So what if the Knicks win the lottery and are forced to surrender John Wall to Utah? That would be side-splitting, though it likely won't happen now that Mike D'Antoni has his team playing with something resembling a sense of purpose.
That leaves the Nets, possibly the worst team ever, picking out baby clothes and painting the locker room UK colors. Except that -- cue that funny trombone -- Devin Harris, the team's lone All-Star and de facto franchise player, also plays point guard. What's a team to do?
If you're one of those people who loves hot new trends, you'd suggest the Nets play them together, since two-point guard (or PG-ish) backcourts are in vogue this season. Even Chris Paul has had to suffer this indignity; it's also the number one question that would've arose had the Jazz ended up with this hypothetical pick.
On Wednesday, Spurs second-rounder DeJuan Blair went for an ungodly 28 points and 21 boards against the Thunder. Blair, a rebounding machine who came out of some unknown school called "Pitt," hit the OKC with exactly what that team needs to make its cipher complete. Though for the record, some of us yet believe that Serge Ibaka will grow into that duty.
Regardless, OKC could've easily had Blair on their roster, as could every other team in the NBA. For once, the Spurs didn't pull off a move that required genius; they just picked up a player whom some had projected to go mid-first.
These are the days of miracles and wonders, which is why things are jumping the eff off over at Darnell Mayberry's Thunder Rumblings. Perhaps drunk off the novelty of Sam Presti having made a mistake, a whole city wonders why they have B.J. Mullens, not Blair, on their roster.
LeBron James is such a singular player that it's strange to speak of him as a test case. But in a sense, he was. James was a player who frequently made us question all we knew about the universe, or at least basketball; his role as "savior" was both more literal and more high-flown than any draft pick -- especially one so young -- in recent memory. That his game regularly blew our collective mind only added to this mystique. You don't get called a "messiah" without offering up a regular dose of revelation.
But enough slobbering. The LeBron James story did work out, and in John Wall, we have the first player since then who has really captured the draftnoscenti's imagination like James. I am not discounting Greg Oden and Kevin Durant; however, there were questions about each of them, and their informal competition for the number one spot became the real story. Like James, or the cheese, Wall stands alone. And if you think teams aren't clamoring for a chance to nab a player who, symbolically, is James redux, you're absent your temporal lobe.
That's how you end up with column like the latest Mike Wells offering in The Indianapolis Post. It's called "John Wall: The Ultimate Consolation Prize," but the title's misleading. In fact, it kicks off with a fiery paean to the Kentucky supra-talent, then reminds readers that when the lowly Nets come to town, their permanent midnight in the standings means they're also on the verge of a Wall-ian epiphany. Totally gnostic, I know.
It seems like only yesterday -- actually, the end of last month -- that Blake Griffin was looking forward to playing his first regular-season games.
It was supposed to be a matter of weeks, which would've put his putative return right around ... Wednesday, actually.
Well, instead, the Clippers have announced that the No. 1 overall pick is done for the season:
After experiencing some discomfort during his recently-accelerated rehabilitation program, Clippers' forward Blake Griffin was examined Tuesday afternoon by Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles. As a result of that examination, it has been determined that the healing in his left patella area has not improved to the expected required level. Griffin will undergo a surgical procedure in the near future, with a recovery prognosis of four to six months.
Our sympathies go out to Griffin, his family, and especially the Clippers, who would've greatly strengthened their playoff chances with Griffin in the lineup. They also stood to gain some flexibility, financial or otherwise, by dealing Marcus Camby -- no longer such a no-brainer should that opportunity present itself.
Griffin was thought to be head and shoulders above the rest of last summer's draft class, in part due to the ongoing obsession with tall people, especially athletic ones. We shouldn't jump to make an Greg Oden comparison, not in the least because Kevin Durant is really tall, while all the guards that have sparkled as rookies this season are short. Still, it's worth noting that again; we have a big man succumbing to injury, and smaller players starring from the get-go. Maybe size isn't such an asset after all.
The game has been getting smaller for a few seasons; the draft has been one of the last holdouts. Seeing as big men are less structurally sound than other players, and thus more likely to be injured, you have to wonder if future lottery teams might take a player's height into consideration as a negative.
It's becoming more clear every day that Knicks president Donnie Walsh will be answering questions about Brandon Jennings this entire season, and perhaps for the rest of his life. The Knicks, with Chris Duhon assigned as the starting point guard and up-tempo coach Mike D'Antoni in the driver's seat, used the No. 8 in the June draft on raw center prospect Jordan Hill instead of Jennings, the out-of-this-world PG.
Certainly, Walsh isn't the only basketball mind to miss on Jennings. But fans would probably prefer believing that Walsh was fully informed of the pros and cons of the top prospects -- especially Jennings, given the aforementioned circumstances -- and made a basketball decision. But apparently, Walsh let New York's scouts handle the vetting of Jennings. And they didn't make the case for B.J. forcefully enough. Hence, Hill.
When I saw him play in Vegas, I did go to our scouts and I told them, 'Look, if you knew he was that good you should have come to me every day in my office and said, 'You've got to look at this guy,'" said Walsh. "I said, 'I listened to you.' You said, 'He's good,' but that was about it."
Given the stakes, you'd think Walsh would want to work the levers on such a vital, vital draft pick. With such a thin depth chart, few prospects of note in the pipeline, and limited resources in this post-Isiah world, this 2009 draft was second only to 2010 free agency in terms of scheduled moments of import.
This post-Isiah world. Hmm. Wait, what if the Knicks' front office still has the scent of Isiah Thomas about it? ...
No ... Walsh couldn't possibly have kept Isiah's entire scouting staff, could he have?
"When I come in anywhere, I don't fire everybody," said Walsh. "I wanted to give the scouts, the front office people, the opportunity to show me what they can do. So I just haven't [replaced them]."
Walsh took over the Knicks more than a year before the 2009 draft. While Thomas drafted fairly well (given where his picks came), it's a bit absurd to effectively blame (no matter how subtly) the previous regime for a pick Walsh made. "If you knew he was that good you should have come to me every day in my office." Further, Walsh admits to Thomsen that the fact that the scouts weren't sure about their job status has hurt communication ... which possibly led to Jennings slipping by! I don't have enough !s on my keyboard!
Thomsen offers Walsh cover by playing down the "Isiah's scouts" angle a bit, and by assuring fans that Hill over Jennings wasn't a franchise-killing decision. Tell that to Charlotte "Adam Morrison over Brandon Roy" Bobcats fans. The Knicks could still come out roses, for sure -- Hill could develop, free agency could deliver. Heck, Atlanta passed up on Deron Williams and Chris Paul for Marvin Williams, and the Hawks have made it after all. But Jennings would be a fantastic head start in the least, and in an ideal world a franchise savior.
Making a bad decision on draft day is understandable, and forgivable. But how do you put yourself in such an ignorant, challenging position in the first place? Patience may be a virtue, but the stakes are high enough to take some control of the situation from the start, let alone at the start of Year Two.
So what if the 
On Wednesday, Spurs second-rounder 
LeBron James is such a singular player that it's strange to speak of him as a test case. But in a sense, he was. James was a player who frequently made us question all we knew about the universe, or at least basketball; his role as "savior" was both more literal and more high-flown than any draft pick -- especially one so young -- in recent memory. That his game regularly blew our collective mind only added to this mystique. You don't get called a "messiah" without offering up a regular dose of revelation.
It seems like only yesterday -- actually, 
It's becoming more clear every day that 
