For Love of the Paycheck
I spent the entire night driving along the grapevine, so I didn't get to watch any sports live today. When I logged onto the internet at my hotel, I thought someone must have hacked into the Los Angeles Hyatt routers to put a fake ESPN.com page up. (By the way, with what a room costs at the Hyatt, do they really need to gouge their customers for an additional $9.99 to check their email and porn?) According to espn, Arron Afflalo and Jordan Farmar have decided to leave UCLA and test the NBA waters. Meanwhile, Larry Brown has decided to leave his nursing facility and continue to drown in the septic tank that is the New York Knicks. I'm not sure who is making the worse decision on this one. I think it's great when people are trying to follow their dream. But if the dream of the former Bruin players and the former Bruins' coach is to actually be successful in the NBA, then they're all making big mistakes. I expect Afflalo to be bluntly told to go back to college and learn to shoot consistently, making this a relative non-story. However because of the lack of decent point guards available in the upcoming draft, Farmar will likely be projected as a 1st round pick and therefore decide to stay in the draft. Someone needs to advise Farmar that just because an NBA team drafts him doesn't mean that he's actually ready for the NBA. While I like Farmar's attitude and raw skills, he still drives exclusively to his right, has trouble protecting the ball against long-armed defenders, and shoots in the 30% range from the college 3pt arc. He'd be much better off with another year in college running the show than sitting on some NBA bench watching the show.
As for Larry Brown...well, I just have no clue what he might be thinking. The team the Knicks put on the court today is pretty much the same team you'll see for the Knicks next season. They have no tradeable parts, other than Nate Robinson who won't command much in return, and Channing Frye, who the Knicks would like to keep- and they have no draft picks. That makes it pretty difficult to change the dynamic of the team. Yet Larry says, "To sit here and think we're going to stand pat is kinda silly." Well Larry, I hate to tell ya this, but Isiah Thomas is a silly man, and you are a silly coach of a silly team.
posted by insomniac @ 2:49 AM (permalink)
2 Comments
2 Comments:
neither afflalo or farmar signed with an agent, so i'd expect them back...it's probably in their best interest.
The problem is sites like http://nbadraft.net/ have Framar and Afflalo projected as first-round picks in 2007. Because undergrads can only test NBA draft waters once, they both figure might as well test this year since they're locks to go next year.
Of course, if those sites were accurate, Nemanja Aleksandrov would have been the number one pick two years in a row.
While Farmar is a first round pick, Afflalo isn't a first rounder this OR next year. If you think about the lottery talent not declaring (McRoberts, Rush, Davis, the entire Gators team), international players and the glut of HSSR's queued up for 2007, Afflalo still gets bumped to the curb.
Which is why players like Jelani McCoy and Jerome Moiso shoud come back to UCLA at the end of each year to explain it's better to be a collegate stud than an NBA towelboy.
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