The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Let’s take a look at what has changed regarding the top of the draft, if anything.

My projection:

1: Chicago, Derrick Rose. Now that they finished completely botching their coaching search, the Bulls can now move on to trying to get the draft right. Despite all the stories about the Bulls trying to trade out of the #1 pick, I doubt it will actually happen.

2: Miami, Michael Beasley. Stories continue to bounce around that the Heat don’t like Beasley and want OJ Mayo, which makes absolutely no sense. How would Wade and Mayo be able to play together? I think all of the rumors are from Miami trying to get someone else to try and trade up.

3: Minnesota, OJ Mayo. Despite the early stories that Brook Lopez was the Minnesota pick, now it appears that the T-Wolves are more interested in taking the best player rather than a big man for the sake of getting a big man. That’s a good move, but I’m not so sure Mayo is the best player available. Regardless, it seems highly unlikely that Mayo will be a bust (he just might not be all that great) and he will be better than Rashad McCants from day one.

4: Seattle, Jerryd Bayless. It appears that, for better or worse, the Sonics have had Bayless tabbed here from day one.

5: Memphis, Kevin Love. Whether they keep him or trade him, Love is the right pick here. He would fit in well next to the athletic Rudy Gay to make a nice frontcourt for the Grizzlies, or some GM would love a chance to trade for him.

6: New York, Anthony Randolph. Conventional wisdom has Gallinari or Augustin going here, but I can’t really see Mike D’Antoni’s offense running with a rookie point guard; and I also hear that D’Antoni isn’t all that interested in Gallinari. Since Randolph is a couple of years away he could develop while the Knicks embark on their multi-year project to cut away the dead weight on their salary cap.

7: LA Clippers, Danilo Gallinari. Most people have Eric Gordon tabbed here, but I think the Gallinari would be a more likely pick. He would have trade value (perhaps in a TJ Ford swap), or would plug in well should the Clippers finally trade Corey Maggette.

8: Milwaukee, Joe Alexander. Seeing as how the Bucks had Alexander and Donte Greene in for workouts, it’s pretty obvious that they are thinking “small forward”. Whether or not Alexander is that great a pick …. I’m not so sure. He’s clearly a workout warrior whose athletic numbers at the draft camp were off the charts, but as for how that translates into game action is questionable. According to my draft rankings, Alexander wasn’t that great a rebounder and his “athleticism ratio” (blocks+steals/fouls) was pedestrian, so he has probably gotten himself into better shape for the draft. Alexander is a heady player (10th best Curry ratio among prospects) who has a nice mid-range jumper. The main problem with Alexander is that he doesn’t have all that much upside — he only ranks as my #28 prospect, and if you are taking a player who is going to be 22 next year then I’d like to see his college numbers be better because he probably isn’t going to improve all that much. Either way, he should be a relatively low-risk pick who should be good-but-not-great.

9: Charlotte, Brook Lopez. It makes too much sense, so I’m sure Michael Jordan will do something stupid like take DeAndre Jordan instead. But there is room on the Bobcats’ roster for a soft center who can score and block the occassional shot, since they already have a power forward who can rebound in Okafor.

10: New Jersey, DeAndre Jordan. He’s big, he’s raw, he might be good in 3 years but probably wont. Since the Nets don’t care about anything that happens on the court until they move to Brooklyn then Jordan makes sense. He might help them win some games in 2010 but will cost them games from now until then, giving them higher draft spots next year and the year after.

11: Indiana, Eric Gordon. If he’s available, the Pacers would get run out of town if they pass on him. They were last in the league in attendance last season and have needs at just about every position.

12: Sacramento, Russell Westbrook. Much like Indiana, the Kings need pretty much everything and a high-profile scoring point guard would fill the bill.

13: Portland, DJ Augustin. About the only thing the Blazers need is a backup point guard, and should Augustin fall in their lap, I’m sure they would be estactic. The only problem is Augustin’s size — he’s shorter than Ty Lawson.

14: Golden State, Courtney Lee. I have no idea what the Warriors will do, so I’m picking a surprise — Western Kentucky’s Lee. He’s a big guard who put up great numbers and apparently had a strong pre-draft camp.

Now that the dust from the lottery has settled, it’s time to take another look at the mock draft.

First of all, I heard a third-hand rumor (from a pretty good source) that the Bulls are considering an offer from Memphis to exchange the #1 pick for Mike Conley and the #5. Apparently John Paxson really wants Kevin Love, and is considering taking the trade. Obviously the Grizzlies — desperate for a draw in Memphis — would take Derrick Rose.

When it’s all said and done, I highly doubt the Bulls would accept that trade. This is the NBA — you simply don’t trade the #1 pick. Also, taking Love would basically mean that Paxson is admitting that drafting Tyrus Thomas (and trading LaMarcus Aldridge in the process) was a mistake. Trading away a chance at a local kid who might become a superstar — Paxson would be absolutely destroyed in the media for pulling that one.

Anyway, I’m going to do another projection of the top 14 picks in the draft, thinking more about team needs than my prospect rankings. There are a few changes from version 1.0.

1: Chicago: Derrick Rose. No way the Bulls accept that Memphis trade.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that this trade has already been rejected and is only one of about 50 similar proposals that the Bulls will receive. The information came to me through a casual conversation, and I doubt that the source would have revealed anything important. What is most interesting is that John Paxson would actually be thinking about ways to get Kevin Love. Now that Love has lost some weight his draft stock must really be rising — I also saw an article on draftexpress.com saying that Kevin McHale wants him too. It all makes it sound like Love will not be around when the Bucks go on the clock at #8.

2: Miami: Michael Beasley. There are some rumors going around that Beasley may measure closer to 6′7″ at the Orlando predraft camp, and other rumors that Miami is interested in OJ Mayo. Why would they want Mayo unless they fear that Dwyane Wade will never be the same player? Hmmm. Anyway, I still think they take Beasley.

3: Minnesota: OJ Mayo. Everything that I read makes it sound like GM’s are starting to believe that Mayo’s poor season at USC was a product of Tim Floyd’s offense than Mayo’s game. Whatever, I still don’t buy it, I still think he’s a young Larry Hughes. No matter how good he looks in workouts or against high school students, if he was that good then his game should have shone in college as well. One interesting tidbit I learned about him this week — Mayo scored a 29 on his ACT. You would assume that since he changed high schools so many times he would have been a lackluster student, but apparently that is not the case. Apparently Kevin McHale (like John Paxson) also wants Kevin Love, and so may try to trade down.

4: Seattle: Jerryd Bayless. Despite what I wrote about Kevin Love being a good partner for Kevin Durant, now I feel that the Sonics will look to boost their backcourt instead. It’s a mistake, but still ….

5: Memphis: Kevin Love. It wouldn’t surprise me if they make this pick for someone else, but Love would be a good fit alongside the athletic Rudy Gay in Memphis’ frontcourt. Hopefully Love has 9,000 friends in Memphis to help fill their stadium.

6: New York: Danilo Gallinari. When I wrote version 1.0 I completely forgot that Mike D’Antoni has known Gallinari since he was a child. D’Antoni played with Gallinari’s father in Italy and apparently has been keeping tabs on him ever since.

7: LA Clippers: Eric Gordon. Yikes, if the draft falls this way then Gordon is the only top prospect left who would fit the Clippers’ roster.

8: Milwaukee: Russell Westbrook. Since the Bucks don’t need Brook Lopez they probably go for the best avalilable player (if the draft shakes out like this — I trust that Minnesota, Memphis or LA will screw it up), and at this point it is between Westbrook and Anthony Randolph. They sure don’t need another soft, skinny 6′11″ player, so Westbrook is the choice.

9: Charlotte: Brook Lopez. They can’t really take Roy Hibbert, right?

10: New Jersey: Anthony Randolph. Good situation for Randolph, as he gets two years to fine-tune his game before LeBron comes to town.

11: Indiana: DJ Augustin. I still think they want to have a replacement for Jamaal Tinsley ready to go should they finally manage to trade him.

12: Sacramento: Darrell Arthur. They need anything but a shooting guard and a center, and Arthur would probably be considered the best player available.

13: Portland: Chase Budinger. I’m not changing my opinion about this pick. Portland is probably trying to trade down.

14: Golden State: Ty Lawson. I still think that Don Nelson — should he still be afilliated with the team — would salivate at a chance to coach Lawson.

Reality check.

In my recent post about the value of Andrew Bogut’s contract extension, I pointed out that the realities of the salary cap means that the Bucks are going to have to do something this offseason to avoid a likely luxury tax bill in the 2009/10 season, the first year of Bogut’s extension.

The failure to plan around Bogut’s extension will wind up being the biggest mistake the Larry Harris ever made. He always seemed to believe that he had a much better team than he did, and now the new GM will have to make moves to avoid the cash crunch that Harris created.

I’m not talking about the Bobby Simmons signing, but signing Gadzuric and Bell. At least Simmons was supposed to be a starter.

After drafting Bogut, Harris signed Gadzuric (who was a restricted free agent) to a six-year contract extension that exceeded the midlevel. Of course, even if a team had come to Gadzuric and offered him a near-max deal the Bucks could have afforded to let him go since they not only had Bogut but Pachulia was a restricted free agent as well. Instead, Harris signed Gadzuric to a contract that has paid him more than Bogut up to this point, when Gadzuric was signed to be a full-time backup, and lasts past the point where Bogut is eligible for an extension.

The same disastrous mistake was made with Charlie Bell. Maybe Bell had been a valuable contributor to the Bucks in 2006/07, but he was a contributor to a 25 win team! How much can he possibly be worth? Then, after Bell tried to talk his way out of Milwaukee and got a ridiculous offer from Miami, why wouldn’t the Bucks let him go in order to not pay him $3.5 million in Bogut’s extension year? I have no problem with Charlie Bell getting paid, but why should the Bucks be the ones to pay him?

Anyway, as I showed with this chart, should the salary cap keep growing at the same pace that it has averaged (5% a year) then the Bucks, should they not do anything, would find themselves at the luxury tax in the 2009/10 season with only 11 players on the roster. Assuming that the cap will expand at that rate, however, is a big if, as the economy is doing so poorly and attendance and league revenues are down this season. It is conceivable that the luxury tax in 09/10 could be closer to $67 million, while the Bucks (assuming $11 million to Bogut that year) are already on the hook for $68.

This means that the Bucks are going to have to make a move right now to ensure that a big chunk of salary will fall by the wayside next offseason. The team right now has a painful collection of good players that don’t work very well together. But it’s a fact of life that in order to get better you sometimes have to make trades that make you worse. Let me make one thing clear – these trade proposals that I am writing about now are not supposed to propel the Bucks deep into the playoffs – they are meant to be the first step in rebuilding the roster into a more compatible group of talent.

Obviously, if you want to cut salary then you could trade Michael Redd for a similar, shorter contract. I’m not looking in that direction, since you could never get anything close to fair value back, and you wouldn’t be able to rid yourself of one of the bad contracts (Gadzuric or Simmons) in the process.

For the purposes of this post, I’ve also given up on moving Gadzuric. Since Simmons has a shorter contract with a larger salary, he will have more value than Danny G in a cap-move trade. Basically, the team acquiring Simmons would get a useless player but still have a nice-sized expiring contract to look forward to the following season.

One might say that the Bucks would be better off keeping Simmons instead of dumping him, paying a small luxury tax bill in 09/10 and reaping the cap room when his $10 million contract expires in the summer of 2010. The problem with this is that most of the cap room created by Simmons’ exit will immediately be absorbed by the six players that we do know for sure will still be on the team — $1 million to Redd and Yi, a likely $1 million to Bogut, about $500,000 apiece to the 2008 and 2009 first round picks, and $1-$3 million to the 2010 first round pick. If the Bucks are a near-luxury tax team in the summer of 2010, Simmons’ exit will likely only result in a $3-$5 million savings.

Of course you have to give something up to get something back, and that means it is time for Mo Williams to go. Williams has blossomed into a very, very nice player and efficient scorer, but I don’t think that the combination of him and Redd will ever be good enough defensively to win consistently. Mo has a reasonable, if sizable, contract and could be moved to several teams that are looking for a point guard, and when his contract is combined with Simmons’, it would equal the value of some of the large expiring contracts out there.

So here are four trade scenarios that would serve the purpose of shedding salary. I have not included how draft picks might be included in these deals, but since the Bucks are always giving up the best player in the proposal, one would assume that they should get back something:

The trades and how they affect the Bucks’ projected salary cap situation are available here.

#1: Mo Williams and Bobby Simmons to New York for Stephon Marbury and Renaldo Balkman (Bucks save $19 million in 2009/10): I hate everything about Marbury, both on and off the court, but I like his $22 million expiring contract. Obviously, in this scenario the Bucks would have to draft a point guard with the idea of turning the reins over to him after Marbury leaves. Since Marbury has gone completely nuts, the Bucks would have to bring him in and tell him: “Look, any incident and you are gone, bought out, we never see you again.� But never underestimate the power of the expiring contract to make a player bring his “A� game on the court and keep his mouth shut off of it (see Patterson, Ruben). Balkman would be an excellent addition as a small forward who can defend and rebound, and would have to be included to make up for the fact that the Knicks don’t have any draft picks to trade to make this proposal more equitable for the Bucks. No doubt, though, that the Bucks had better have a plan “B� in place for point guard if they do get Marbury – there are no guarantees he even is capable of running a team any more.

#2: Williams and Simmons to Portland for Raef LaFrentz, Travis Outlaw, and Sergio Rodriguez (Bucks save $13.5 million in 2009/10): It’s a shame that LaFrentz’s knees gave out on him, and he’s good for nothing more than $12.7 million of expiring contract. Outlaw is a talented player who inexplicably spent most of the season out of position and losing minutes to Martell Webster, despite dramatically outplaying him. He is a big, athletic, slashing small forward – exactly what the Bucks need – and has a reasonable 3 years/$12 million remaining on his contract. Rodriguez is a talented, young player who might be the most exciting passer since Jason Williams, but the attendant turnover ration has kept “Spanish Chocolate� on the bench. He’s a worthwhile risk. The Bucks would save money, but would need to find a starting point guard from another source for next season. Portland has been searching for a point guard, and were a rumored participant in the Jason Kidd sweepstakes at the trade deadline.

#3: Williams and Simmons to Seattle for Chris Wilcox, Luke Ridnour, and Donyell Marshall (Bucks save $13 million in 09/10): Seattle gets two things from this deal – they clear part of their point guard logjam by adding a definite starter in Williams and also clear their power forward logjam for Durant, Jeff Green and possibly Michael Beasley. The Bucks, who get three useless players, would need draft picks back in this scenario. But Seattle is a good team to chat with for that – they have five first round picks in the next three seasons — their own, plus Phoenix’s 2008 (lottery protected) and 2010 (unprotected) picks. Also, Seattle will be about $7 million under the salary cap this offseason, so they could theoretically take back more salary than they send out. This means that this trade could be completed without Wilcox.

#4: Williams, Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric to Seattle for Chris Wilcox, Luke Ridnour, and Donyell Marshall (Bucks save $13 million in 09/10): I only include this because it is another scenario with Seattle that most likely wouldn’t require the Bucks to get valuable picks back – not only would they lose two awful contracts, but would retain the Simmons bargaining chip, who could be paired with Villanueva in another deal. Both of these Seattle proposals still leave the Bucks in a tough spot regarding a starting point guard – Ridnour doesn’t really fill the role. There is one reason that Seattle may actually want Gadzuric instead of Simmons – Danny G’s contract has an extra year on it, so it will expire right when Kevin Durant becomes eligible for an extension. Sam Presti may actually want a longer contract in order to postpone some of his cap space (potentially $30 million in the summer of 2009) until then.

So there you have it – these are the sort of trades that the new GM is going to have to pursue in order to try and rebuild this team around Andrew Bogut. The good thing is that they would clear salary space to use their one other tradable player – Villanueva – to bring back something that they can actually use. Besides, as much as we love Mo, the facts are clear – he has turned into a terrific player who was only capable of leading this team to less than 60 wins in the past two seasons. It’s time to rebuild, and awful deals like these are where it starts.

The Northwest division contains all the elements of a fine Victorian-era tragedy. Wealthy, volatile favorites. A whiny Russian. A potential superstar. Another potential superstar facing adversity. And a chorus of snowbound alley-dwellers hailing from the upper Midwest. This season this division will contain 3 of the worst teams in the NBA – albeit two with exceptionally bright futures – and my dark-horse contender for the championship.

1: Denver: First of all, I hate everything about Allen Iverson’s game. I’ve always felt he was overrated, made the game harder on his teammates, and was such a low-percentage scorer that all of his machinations made it that much harder for his teams to win. That said, Denver is the perfect place for him because they play at such a high pace that there are more quick shots to go around. Given some time for his game to meld with Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Denver bunch, this team can give anybody trouble – and I feel that this team will be one of the final 4 standing in April, because the thin air of Denver should give the Nuggets an almost insurmountable edge in a playoff series.

The Nuggets have a deep roster, but the one question mark is injuries. While their frontcourt of Camby and Nene is active and excellent defensively, neither player has been able to play a whole season in years and despite their best efforts to increase depth, the loss of either of these rebounding machines late in the season could torpedo their year.

I never could understand all the noise about JR Smith’s “breakout season� last year – he seemed like little more than a defensively-challenged standstill shooter to me, and one with a well documented bad attitude at that. The Nuggets seemed to agree with me, signing Chucky Atkins to provide a point guard who is a three-point threat, moving Iverson to shooting guard and Smith to the bench. The Nuggets don’t have a backup point guard of note (and since Iverson plays 40+ minutes a night, probably intend to use him at that position), but other than that Denver has good depth in Smith, Eduardo Najera, Steven Hunter and Linas Kleiza.

Questions abound about this team – particularly regarding team chemistry – but George Karl has succeeded in this situation (in Seattle) before, and at the end of the year last season was seeing pretty good results (after squeaking into the playoffs as the 7 seed, they had a tough series with San Antonio). I foresee a team that gets up and down the floor, scores lots of points, and keeps the egos in check enough to make the Western Conference Finals against the Spurs. 52 wins this year

2: Utah: Don’t you kind of get the feeling that everything went too perfectly for the Jazz last season? Deron Williams busted out as a bona-fide star, Carlos Boozer had his first healthy season in his third with the Jazz and finally justified his contract, and Paul Millsap turned out to be the steal of the draft. The Jazz rode the wave to the Western Conference finals, looked like they were a couple of players away from taking a shot at the championship … and then were silent this offseason.

It actually makes some sense – I think the Jazz looked at their payroll and the competition and realized that no matter what they did they aren’t ready for a championship run – but if they play their cards right, the window may open for them in two or three years. So why break the bank now? In 2 years, Williams, Boozer and Okur will all be eligible for extensions, so while Utah’s big hole last season was at shooting guard (exacerbated by the loss of Derek Fisher), they are addressing the position this season by throwing out a rookie (Morris Almond), a second year player (Ronnie Brewer) and a 2005 second round pick (CJ Miles). This sounds to me like a 2-year open audition: “Hey, we are going to have 3 starters making big money in 2009-10, who wants to play shooting guard for $1-$3 million?� Honestly, it’s not all that illogical a maneuver – to compete for a championship right now, Utah would have needed to add a Kobe Bryant-caliber player. That wasn’t going to happen, so now they try to position themselves to make a run after the Nowitzki/Duncan/Nash era fades past its prime.

Which leads us to the Kirilenko issue. Lost in the whole Kirilenko “my-wife-says-I-can-sleep-with-someone-else-once-a-year-I-hate-Jerry-Sloan� complaining, was the fact that Andrei was awful last year. The problem is that while Kirilenko is a matchup nightmare at power forward, slithering around defenders for baskets and blocking shots from the weak side at will, he had a hard time playing small forward with the emergence of Boozer. Offensively, he doesn’t shoot well enough to carry his weight at the “3� and defensively he gets pulled away from the basket, making it harder to rebound and freelance for blocks and steals. Kirilenko makes tons of money and doesn’t want to be in Utah any more, so trade him, right? Maybe not – his contract has 4 years left, so for the Jazz to trade him for expiring contracts (in order to extend Williams, Boozer and Okur) to have cap room in the 2009 offseason then they need to make that move next year, not now.

I feel that Utah will spend this season in a sort of holding pattern – good enough to cruise into the playoffs, not good enough to make much noise. Denver should be improved, shutting the Jazz out of home-court advantage in the playoffs, but the rest of the division is too weak for Utah to fall all that far. It’s too bad, too, because it was fun to see the Jazz emerge with their deep playoff run last season. My guess is about 43 wins.

3 (tie): Seattle: The Sonics took second prize in the draft lottery and won sure-fire star Kevin Durant, but other than his presence this team is a complete mess. The ownership situation is a major problem that will cause a distraction all season and the roster is filled with almost nothing but role players. It appears that Seattle’s great season three years ago made management believe that the Allen-Lewis show was ready for prime time and just needed some bit parts around them. That wasn’t the case, and now three years of mismanagement won them Durant and a golden opportunity to start over.

Apparently from 2004-2006 the Sonics were getting draft advice from Matt Millen, taking flyers on project big men three years straight. To the surprise of pretty much nobody, all three have been colossal busts with Robert Swift, Johan Petro and Saer Sene barely ever seeing the floor. The Sonics claim that losing Swift to a preseason knee injury was a blow to their season, but that just begs the question – if he was showing talent, then why bother with using picks on Petro and Sene in subsequent years? Anyway, Seattle entered the draft this year almost completely devoid of useful young talent, and going nowhere except to rebuild around Durant. So they made the entirely sensible decision to cut bait with Ray Allen and work out a sign-and-trade for the ridiculous contract that Orlando offered Rashard Lewis.

The Sonics will see significant roster turnover over the upcoming seasons, and that is partially a function of needing to wait to see what Kevin Durant’s game will be like when his body matures. Right now he is a 6’10� stringbean, understandable for a 19 year old, but will he become a 250 pound inside force or top out at 230 and depend on his long- and midrange game? Will he be a power forward or a small forward? Right now he is so explosively athletic but so physically weak that PJ Carlesimo is talking about starting him at shooting guard this year. Durant’s growth will have a major effect on the roles of the other power forwards – Chris Wilcox and Nick Collison – and Jeff Green, the only small forward on the roster after 2-year rental Wally Szczerbiak.

Seattle is kind of the anti-Portland – a roster filled with blah talent but a guaranteed end-game killer in Durant (word from the US national team was that he was sometimes the best player on the court), which should mean lots of blowout losses but a pretty good chance to win the close ones. Still, this team will be down this season and will spend most of the year shopping for new players and a new home. I’d guess that they win 30. Hopefully the fans of Seattle will still have a team when this bunch matures.

3 (tie): Boston’s AAA franchise: I think that by now it is common knowledge that the real problem in Minnesota is the owner, Glen Taylor, and the GM, Kevin McHale. After years of brutally bad management, they finally heeded the call from Boston and let them heist Kevin Garnett, while receiving Al Jefferson, Gerald Green and assorted other shiny beads and trinkets. This was the second major trade McHale has completed with his friend and former teammate Danny Ainge, and gives Minnesota an incredible 7 former Celtics on their current roster.

The T-Wolves now will rebuild around Jefferson, who put together a great 20 game streak to end last season, but the Celtics were tanking games then and finished the season on something like a 3-17 run. I guess I have to remain skeptical about a player until he does it in games that matter, but there is no doubt that Jefferson has offensive talent. His defense has been spotty, but it may come around for him. The Wolves have 3 other interesting young players – Randy Foye becomes the point guard after a spotty, injury-plagued rookie year while Gerald Green and Corey Brewer will try to make something of the small forward position. Green is a 3^rd year man who has done nothing of note beyond winning the slam dunk contest, while Brewer was widely regarded as a steal with the #8 pick in the draft. I have my doubts, however, as at 6’8�, 185 pounds Brewer desperately needs to put on some weight. He’s a defensive specialist, but how that skill will translate from guarding 19-year-old college players to 240 pound men is a question mark in my mind.

Other than that, Minnesota is made up of inexpensive veterans of dubious quality (except for Craig Smith, who was a steal in the second round last season). They made up for one mistake last season by swapping Mike James for Juwan Howard (saving several years of James’ contract in the process) and are apparently looking to trade Howard. And now their best veteran player is the famously me-first Ricky Davis, who will be gunning for his own stats in a contract year. What does it say about the Minnesota roster when the late Eddie Griffin ($2.9 million) will be their 8^th highest paid player this season? It says that they have a long way to go, and wins are a long way off. They’ll be lucky to win 30 games.

5: Portland: Even without Greg Oden this year, my God do the Trail Blazers have a lot of young talent! They have 7 former first round picks who are still in their rookie contracts, and they just extended Travis Outlaw, who is all of 23 years old. Unfortunately the future is probably two years away, as Oden will miss this season and will have to undergo his rookie trials next season, but that future is incredibly bright.

At least they have a somewhat adequate replacement for Oden in the starting lineup in Joel Pryzbilla, but he’s not much more than adequate. The rest of the starting 5 (Jarret Jack, Brandon Roy, Outlaw and LaMarcus Aldridge) is young and athletic and should keep the Blazers in a lot of games. However, finishing them will be a problem, as Portland traded away their entire offense in Zach Randolph. Randolph was heralded for his great season last year, but he really wasn’t much greater than he had been before his knee surgery. However, Randolph touched the ball on seemingly every possession last year – as often as noted ball-hogs Kobe Bryant and Gilbert Arenas. Not a single player on this Blazers roster has experience as a go-to guy (although Roy and Aldridge are on a track to become such a player) and as the Wizards showed last playoffs when Arenas went out, that if you have a one-man offense then losing your main man is a bitter pill.

I cannot help but think that Portland will take a step back this year. Even with Randolph, the Blazers had – by my metrics – the worst offense in the league last season. They are going to be young, they are going to be exciting. But they are going to go through a lot of 4^th quarters with a hard time executing well. I don’t think they top 28 wins, but fear not – with this core, they should win 60 in 3 or 4 years.

I was sad when watching the lottery when I saw that the Bucks were going to get the sixth pick, but Ty at the Bucks Diary has cheered me up with his thoughts on the Greg Oden saga and the fact that Yi has signed…

Think about what might have been, Antlerheads. Had the Bucks won the draft, we would have been partying in May, dancing in June… and crying now. Could you imagine the pain BucksNation would be feeling today if we had selected Oden, believing him to be the second coming of Lew Alcindor, only to find out we actually selected a 19 year old big man saddled with the knees of an aging Bob Lanier (and not the deadly babyhook either)?

AOL Fanhouse provides the best roundup I’ve seen so far of all the commentary in the world of Greg Oden’s micro fracture surgery.

Is he the next Sam Bowie?  Probably not, there aren’t dominant centers out there to make him look like a fool.

It’s Thursday and that means it’s time for “NBA At A Glance” on the Fresh Coast Sports Network, covering the comings and goings of the NBA.

• Isiah Thomas is getting lit up, but it’s in court instead of on the court.  I would imagine the Knicks are going to feel the hurt next year when it comes to corporate sponsorships.  Stephon Marbury is in the mix too, with an intern.
• Now that easy Yi is a Buck, the Charlie Bell saga is hitting full swing.  Will he stay or will he go?
• Greg Oden is going to miss the entire season.
• Former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien has passed away at 82.
• The Bucks signed second round pick Ramon Sessions.
• Allan Houston looks to be back as a New Jersey Net.
• Devin Harris got a huge $43 million extension from Mark Cuban.

Here’s a piece of important NBA news — the Portland Oregonian is reporting that Greg Oden will be having arthroscopic knee surgery on Thursday, and they aren’t really sure how bad the damage is.

A team source told The Oregonian that the MRI results were inconclusive and that the damage could be as minor as a cartilage injury or as major as a ligament tear.

Apparently Oden has been dealing with some knee pain for a long time and it just wasn’t getting any better. He doesn’t know when he hurt it.

Best of luck to him. I’m sure that it’s a good sign that whatever the problem is, it hasn’t been enough to keep him out of action to this point. Hopefully he’s good to go in a month or so and doesn’t miss much of training camp.

Jamaal Magloire, who I love to hate, is telling people that he brings “toughness” to the New Jersey Nets that he doesn’t see often in the NBA. Apparently that year with Darius Miles and Zach Randolph in Portland got to his head, the Trail Blazers should trade Miles before he messes with Greg Oden’s head.

Jamaal Magloire should not be allowed to arrive with him any team and talk about improving them after that terrible post-combination he created with him and then rookie Andrew Bogut.