Beware the Wizards in the draft lottery
The NBA draft lottery is Tuesday night and for just the second time in 11 years, the Bulls are not involved. Even when they made the playoffs, they had the Knicks' pick two years in a row in 2006 and '07 from the Eddy Curry trade.
They will have a rooting interest, though, because this appears to be a one-man draft. In the short-term, Oklahoma's Blake Griffin seems to be well ahead of the class. The rest of the top five could include Spanish point guard Ricky Rubio, who is under contract in Europe; UConn center Hasheem Thabeet, Arizona PF Jordan Hill and Arizona State SG James Harden.
If the Thunder wins the lottery, Griffin will join Derrick Rose as the second straight No. 1 pick to play in his home town.
One thing that's interesting about this year's lottery is out of the seven teams with the best odds at No. 1, six are from the Western Conference. Washington is the only one from that group in the East. A Wizards win means they could field a lineup of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison and Griffin next season -- assuming everyone is back healthy. Washington could return to prominence very quickly in that scenario and maybe threaten the Bulls' status as the team most likely to step forward next season.
Here's the list of lottery odds:
1. Sacramento 25 percent
2. Washington 17.8
3. LA Clippers 17.7
4. Oklahoma City 11.9
5. Minnesota 7.6
6. Memphis 7.5
7. Golden State 4.3
8. New York 2.8
9. Toronto 1.7
10. Milwaukee 1.0
11. New Jersey 0.9
12. Charlotte 0.7
13. Indiana 0.6
14. Phoenix 0.5
--The Bulls have two first-round picks, No. 16 and No. 26, which originally belonged to Denver, but came over from OKC for Thabo Sefolosha.
I'm not going to pretend to know who might be a good pick at either spot. DraftExpress.com has the Bulls taking Wake Forest PF James Johnson and UCLA PG Darren Collison.
NBADraft.net suggests a North Carolina perfecta of PG Ty Lawson at 16 and PF Tyler Hansbrough at 26.
I am hoping the Clippers get number 1 they would probably be open to trading the pick. Bulls could deffinately use a Blake Griffin that is for sure!
We need to package are picks and some players ie Ben Gordon or Kirk Hinrich and try to get a scoring big. I really hope the strong playoff showing doesn't cause Pax to make the same exact mistake he did a couple summers ago and do nothing.
Bosh would be the ideal fit but that would be a big surprise if that actually happened. Others availible are guys like Boozer, Chandler, Marion and Kaman. Boozer is great when he is playing but has been injured every year. Not to mention the low ball tactic he used to get out of cleveland.
Marion is an interesting option but would only be availible in a sign and trade. He would be cheap to trade for and a good fit.
I would push hard for Bosh and evaluate how Boozer would fit the uptempo game we run and probably go after him. Trading Kirk and a pick for him wouldn't effect are cap status for the big free agent year so we could still persue D Wade and LeBron.