Ping Pong

The Pacific Northwest made out Tuesday evening in the annual NBA Lottery bingo night.

Greg Oden in Portland with Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge will be a force to be reckoned with for some time. Kevin Durant freeing up shots for Ray Allen will also make the Sonics a team to watch.

But the luckiest draft spot, for the NBA, was the Hawks going at #3. Had they not hit one of the top three spots, the Phoenix Suns would have secured their spot and would have only made the rich get even richer.

For the fourth year in a row, the Nuggets weren’t in the running for the top spot. It wasn’t like this was 2002 when their third selection netted them Melo, who at this pace will go down as one of the top Nuggets of all time.

No, for the fourth year in a row the Nuggets made the playoffs and had no shot at a lottery pick. This is also the fourth year in a row that they were bounced in the first round of the NBA Playoffs.

(Another time, probably closer to the start of the NBA season, I will analyze what the Nuggets need to do in order to advance deeper into the playoffs.)

Today, the discussion is around the NBA Draft and why the Nuggets not only do not have a lottery pick, but do not have a selection in the draft at all.

Usually no draft selections is a bad thing, besides, how can you build your team around a strong, young nucleus without the help of strong, young athletes?

Instead, the Nuggets traded away their pick for a shooting guard out of Georgetown with 10 years experience. Obviously I am talking about AI.

Now ESPN Insider, Chad Ford put up his latest mock draft after the lottery was announced. Obviously he has Oden and Durant at 1 and 2 and then the usual cast of characters follows.

Scanning down the list you see some guys who could alter the shape of basketball for years to come: Conley Jr, Brewer, Rush, Wright, Wright. Keep going down to pick 21 where Ford thinks the 76ers will draft Duke PF Josh McRoberts.

Without the AI trade, this would have been the Nuggets selection. I highly doubt that the Nuggets would have gone with the big man, having Nene, Kleiza, Najera, Camby, and K Mart on their squad. But looking past McRoberts at some of the guys the Nuggets would have had a chance to select just reiterates how well the Nuggets did in this trade.

If AI’s career were the workweek, he would be on Wednesday, hump day. He is not falling off, but he has probably seen his game elevate to the top and, although it can stay there a while longer, it is probably not going to keep rising. What you see in AI is what you get.

That is not to say that he doesn’t have another 5-7 All Star caliber seasons left in him, he most certainly does. That is just to say that he has reached and exceed his potential and we know what we are going to get from him.

So scanning past McRoberts you still see Brandon Rush and Daequan Cook on the board, along with a handful of foreign imports and some pretty good athletes.

It should just be apparent that this AI trade was one of the biggest in the league this year, and one of th ebiggest in the Nugget’s history.

Time may reveal that Cook or Gabe Puritt from USC will turn out to be the next AI. Time has a tendency to weed to good and bad picks and ruin GMs credibility’s.

So even though the NBA Draft may not be as fun for Nuggets fans as it has been in the past, in the meantime, for the next 5-7 All Star years, I think selecting AI with the 21st pick will turn out to be one of the top 3 picks in this year’s draft.

- SEO, TEO