the key to the draft

[Josh Ozersky <josh_ozersky@yahoo.com>]

Sitting here luxuriating in my contempt for Peter May
-- the Sunday before the draft, and all he can do is
to shit out another "go to school" homily for his
column? -- I've been thinking about the draft.  I
think I may have stumbled across the key to it. 
Here's how it works:  there is a consensus top ten,
consisting of

Eddy Curry
Tyson Chandler
Kwame Brown
Eddie Griffin
Rodney White
Sagana Diop
Jason Richardson
Joe Johnson
Shane Battier
Pau Gasol

Now, one of those guys WILL be available to us at ten.
 We absolutely don't need to trade up to get one.  And
depending on which one it is will go far toward
determining who the second guy is.  (Assuming two
don't fall.)   For example, should Diop fall to us, it
would make sense to take a polished player like Troy
Murphy with the second pick.  (Of course, you could
argue that both picks should be purely based on
talent, but roster considerations have to matter to
some extent.) It seems to me that Gasol at ten, with
no trading up necessary, is actually the least we can
expect!

So here are some likely combinations:
Pau Gasol - Kedrick Brown (finesse + toughness)
Diop - Murphy
Johnson - Michael Bradley (outside + inside)
Richardson -- Murphy (althelticism + polish)
Chandler -- Brown (finesse and toughness)
Battier -- Brown (leadership and athleticism)

That's the way I would approach it, anyway.  To take,
say, Joe Johnson and Kedrick Brown really would
require Wallace to be completely indifferent to
O'Brien's needs.

Once we have picked ten and eleven, eight players will
pass before we pick again.  Therefore, we can expect
to get the best remaining athlete from this group:

Murphy/Brown leftover
Michael Bradley
Richard Jefferson
Vladimir Radmonivic
Zach Randolph
Jamal Tinsley
Joe Forte
Brendan Haywood
Loren Woods
Steven Hunter
Omar Cook/Tony Parker

Now it's by no means clear that one of the three point
guards will be who we are left with; in any case, with
the exception of Joe Forte and Tony Parker, every one
of these guys has been projected as a lottery pick at
one time or another.  I don' know if there has ever
been a better year to have the 21st pick!  Can you
imagine getting, say, Gasol and Brown at 10+11, and
then finding yourself with a center as polished and
talented as Loren Woods, or a forward as gifted as
Zach Randolph, with the 21st pick?  And yet it is
bound to happen, even if we only end up with Omar Cook
or Tony Parker, our "worst case" scenarios.

Hopefully, this is all clear to Wallace and co.  

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/