AJWatson3
June-29th-2003, 11:54 AM
an entertaining article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2003Jun27.html
Wizards' Top Pick Is Truly Out of Sight
By Tony Kornheiser
Saturday, June 28, 2003; Page D01
Wasn't it nice that the Wizards drafted Steve Blake? It will be great to see Blake running with Juan Dixon again. You know, nobody knows how the ACC expansion is going to end up exactly. But if Miami decides not to join and the ACC is still looking to add a team, they might want to invite the Wizards. Because now with Blake and Dixon, the Wizards would be a pretty good bet to finish in the top half of the conference. (That way Kwame Brown wouldn't have to miss out on playing in the NCAA tournament.)
Blake, we know. Jarvis Hayes, on the other hand, is a mystery. Because he played at Georgia, he missed out on the NCAA tournament, too. So few people here have seen Hayes play. You will recall Georgia disqualified itself from the tournament after it became known that some Georgia basketball players received good grades without taking tests, or even showing up for class. (You may think this is a scandal, but believe me your college-age children now view Georgia as a place they might apply to, early decision.) All we really know about Hayes is that he's in this column because, at No. 9, the Knicks picked Mike Sweetney, thereby foiling LaSooz's grand design to make every Tuesday "Oxon Hill Night," and every Thursday "Georgetown Night."
I've seen Hayes compared to Glen Rice and described as "a young Mitch Richmond." That is somewhat of a relief because we had the old Mitch Richmond here, and it wasn't pretty. Apparently, Hayes will be more like Rice, because the Wizards want to play him at small forward. What would be the point of drafting him at shooting guard considering the Wizards already have Jerry Stackhouse, Larry Hughes and Juan Dixon there? The Wizards need another shooting guard like I need Alberto VO5 Hair Conditioner.
Hayes is said to be a good shooter, which makes him quite valuable. Good shooters are rare in the NBA these days. Or didn't you watch the NBA Finals? What am I saying! Nobody watched, and that's why -- because New Jersey and San Antonio missed almost every shot they threw up. And I use the term "threw up" deliberately. Unfortunately, Hayes is also said to have trouble dribbling the ball. But whaddya want from the No. 10 pick? At No. 17 you're lucky if the pick can take off his warmup pants without tripping over them. As long as Hayes can shoot, he can stand still somewhere and wait for Stackhouse to pass him the ball. (Yes, that's a joke. Next season Stackhouse won't be looking at anything but the basket. He'll take more shots than Sonny Corleone.)
We won't have to wait long to see Jarvis Hayes, though. He'll be in town sometime next week. Many teams bring their draft picks in the day after the draft. But I guess the Wizards wanted to wait until Ernie Grunfeld could buy a house here, drive down from Milwaukee and get his cable hooked up. Or maybe they couldn't snag a low fare without Hayes having to lay over Saturday night. On the other hand, what's the point of Hayes coming here now and meeting everybody in management? The GM is leaving, and most of the executives are going to be fired. Of course that doesn't explain why Steve Blake isn't coming until next week. Blake could walk and be here by this afternoon.
The Wizards were a rarity in this draft in that they didn't take any foreign players. Four players from Serbia and Montenegro alone were taken, compared to two from the Big Ten. (It's cool to have two countries combined into one, like "Serbia and Montenegro," or "Trinidad and Tobago." It would help us a lot in Olympic running if we could become "United States and Kenya.") It's so trendy now to draft foreign players. Eight were taken in the first round, and 12 in the second round. You had Darko and Zarko (but not Harpo and Chico) and Paccelis and Sofoklis. My favorite is the guy Atlanta took at No. 21: a black Frenchman named Boris!
Nobody here knows anything about these foreign players. Nobody here has ever seen them in anything but 30-second film clips in which they are shown dunking over some scrawny guy wearing a uniform that came straight out of a CYO league in 1968. The film clips look like they were taken by a high school kid, and the level of play is equally amateurish. And yet we are always assured that Slavko or Bobko is "7-foot-1, fluid and a great shooter." Doesn't anybody in Europe rebound? Silly me, I guess all the shots go in!
Then what you find out is that there's this one small catch: Your player "might not be here until 2005 if he can't get out of his contract." What? Then why draft him? Any coach who doesn't win in 2004 might not be here in 2005. Maciej Lampe of Poland dropped all the way to the second round because FIBA, the international basketball organization, declared Lampe was tied to his team in the Spanish League, Real Madrid, for at least the next two years -- and that Real Madrid held options on Lampe for five more years after that! (That's bad news for Lampe. No way he can get enough shots on Real Madrid now that David Beckham is there.)
The fact is foreign players often seem more attractive than American players because we don't scrutinize them with the same intensity. We don't see them enough to discover their flaws, like we do with our own college players. Jason Kapono may have had his tongue in his cheek, but there's a lot of truth in what he said: "I should have left UCLA after my freshman year, moved to Yugoslavia and changed my name to Jason Kaponovich, and I'd have been a first-round pick."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2003Jun27.html
Wizards' Top Pick Is Truly Out of Sight
By Tony Kornheiser
Saturday, June 28, 2003; Page D01
Wasn't it nice that the Wizards drafted Steve Blake? It will be great to see Blake running with Juan Dixon again. You know, nobody knows how the ACC expansion is going to end up exactly. But if Miami decides not to join and the ACC is still looking to add a team, they might want to invite the Wizards. Because now with Blake and Dixon, the Wizards would be a pretty good bet to finish in the top half of the conference. (That way Kwame Brown wouldn't have to miss out on playing in the NCAA tournament.)
Blake, we know. Jarvis Hayes, on the other hand, is a mystery. Because he played at Georgia, he missed out on the NCAA tournament, too. So few people here have seen Hayes play. You will recall Georgia disqualified itself from the tournament after it became known that some Georgia basketball players received good grades without taking tests, or even showing up for class. (You may think this is a scandal, but believe me your college-age children now view Georgia as a place they might apply to, early decision.) All we really know about Hayes is that he's in this column because, at No. 9, the Knicks picked Mike Sweetney, thereby foiling LaSooz's grand design to make every Tuesday "Oxon Hill Night," and every Thursday "Georgetown Night."
I've seen Hayes compared to Glen Rice and described as "a young Mitch Richmond." That is somewhat of a relief because we had the old Mitch Richmond here, and it wasn't pretty. Apparently, Hayes will be more like Rice, because the Wizards want to play him at small forward. What would be the point of drafting him at shooting guard considering the Wizards already have Jerry Stackhouse, Larry Hughes and Juan Dixon there? The Wizards need another shooting guard like I need Alberto VO5 Hair Conditioner.
Hayes is said to be a good shooter, which makes him quite valuable. Good shooters are rare in the NBA these days. Or didn't you watch the NBA Finals? What am I saying! Nobody watched, and that's why -- because New Jersey and San Antonio missed almost every shot they threw up. And I use the term "threw up" deliberately. Unfortunately, Hayes is also said to have trouble dribbling the ball. But whaddya want from the No. 10 pick? At No. 17 you're lucky if the pick can take off his warmup pants without tripping over them. As long as Hayes can shoot, he can stand still somewhere and wait for Stackhouse to pass him the ball. (Yes, that's a joke. Next season Stackhouse won't be looking at anything but the basket. He'll take more shots than Sonny Corleone.)
We won't have to wait long to see Jarvis Hayes, though. He'll be in town sometime next week. Many teams bring their draft picks in the day after the draft. But I guess the Wizards wanted to wait until Ernie Grunfeld could buy a house here, drive down from Milwaukee and get his cable hooked up. Or maybe they couldn't snag a low fare without Hayes having to lay over Saturday night. On the other hand, what's the point of Hayes coming here now and meeting everybody in management? The GM is leaving, and most of the executives are going to be fired. Of course that doesn't explain why Steve Blake isn't coming until next week. Blake could walk and be here by this afternoon.
The Wizards were a rarity in this draft in that they didn't take any foreign players. Four players from Serbia and Montenegro alone were taken, compared to two from the Big Ten. (It's cool to have two countries combined into one, like "Serbia and Montenegro," or "Trinidad and Tobago." It would help us a lot in Olympic running if we could become "United States and Kenya.") It's so trendy now to draft foreign players. Eight were taken in the first round, and 12 in the second round. You had Darko and Zarko (but not Harpo and Chico) and Paccelis and Sofoklis. My favorite is the guy Atlanta took at No. 21: a black Frenchman named Boris!
Nobody here knows anything about these foreign players. Nobody here has ever seen them in anything but 30-second film clips in which they are shown dunking over some scrawny guy wearing a uniform that came straight out of a CYO league in 1968. The film clips look like they were taken by a high school kid, and the level of play is equally amateurish. And yet we are always assured that Slavko or Bobko is "7-foot-1, fluid and a great shooter." Doesn't anybody in Europe rebound? Silly me, I guess all the shots go in!
Then what you find out is that there's this one small catch: Your player "might not be here until 2005 if he can't get out of his contract." What? Then why draft him? Any coach who doesn't win in 2004 might not be here in 2005. Maciej Lampe of Poland dropped all the way to the second round because FIBA, the international basketball organization, declared Lampe was tied to his team in the Spanish League, Real Madrid, for at least the next two years -- and that Real Madrid held options on Lampe for five more years after that! (That's bad news for Lampe. No way he can get enough shots on Real Madrid now that David Beckham is there.)
The fact is foreign players often seem more attractive than American players because we don't scrutinize them with the same intensity. We don't see them enough to discover their flaws, like we do with our own college players. Jason Kapono may have had his tongue in his cheek, but there's a lot of truth in what he said: "I should have left UCLA after my freshman year, moved to Yugoslavia and changed my name to Jason Kaponovich, and I'd have been a first-round pick."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company