a nice guy who would later be known as "LaRue Who?" He simply wasn't geared for the NBA and averaged 5.3 points in four seasons.
* Sam Bowie, No. 2 in 1984: Who needs Michael Jordan? Bad move based on bad wheels. Bowie had foot problems in college, and he never amounted to anything for the Blazers.
* William Bedford, No. 6 in 1986: He had trouble dripping off him from his Memphis State days, but the Phoenix Suns still took a chance. He flopped.
* Shawn Bradley, No. 2 in 1993: Tall as the rafters at 7-foot-6 but really just the tallest stiff alive. In negotiating a buyout with the Dallas Mavericks last week, he's doing the entire NBA a favor.
* Benoit Benjamin, No. 3 in 1985: He was so bad, so soft, so overrated that you wondered if "Bust" was what he named his first child. For the Los Angeles Clippers, it didn't matter. They drew busts to their corner regularly.
'Big Shot Bob'
Larry Brown talks about how he really could have used Bibby during the U.S. Olympic team's doomed bid last summer.
What about Spurs forward Robert Horry? You don't think the man would hit some three-pointers in that field?
Horry, of course, was Horry again in the Finals, earning his sixth NBA ring to go with two as a Houston Rocket and three as a Laker. His Game 5-winning shot this season inched the Spurs that much closer to the title, and he drew a charge late in Game 7 to help seal it.
Horry hasn't been to an All-Star Game during his 13-year career. He hasn't always been a starter. He will never be a Hall of Famer, but he's an all-time playoff great who still marvels at what he does. And he'll always be booed now in Detroit, just as in Sacramento.
In a story last fall, The Bee listed Horry's 2002 Western Conference Finals buzzer-beater in Game 4 against the Kings (thus tying the series) as the No. 1 dramatic moment in the team's Sacramento history. Horry revels in that, and on a visit to Arco Arena later this season, he said he was delighted to be No. 1 "on the Kings' 20 Most Drastic Moments." Close enough.
Baseline jumpers
With Shawn Bradley on his way to sore-kneed retirement, will we ever see a big man get posterized quite as often? Chris Webber said he knew his knees were bad when he could no longer sky over Mount Bradley.
* Gary Payton on the teams he'd like to play for next season, in order: Boston, Sacramento and Phoenix. The teams would have welcomed the old Payton. Now, they worry that Payton is just old.
* Tim Duncan's legacy is set. He survived a brutish Finals series, had his shot blocked 17 times, yet still hoisted the goods. Do his three Finals MVPs make him the best player of his era, even above Shaquille O'Neal?
* Terry Porter found out just how cutthroat his profession can be. He was axed as Milwaukee coach days before the draft and, perhaps, too late to get any other coaching offers.
* Jack Ramsay has been brilliant in every basketball duty, from GM of the legendary 1967 76ers to coach of Portland's NBA title team in 1977 to his radio work now, including saying that the inbound guy, Robert Horry in the closing seconds of Game 5, is the most "feared guy." Horry came through.
* Alonzo Mourning says he wants to be more of a factor next season for the Heat, or he may retire. Advice: Make him a factor.
* PinnacleSports.com has the Spurs as 5-2 favorites to win the title next season, followed by the Miami Heat at 11-2, the Detroit Pistons 7-1, the Phoenix Suns 8-1, with the Kings and Seattle SuperSonics at 40-1. * Under the new collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the players, teams are allowed to place one player on waivers in order to gain relief from the luxury tax. However, the salaries would still count against the salary cap and the players would still get paid. Players like Dallas' Michael Finley and New York's Allan Houston might be among the first to get jettisoned.
