Then came the draft, a month long period during which I spent learning who all the prospects were, and I why I should hate them. I don’t watch college basketball. I don’t necessarily know what makes a draft bad; I mean, we’re just figuring out the value of the 2006 draft now, but the sentiment surrounding this year’s was just dark. As if the players should be ashamed of themselves for even supposing that they could earn a living on a basketball court. Jrue Holliday is some sort of monster who had the gall to not to murder it while backing up a guy four years his senior, and I guess DeJaun Blair is just a fucking dick for wanting to cash-in before his ACLs give out for good.
Some have compared this draft to 2000, seemingly due to that draft’s irrefutable shittiness. But think about the kind of players that went in the lottery that year. Stromile Swift and Darius Miles were supposed to advance the KG prototype - despite bearing little more resemblance to the man than their frightening gauntness and leaping ability. Elsewhere, desperate squads latched on to tall, reputedly fundamentally sound, foreign players in hopes of replicating the Duncan formula. These were players people were excited about, or at least thought them to be sure-fire rotation guys due to the accidental attributes.
But, again, people don’t just hate the players that have come out this year, aside from Griffin and maybe Rubio, these players actually make people hate basketball. Tyreke Evans can score a lot but he can’t pass or shoot and he killed I guy on time, I think, and Brandon Jennings said the fuck the Knicks and called Luke Ridnour out on Skype with a guy who’s songs I would be too embarrassed to google.
With the playoffs being all about realization and eventually, and because of that, ultimately a disappointing bummer, the draft is a salve that honestly makes us believe that next year will turn out differently. I don’t mean differently because the Clippers might make the playoffs, but different in a more holistic sense. At least, momentarily, it gives us reason to hope. Shit, that started to feel vintage in a hurry.
That’s why this draft is so weird, and so unlike 2000, there’s not just cautious pessimism about these players; it’s a foregone conclusion that all will fail. In fact, even Griffin has lost some of his shine and is projected by many to be nothing more than a weird looking Okefor. So, then what? How do we approach this coming season? The in-league come-up in the NBA is rarer than in any other major sport. In Baseball, it can take as little as a hot month to become part of city‘s consciousness. In football, the land were American Dreams come true, it is law that the meek shall inherit the earth. Perhaps the reason players so rarely take-off to heights unexpected by prognosticators in ball is, because, well, the prognosticators have been watching these kids eat macaroni and cheese with a fork in their left hand since they were 12-years-old. Maybe there is, as devastating as it sounds, a science to all this. But, then again, there’s a comfort in knowing that in basketball, unlike the other major sports, talent and grace, above all else, wins the day.
Also consider the strength of the social narrative in basketball. The rise to power in NBA is enthralling because, for us, the spectator, it is a chance to witness those who are destined for a higher greatness actually pursue and take hold of it. Is that not more dignified and, untimely, a more spiritually fulfilling communal experience than watch the underdog gnawingly carve a place for himself in the façade of a monolith. Yet, there is a third option, those for whom the balance between destined for greatness and doomed to ignominy has been tipping in couplets before their path even really began. Of those type of men, there are many in this draft. Jennings and Evans are primary, those who will demand a spot at the dinner table, not humbly, but because their invitation got lost and they couldn’t care fucking less about looking for it. Now let me in, kid.
Evans knows you know he is not a point guard, and he has yet to give any intimation that cares. He scores as if nature decreed it to be so, and as for his shooting, his ability to create for himself is a greater asset than being able to knock down open jumpers in workouts. I’m not saying Evans is Wade or even Arenas. What I am saying is that by not dancing on the borders of that suggestion enough, we all have done an injustice to the league’s psyche.
Jennings, well, I don’t know what the game holds for him. He thrills me more as avatar than player at this point, as ball handling and passing are, all things considered, sublimated to systems dictated by older men in suits. However, it is his inherent iconoclasm that will make him valuable to the league in the coming years. Will he force Skiles out of Milwaukee by sheer force of will just to enforce his primacy among the draft’s point guards? Seems unlikely. The Bucks took the kid simply because he was still there, and don’t seem to have any grand designs on building their fortress, however flimsy, around him. A second, and I think even more gratifying scenario, would be one in which Jennings shows us all just how little we know about him by proving how well he can play under a coach who, according to the world, was made to break backs and spirits just like his. Maybe Jennings doesn’t need a tailor made system like D’Antoni’s to thrive in? Maybe, like he had us all believing before he jetted to the Mediterranean, he is the kind of chip you build around and just watch? Maybe he was right all along. If he can prove that, it’s easily the greatest gambit he would have achieved yet, in a young life that’s been full of them. And if he fails? Well, it will at least be a satisfying trial to endure. And far greater than nodding in self-satisfied approval at how sound and serviceable the lottery picks from the last five years have turned out to be.
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