You Take All You Can
Last night was totally discombobulating and snuck up on me, weird-wise, like various things that kill you. After it was all over, I tore out my teeth trying to decide if I liked the possible Amare-to-GSW trade, and realized in the process that my very being was at stake. So that's a longer post that will get written over the weekend.
In the meantime, here's 1,000 words on the Jennings/Rubio screenplay as of right now.
Labels: brandon jennings, links, nba draft, ricky rubio
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 6/26/2009 04:36:00 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Supposing Phoenix gets Curry, Wright, Biedrins and Buike or Beli, they got a pretty nice package for him...although it's sad to see SSOL completely die.
OK, I gotta make my case for my fear as a Dubs fan. This is a Grand Moff Tarkin moment. As in "I'm taking an awful risk Vader, this had better work." PHX is just doing the tear down and getting some interesting pieces in return. Biedrins is capable and in the right hands, productive. Wright still has the small potential to simply blow up. If Curry is included, same thing.
Amare? If he gets his extension and (a) his knees go, or (b) that retina decides it doesn't want to stay attached? Doom. And although everyone talks about how Amare would be Nellie's sort of guy, everyone gets that Nellie's gone after this season, don't they? He was more surprised by anyone that he got extended and, frankly, I don't think he has much interest in actually, um, working any more.
I think you sort of hinted at this in your other piece, Shoals (or maybe you just said it explicitly), but... I guess I remain puzzled. Can someone explain to me why Rubio is allowed to act like a total prima-donna? And don't get me wrong, I LIKE Rubio. But jeez, players get drafted by teams that they probably don't want to play for every year -- and they go play for them. I mean, is Indianapolis a really great city to live in? Is Detroit super-cool? No.
How come Rubio is allowed to be super-diva-y like this? It is just 'cause he's Spanish and has a groovy haircut? (And again, I LIKE the dude.) ...But if, say, Brandon Jennings was all like, "Okay, I'll play for Sacramento and/or the Knicks, but not OKC, Memphis, Minnesota, Indiana, Milwaukee, etc..." ...If Jennings was had done that, he'd be roasted alive at the stake, and everyone would be moaning about the decline of Western Civilization and these kids today, and how selfish, and blah, and blah, and blah.
ANY-way, it's some weirdness, is all I'm saying.
Two additional points:
1) I'm not a Wolves fan, but for some reason I'm holding out hopes that Kahn turns out to be a crazed genius.
2) The fact that Rubio seems to think that Sacramento is a really happening town is sort of adorably clueless, in a "I'm foreign and I know that California's supposed to be awesome" kind of way.
Rubio's hyping up reminds me of OJ Mayo before his first year at USC; at this point the onus is on him to fulfill and exceed expectations. It's not his responsibility to come to the NBA; it is still a foregone conclusion that the NBA is the most competitive league in the world top to bottom, right?
Basketball in Great Britain is like Soccer in Oklahoma.
The first interesting thing to come out of Granger's twitter.
In re Rubio and Jennings:
Feeling a lot of parallels between the narrative of Jennings studying abroad his freshman year and Rubio contemplating a gap year. Both are testing limits of the NCAA/NBA power structure. I just don't think it's as simple as the label "diva". Thinking more along the lines of Bloomberg and Perot.
The second interesting thing to come out of Granger's twitter.
DGRANGER33: What's the point of asking me how tall I am? I have yet to figure it out
Me: So, you have yet to figure out why people ask you this question OR are you making a commentary on the absurdity of such static measurements and thus an implied argument for The Theory of Apositionality?
In a completely unrelated note, saw Polvo in Charlotte last night and Dave the aging guitarist dropped not one but two NBA references. The first: An admonishment of the Queen City faithful for drafting a Dookie when Tyler Hansbrough was still on the board (after all, the spanish powder is based out of the RDU triangle). The second: A recollection of a long ago Charlotte memory for the quartet. Apparently, they had gone to a now shuttered hotspot after one of their concerts and run into a then-Miami Heat Glen Rice. That was a long time ago now... that was before the Hornets were forced to trade Zo for Rice straight up because Zo hated the South.
So Shoals, the question lingers... when are you gonna do an interview with these guys? They obviously all love the NBA and they do need to promote their new album coming in September.
re: Oliver's question as to why Rubio can be a diva and Jennings can't:
Race matters.
I was sort of tip-toeing toward that conclusion myself. I guess I could have saved a lot of space if I had cut my blathering and just written, "So it's cool 'cause Rubio's a honky, right?" I mean, that's the only possible answer that I can see.
Oh, and by the way... Race card! Oh yes, I threw it down!
I have not read any live blogging of the drafts, but did anyone get totally freaked out when Steph Curry put a hat on his head. It was like Sam Cassel smiling scary. Dude makes Reggie Miller look like his cousin Oliver. Who recently came out to the public that he is ready for a return to the game. I think this is the free agent that Celts GM Wyc Grouspointbank was reefering to as the Celts top priority this off season. To conteract Cleveland's trade of Shaq of course.
Has there ever been more questions about a group of players entering the association.
I can only hope that something about David Kahn is forthcoming, because I find myself wondering if he's a new mad genius, or just the bumbling clod he's being made out to be. The answer, of course, is probably "a little bit of both."
I just know that I love the idea of a Rubio/Flynn/Brewer/Love/Jefferson line-up. I envision Minnesota running some kind of women's netball system where one point and one big always stay on one side of the court, with Brewer sprinting back and forth in between. Shit would be off the hook.
It's weird because my full name is Oliver Miller*, and so when I read W2's comment, I got an odd little jolt -- or frisson, if you will. Just thought I'd share that.
(*Yes, like the fat center guy.)
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