The Knicks are high on Danilo Gallinari and one longtime Eastern Conference European scout had the following to say:
“He’s better than [Andreas] Bargnani, no question….The guy doesn’t back down from anybody. You’re in his face. He’ll get right back at them….The only Europeans who succeed in the NBA are the tough ones. The Italian league is better than college. If you put him in college ball, he’d be getting 25-30 (points) a night and everyone would be going ga-ga.”
One thing is for sure, this isn’t a Raptors scout talking. And just for Bargnani’s sake I’m hoping Gallinari is a dud.
There’s some love in the air for Chris Douglas-Roberts and we’re hoping he’s around at 17 but we’re not the only ones. The Orlando Magic are also interested and might do something ballsy like trade up in the draft to get him or even make a run at Brandon Rush. If we’re going to get CDR we’re going to have to play ball and outbid and outsmart other teams, he’s not going to fall in our laps like Danny Granger did a few years back. The tournament might have upped his stock beyond our reach. In a conversation between CDR and Draft Express he also mentions how the Nets are interested and if that happens, Richard Jefferson could be expendable.
I don’t know if this is good strategy or madness by Rick Carlisle but he’s going to change his entire offense so its easy for Jason Kidd to do his thing. Kidd’s 35 years old and can’t stay with any of the elite PGs in this league so the best the Mavericks can hope next season is a hollow regular season filled with wins that don’t mean squat when it comes playoff time. I think we saw just exactly how good Kidd is in New Jersey and how far he can carry a team, in the West the job becomes that much more difficult and the chance of him seeing the conference finals there are remote.
I couldn’t find any articles this morning where I could whore TJ Ford and Anthony Parker as trade bait so we’ll keep it quiet for today. The Knicks hunt for a point guard could turn towards Baron Davis which makes a lot more sense for them than acquiring the erratic Ford. As I said before, the only people on the Knicks I like is David Lee and Jamal Crawford and I doubt they’ll be willing to part with those two.
Since it’s a slow day we’ll throw in Mark Cuban’s views on marijuana smoking as pertaining to Josh Howard. Cuban doesn’t like it, probably smoked the wet kind and coughed his lungs out. There are unconfirmed reports that David Stern was with him when he tried it, a source close to the NBA says:
David Stern held the screen as Cuban took his hit. Cuban then gathered up the smoke and proceeded to do a mouth-to-mouth with Stern who passed out immediately into Darius Miles’ lap. Cuban then laid down a beating never seen before on an already passed out Joey Crawford who happened to be knitting a sweater on a nearby couch.
This little piece of information slipped past me and I found it on RealGM – Kevin O’Neill got hired by the Grizzlies as an assistant coach. The man knows his defense and should stick to it for earning a living, it’s when he tried to turn a team with Vince Carter on it into the mid-90’s Cavs that the shit hit the fan.
Finally I have some complete horse-shit to report, its this article at Bleacher Report, a site that fails to produce a single worthy piece out of the 64,857 it publishes daily. It lists the ten best fan bases in professional sports and I have to say the sniveling little cunts got it all wrong. I mean I’m glad Toronto FC made it but what are the Dallas Maverick fans doing there and more importantly what the fuck is Man Utd doing at #1 and where are the Raptors fans (biggest online presence ever)?. The whole thing is drastically wrong because if we were to talk about great fanbases the top 50 would be filled by football clubs from across Europe and South America. I will say this though, we are one of the most loyal fanbases in professional sports and that’s counting Europe.
You think Manu Ginobili’s diving is getting some press?
