Draft Night Rehash

The greatest offseason event in all of sports just took place, so here are my thoughts on the happenings of NBA Draft Night:

* Like most Warrior fans, I was hit with a jolt of sadness when I heard about Jason Richardson being traded. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how dispensable Richardson was, given the Warriors current roster. Richardson was mainly good for two things: hitting threes and making athletic plays. But Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, Al Harrington and newcomer Marco Bellinelli can do all of those things too. Between those four guys, it will be fairly easy to replace Richardson's 18 points per game, and Monta Ellis is ready to take on most of his minutes at shooting guard.

Then you also have to factor in the bounty we're receiving in return: $10M in trade bait and Brandan Wright. Let's not forget that 5 weeks ago, most mock drafts had Wright as the draft's third best prospect and that he's the one big man (excluding Kevin Durant) who is athletic enough to fit Nellie's system. After realizing all of this and reading Tim Kawakami's blog post this morning, I've successfully convinced myself that J-Rich is a poor man's Bimbo Coles and the Warriors are guaranteed to win 60 games without him.

* By acquiring eight new players in a five hour span, I think we can safely say that the Blazers are in rebuilding mode. Kevin Pritchard knows he's not playing in a fantasy league, right?

* That Seattle-Boston deal seems to be that rare trade that ends up hurting both teams. If you're Boston, why sacrifice a high pick on a solid, yet fading 31 year-old who does the same things as Paul Pierce? If you're Seattle, why trade away a model citizen who would have been an excellent mentor for Kevin Durant? Ray Allen would have shouldered the scoring and leadership responsibility for the Sonics, serving as the David Robinson to Durant's Tim Duncan.

* Isn't it funny how the two biggest names to be traded (Jason Richardson and Ray Allen) were completely left out of the trade hype headlines this week? Meanwhile, Garnett and Kobe stay right where they are. Nice job, NBA reporters. People always forget that trades are extremely difficult to pull off, and the ones that do actually happen are the ones that aren't dished about for days on end. Yet year after year after year, everyone gets seduced by NBA trade rumors.

* Who knew Greg Oden was such a comedian? That hand sanitizer ad-lib in his post-draft interview was positively Shaq-like.

* I hate how teams, writers and analysts always assume that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. Several times this week I've heard some variation of "You know, the Grizzlies can now combine Mike Conley, Pau Gasol, Rudy Gay and Mike Miller-- that's a pretty good young roster!" or "Horford+Childress+Smith+Johnson+Williams=An Atlanta Resurgence!" There was a reason those teams were bad enough to earn top-5 picks: talented pieces does not a winning team make.

* I love the additions of Durant and Jeff Green, but let's not hand the Sonics a playoff berth quite yet. Why hasn't anyone made more of the fact that Seattle does not currently have a coach? Isn't that pretty crucial to the development of two supposed superstars? With training camp only three months away, it's not like there are a ton of great coaching candidates available-- I'd be very worried if I were a Sonics fan.

* So it turns out that marrying a Swedish beauty queen does NOT in fact, guarantee that you'll have good-looking children.

 
The End is Nigh

It's a few hours before The Sopranos' series finale and my head is bursting at the seams. I think it will be a solid episode tonight but I just know that on Monday morning I'll be slightly dissatisfied because there's no way that David Chase will tie up all the loose ends that have been nagging me, namely:

* Carmela's suspicions about Adriana. Will Carm finally find out what really happened to her and flip out?

* A.J's descent into violent despair. He's been a weak successor to his father for seven seasons. Is tonight the night that A.J. grows up and lashes out?

* Whither Tony's alter-ego, Kevin Finnerty? Will it turn out that for all this time, Tony Soprano has just been a figment of Kevin's imagination?

* Meadow dating Patsy's son. Will this lead to Meadow becoming an easy target for Phil Leotardo's henchmen? Or does it signal a future of organized crime for Meadow Soprano?

* Dr. Melfi's sudden dumping of Tony. The series began with Tony waiting in Melfi's doctor's office-- surely Melfi has to return in some capacity in this final episode, right?

* Silvio's near-death. They could have easily have had Sil die in that car shootout, so there must be some reason for him to remain alive in the hospital for this final episode.

As for my previous post, I'm still predicting that Tony dies tonight. The producers won't want to keep him alive because they'll want to squash any chance of an awful Sopranos "reunion" show or movie years down the line. I don't think my bold prediction of Furio's return will pan out (although I did have some hope of it when Tony ordered some hitman help from Italy last week). I also think the Feds might be the ones pulling the trigger, and I completely left them out of my previous list of candidates. But here's what I now think will happen: The Feds recover Silvio's incriminating papers that were left in the backseat of the car after the shootout in the Bada Bing parking lot. Using that evidence, the Feds approach Carmela to try to turn her against her husband. She reluctantly agrees, but Tony finds out and confronts Carm one-on-one. This leads to a violent fight, Carmela ends up stabbing Tony to death, The End. Cue up a Rolling Stones song, fade to black.