I recently wrote something about Kelvin and his latest recruiting incident at Indiana and I went back and read it again and I don’t think I did it justice.  This man needs to resign. 

Kelvin Sampson can’t recruit another player at Indiana, especially a top recruit, without everyone thinking that he crossed a line to get there.  The reputation is stained and is staining Indiana each day he has a job there.  I don’t know Kelvin personally and I’m sure he’s a great guy.  But he needs to do the right thing and step down and earn his way back.  It’s a shame that Matt Doherty gets run out of North Carolina and has to start at the bottom again and this guy gets free pass after free pass.   

Kelvin’s assistant recently resigned over the issue and isn’t that kind of backward.  The guy trusted with the program has an assistant who recruited some of their best incoming players and did so by making some illegal phone calls.  The head coach was in on at least 10 of those calls yet the assistant is forced to resign?  Makes no sense to me.

As a sidenote, I’ve noticed lately that more and more high school kids are committing to schools earlier than ever before.  Already we are seeing kids that have committed to colleges and these kids won’t graduate until 2009.  Sophomores making life choices is an amazing thing.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe that people with strong support systems can make this choice at a young age but it is going to lead more and more to football type recruiting.  In football you have strong commits, soft commits until signing day approaches.  In basketball there are 2 signing days each year and that helps but the earlier the commitment the better chance that the kid will rethink his decision.  Illinois has 4 commitments already for players that are going to be there in 2009 and 2010.  As an Illini fan, I’m very excited about that but it makes me a little leery at the same time.  After all, I am a Cub fan and I see the worst in things sometimes.

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Someone explain to me why David Stern isn’t doing anything about the mess in New York that’s going on.  With all the other leagues taking tougher stances we haven’t heard one thing from the Commissioner on the Isiah Thomas/James Dolan Madison Square Garden issue.  Honestly, football commish Goodell has had his hands full and is sending a clear message to the league as to what he will or won’t tolerate and has drawn his line in the sand.  Meanwhile, David Stern is like the rest of us, watching Sportscenter drinking a diet coke.  This kills me.  How does Isiah Thomas still have a job? If this guy was running your company you’d can him completely by now.  The Knicks had to pay 45 million in a luxury tax situation and now another 11 mill for this.  The word on the street is that the owner believes Isiah did nothing wrong here.  It doesn’t matter.  In the past we’ve seen players commit crimes and still have jobs because they were good players.  In this case, Isiah Thomas isn’t even good at what he does.  He’s spent money like crazy for a losing product and to top it off they have over 18 players under contract for next season when you can’t go over 15 when the year starts.  He’s drafted poorly and the team underperforms.  Now this.  The NBA needs the Knicks to be good and if James Dolan, Knicks owner, isn’t going to do anything then Stern needs to step up and act.  It’s time.

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I love this guy.  Andrei Kirilenko reportedly wants out of Utah.  In a report that is circulating over every sports website, Kirilenko blames Jerry Sloan for wanting out of the organization.  I find this so funny that I can’t stop laughing.  Do the Jazz even care anymore?  We are talking about a player who averaged 8 points and 4 rebounds a game and couldn’t hit the side of a barn with his shot outside of 5 feet.  I live in Utah and Andrei is like the girl in school that kisses you one day and won’t talk to you the next.  You just don’t know what you are going to get or expect. 

But let’s look into this further.  He lost some playing time this past season to rookie Paul Milsap.  Milsap had a great season and surely would’ve been a first round pick if the draft was done again.  Milsap makes Kirilenko very expendable.  Does Kirilenko shoot the ball well or is he a threat on offense?  No.  He is barely guarded when he is outside of the key.  He lacks strength and isn’t a great foul shooter.  Is it Jerry Sloan’s fault that Andrei can’t make a jumper?  Of course not.  Milsap does all the little things at a much smaller price and constantly provides a spark for the team.  He brought heart every game which is something that Utah questions about Andrei.  If Andrei is going well then he is all over the court with energy, but give him an early foul and you may as well go sit him in the locker room.  When Andrei is on his game there are few players who are better defensively.  He can guard multiple positions and with his ‘go go gadget’ arms he seems to block or nearly block any shot that is taken around him.  I’ll miss that but nothing else. 

Let someone else have this guy because he is the 4th option for the Jazz now and doesn’t deserve the touches.  He lost the confidence of his point guard and rightfully so.  Deron Williams is a future all star and when you couple him with Okur and Boozer you have the nucleus.  Kirilenko is on the outside looking in and it bothers him.   I say stick Milsap in there and let’s see what happens.  I know you wont’ see a much different win loss record because Milsap provides the intangibles so well.

I’ve heard and read rumors of Shawn Marion for Kirilenko and it makes me laugh.  Did the Suns watch any game film of Kirilenko?  Will he do that much better playing in a running game when he lacks the ability to finish like Marion does?  Nash won’t like it I can tell you that much.  At this point I’d take whatever I could get as soon as I could get it and say thanks.  If he doesn’t want to be in Utah then Utah will want nothing to do with him.

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Let’s get right to the point.  With Midnight Madness less than a month away these 5 players have their campuses very excited and give each program hope for a Final 4 spot in March.

 #5….Michael Beasley (Kansas St.)  Highly sought after recruit who probably would’ve gone wherever Bob Huggins ended up.  Huggins was smart and didn’t waste his year away from coaching.  He took the time to establish some good relationships with kids without having to adhere to all the rules that follow coaches.  Then Huggins left for West Virginia and Beasley is staying put.  Beasley is a 6*9 beast of a player with strong offensive and defensive skills.  He is very athletic and will be able to guard most small forwards in college basketball.  He’ll be one and done and a lottery pick next season barring injury.

 #4…Derrick Rose (Memphis)  Rose was clearly the best player in Illinois last year and spurned the Illini for Memphis.  He will play for a solid team and a coach with pro experience.  Rose is a do it all point guard who has amazing court vision and athleticism.  He can get to the rim at will and makes his teammates better.  If he develops a consistent jumper he’ll be a top 5 pick in the draft next year.  Without it he may be in school for a couple years.  My gut feeling is that he’ll have an average season and decide to come out for the draft.

#3…Kevin Love (UCLA)  Ben Howland got a great player in Love.  After watching video of this kid, he is very polished and ready to play from the start.  Great court vision for a player his size and a good passer.  Has excellent post moves and is very smooth.  I look for Love to be one and done also as he would’ve been a top 10 pick this season had he come out.

#2…Eric Gordon (Indiana)  I absolutely love watching this kid play basketball.  Great shooter, great scorer and great athlete.  Has good size, strength, long arms and can defend.  I wish he were wearing the orange and blue but instead he’s Kelvin Sampsons to screw up.  Sampson hasn’t produced a lot of pros despite being considered a great recruiter.  Gordon will change that as he’ll be gone after one excellent season at Indiana. 

#1…Oj Mayo (USC)  We’ve all been following him for years and I’m shocked he’s playing in Southern California.  Who would’ve guessed this?  When he was getting scholarship offers in 8th grade, Tim Floyd was still coaching the Bulls.  Now here we are years later and Mayo is in the Pac 10.  Great size, strength and the ability to score every time he touches the ball sets him apart.  I put on the top because he is going to bring visibility to this program that it hasn’t seen before.  USC will be on tv now and start it’s progression away from just being a football school and Mayo is a major factor there.  He’ll be a lottery selection in next years draft.

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Greg Oden was questionably the best player in the NBA draft this year.  The Blazers had a choice of Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.  After Greg Oden was clearly outperformed by Durant in the summer leagues and nearly making the Olympic squad, the Blazers could have been questioning if they made the right choice with that selection.  However a recent injury and surgery has to alarm the Blazers as they look forward to the coming season. 

Greg Oden recently announced that he’ll be having surgery done to one of his knees that has been bothering him for quite some time.  Let’s put this in perspective, Oden is only 19 years old and not even in his first season yet and in the past two years he’s had a major wrist injury, tonsillitis and now knee surgery.  What’s that about?  I know that many people have these things happen but this has to bring up some red flags.  I remember another high pick the Blazers had that got hurt right away and it has cursed the franchise ever since.  Sam Bowie.  Now I’m not saying that Oden will fall the way of Sam Bowie at all but this has to make you question if this is a pattern following the likes of Marcus Camby.

I’ve had Marcus Camby on my fantasy team for a number of seasons and he’s great to have until you see the DNP-ripped fingernail.  I hope that Oden gets healthy because he is as exciting a prospect as I’ve seen in a while.  Defensively he could have played in the NBA when he was in high school.  He will develop offensively but anyone who watched the national championship could clearly see that he was head and shoulders better than Noah and Horford down low.  He dominated two of the better big men in college last season. 

But just like I’ve called Marcus Camby Mr. Glass for the past few years I may have found a new nickname for Greg Oden…Lladro.  For those that don’t know it is the real expensive porcelain that is hand carved from Spain.  Very expensive and a big money loss when broken.

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Webster’s dictionary has commitment as a pledge or a promise or an obligation.  I have no reason to doubt Mr. Webster or Mrs. Webster for that matter or even Miss Webster if that’s the case.  I do doubt though whether the NCAA should change the word committed when talking about college athletics. 

Since this is a basketball blog I will keep it focused on that, but in college football the term commitment is as loose as it gets.  Players constantly are changing where they say they are going to go.  Basketball hasn’t been that way in the past as when a player commits to a school other schools tended to focus on other players to sway.  Football also has many many more scholarships to fill each season and they can afford to continue to recruit committed players.  However, in basketball that simply isn’t the case.  Most college coaches only have a couple scholarships each year to give out and have to use their time and energy wisely.  To go after a committed player is a strain on recruiting resources and is a big gamble.

Eric Gordon, in my opinion the best player from last years high school class, had committed to the University of Illinois.  You all know my love for the Illini so I won’t try to hide it.  Kelvin Sampson got the Indiana job after Mike Davis was let go and went after Gordon.  Gordon decommitted from Illinois and signed with Indiana.  I was crushed.  Eric Gordon is a one and done player and a signature recruit for a coaching staff.  As much as it pains me to write this I don’t think Sampson did a lot wrong here.  Sampson had to give it a shot as Gordon was an Indiana kid and nobody ever told him ‘no’.  He was doing his job.  In the coaching ranks it is being debated whether or not this is ethical or not and some would say that it isn’t ethical to go after a committed player.  Personally I see both sides of this argument and I have a hard time siding with either of them. 

Basketball has the advantage of having 2 signing periods throughout the year where football only has one.  That plays a large role in decommits as so much can happen in a year.  What I think needs to happen and should happen is that a player signs a letter once he has committed and if he wants out then it would have to be granted.  It would force kids to make more thought out decisions and teach them to learn to live with their choices.  Football needs to add a second signing day plain and simple and they will see this cut down a lot.  If they don’t they will continue to have recruits poached up until and including signing day.

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Recently the University of Illinois, my favorite school by a long way, lost their top assistant coach Tracy Webster to the University of Kentucky.  This has caused an uproar to Illini Nation and has disturbed me a little bit.  I’m a die hard fan who will live and die with whatever decisions are made but the decision that is to be made by coach Bruce Weber is a big one.  He has to pick someone who can recruit Chicago well, has a good name and recognition.  A name being thrown around right now is Dickey Simpkins, formerly of the beloved Chicago Bulls.  It got me thinking a little bit about former players that have coached and how well they done as coaches whether in the pros or college.  Now I’m going to leave some out of course because I’m going off memory but bear with me a little bit here.

Isiah Thomas-  I’m still messed up by the spelling and pronunciation of his name.  This guy was an amazing basketball player and clearly one of the top 50 players ever to play the game, but he hasn’t faired so well in his coaching and especially gm roles.  Isiah coached the Pacers and was let go by Larry Bird there.  He didn’t do bad.  Now he coaches the Knicks in an attempt to clean up his mess there.  Isiah is a .500 coach so far in his career.   I think this year will make or break him as a coach and could be his last chance.

Clyde Drexler-University of Houston-  This didn’t last long at all.  Being a college coach is much tougher than a pro coach in that it is a full time year round job.  Not that being a pro coach isn’t tough it’s crazy, but Clyde lasted a season here and realized it just wasn’t for him. 

Bill Russell-  In my opinion, one of the top 10 players of all time and the guy I would want on my team over anyone to play the game.  Statistically wasn’t that great of an offensive player but there hasn’t been a defender like him since he retired.  Bill Russell actually player coached the Celtics very successfully and had a decent run with the Sonics in the mid 70’s before bombing as the Kings coach for not even a full season. 

Let’s change gears a little bit….

 Phil Jackson, Jerry Sloan, Pat Riley, Scott Skiles, Byron Scott, Don Nelson, George Karl…never mind.  Players can and are great coaches go ahead and hire Dickey Simpkins Illinois and sign some good kids for me so I start to sleep at night.

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It could be.  Now I have some serious gripes when I watch these guys play but I’m not sure how much of it is straight personal bias.  I love watching these guys play together for the most part with the other part being when Kobe Bryant gets the ball.  I watched a game last week when Lebron James didn’t get a shot for minutes while Kobe was trying to dribble around player after player.  I wonder if they ever remind him that they aren’t in LA.  The straw that stirs this teams drink is James.  He is one of the few guys that makes everyone else better out there.  He has what Magic and Larry had as a player.  Size and all around ability.  He can’t help but pass to an open player.  When he is on the top of the zones I feel very confident that someone will get a wide open shot or a dunk.  They have fast breaks all game long with James, Bryant and Anthony and that is as close to as good as it gets.

The best thing the country has done is gone to a program.  I can see the difference and as much as I dislike his game at times, Bryant is the teams leader on the court.  The players clearly look to him for guidance and Bryant expects it out of himself.  But the program being established has set the tone and with the crushing of Argentina on Sunday by 37 points the USA has sent the message that they are back. 

With a guaranteed Olympic spot and the odds on favorites to win the gold we can only hope that no injuries take place except to Tyson Chandler (just kidding), maybe that way we can get another big man or two to help Stoudamire as a scoring threat.  Teams let Howard go one on one all game and they don’t even sniff at Chandler when he’s out there.  Let’s just hope no injuries take place and that the USA brings home the gold in 2008.

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Eddie Griffin died last week when he crashed his car into a moving freight train.  He ignored warning lights and sirens and barricades to crash into the train.  He was burned so badly that they had to identify him through dental records.  Everyone is wondering today if it was suicide or not.  Nobody is wondering if Eddie Griffin was a troubled soul.

Some people around me, who don’t follow basketball, have been asking who he was.  I asked them if they heard of the NBA player who crashed his car while watching a porn flick last year.  Most have heard of that story and even chuckle a little bit at it but now it isn’t so funny.  Eddie Griffin was struggling in life and died an unhappy person.  Did the NBA help or hurt this kid?

When Eddie Griffin came out of high school he was one of the top recruits in the nation.  He signed with Seton Hall with a heralded recruiting class and he performed very well as a Freshman.  He was a very smooth player who had great defensive skills and who I thought would have been an all star right now.  I watched him every chance I could.  He could run, jump, shoot and block shots like crazy.  His timing was amazing.  Socially, the signs were all there that this kid had issues.  He got in a fight in high school and in knocked out a college teammate once.  Lots of kids get in fights though right?

The Houston Rockets drafted Eddie and if I remember right traded draft rights to Richard Jefferson to get him.  He was a clear cut lottery choice and every team saw it that way.  I praised the Rockets for doing it because Eddie Griffin had it all.

From there everything is a haze.  Eddie seemed to struggle with simple decisions and life with all that money.  He was an instant millionaire and reportedly hung out with the wrong people.  Most recently he was given a 3 year contract with the Twolves and then he went AWOL.  He violated the leagues substance abuse policy and went to rehab more than once.  The Twolves cut him loose and that was it.  Can you imagine what he was going through?  At a young age Eddie knew he was going to be an NBA player and expected it.  It came true and was over by the time he was 25 years old.  25 years old and everything he’d worked for was over.  That wouldn’t be an enjoyable feeling to have when you wake up one day and realize that your actions caused it all.  That accountability must have been very hard to bear.  Maybe so hard to bear that he kept trying to find it in a bottle. 

I always held out hope for Eddie and what he could do on a court.  Maybe the NBA was too much too soon or was it all inevitable.  If he had stayed in school for 3-4 years would it have been avoided or would it have happened earlier.  We’ll never know.  People have compared him to Len Bias, but Len Bias never got the chance to truly play.  Griffin did and failed to take advantage.  He should be in his 2nd or 3rd year of a max contract but instead he’s gone.  Rest in peace Eddie, finally.

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Today the United States finalized their roster of 12 as they get set for the upcoming qualifying tournament that starts on Wednesday.  The final two cuts were Kevin Durant and Nick Collison.  Yes, I said Nick Collison.  The same player that was rumored to have only benched 185 three times coming out of college.  Of course he denied it repeatedly and it didn’t hurt his draft stock.  Then as the season started he had a ball stripped out of his hands and it seriously injured both his shoulders to the point that he missed the season.  This guy is an average at best NBA player who would struggle to make the rotation of some teams.  Him being one of the final cuts scares me to death. 

On the other hand, Durant you can make a serious case for.  I wouldn’t mind having the youngster playing for the squad.  It gives him experience.  I’m sick of getting beat each year now and I’d like some of these guys to really stick around more.  Keeping Durant would accomplish that.  However, I know he is young and we want and need to win right now.  He’s still 18 or 19 years old so he’ll have plenty of chances hopefully. 

The final roster is now Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, Dwight Howard, Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Redd, Miller, Tyson Chandler, Tayshaun Prince and Deron Williams according to Espn.  This is a very good team.  We have a great mix or scorers and defenders.  I like the addition of Prince.  This is a guy who doesn’t need the ball to be effective.  Williams, my favorite player, should do very well playing with Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups.  They have shooters finally with Michael Redd and Mike Miller.  The team lacks a lot of height but having Tyson Chandler and Dwight Howard isn’t bad.  But they lack that experience down low that you like to see.  The good thing is that teams haven’t beaten us on the inside, they’ve killed us from outside. 

How would you like to defend a fast break with Lebron in the middle, Kobe on a wing and Carmelo on a wing?  I used Lebron to make it a tough choice.  If I put Kobe in the middle we all know he’d just shoot it.  I like our chances and here’s to the USA getting back to the top where they belong.

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