Frank, the story IS Utah

A few things to clean up from the second part of the summer league season:

- Nice article today on Jason Smith in today's Inquirer. For those of us old enough to work for a living, I'm sure at some point someone had the same type of chat with you that Coach Cheeks had with Jason a few weeks ago. My first boss told me never to read the paper at my desk. I can see this headline in a November notes column - "Smith still recovering from ankle injury".

-Interesting note from Maurice Brooks in Vegas regarding the Knicks and their talent level.

- Louis Amundson looks like he's going to play 15 minutes a night this year.


- One of 76BigShot's league wide spies mentioned speaking with a NBA GM in Vegas; this GM said that he thought the Sixers had a tremendous draft and that Thad Young and Jason Smith are both going to be good players. Take it FWIW.

- The teams in Utah were not as good as the teams in Vegas. With all the issues that have occured over the past few days, will the summer league still be in Vegas? You bet...the players love it there!

- Herb Hill is coming on a little. There's a fierce competition going on for the final 2-3 spots on the roster; it seems from afar that Hill is getting every chance to lose that spot and he's hanging on...there is really nothing better than free agents and second round draft picks that turn out to be servicable to good players is there? Hill played four years of college ball in a big time conference so playing in front of 7000 pissed off Philly fans shouldn't be that big of an adjustment.

Herb Hill

Nice article about Herbert Hill from Jessica Camerato at Hoopsworld.com

I don't know if HH will make the top 15 but he'll be with the Sixers for the season, probably in the D.

We're talkin...summer league

Ugh.

So I'm going to free-flow some thought of the past week and hopefully it will make sense.

The draft overall...Man was I and the rest of you upset with the draft. Fuming. I was sure that Julian Wright was going to play for the sixers...check the record. This is not Thad Young's fault. I'll say it again - while he wasn't the top player on the board according to Jay Bilas, it was obvious this is the guy they were going to take if they couldn't move up to get Yi.

Yi! Jeez...he still might be a Sixer, but at what cost? He was the guy they were chasing? He can rebound? Can Yi adjust to the NBA like Yao did from a mental standpoint? Yao struggles his first few seasons...which Thad Young is going to do.

On to Mr. Young...I'm not sure that you can equate a year in college at Georgia Tech comparable to Ohio State, Florida, or Texas...they actually make you study at Georgia Tech. A few more things I like about Young - the fact that he's still growing, maybe not so much from a height perspective (although he thinks he can grow another 2 inches) but from a weight perspective. He has a body like Scottie Pippen. Pippen was a QTip when he came into the league and developed about 25 lbs of muscle and was a huge physical mismatch on the wing. Young was the #3 player coming out of high school behind Oden and Durant....remember that 3 Florida players stayed in school, Jeff Green kinda came out of no where, and there was a backlog of good top end players. I'm trying to tell myself that they saw a higher end Andre Igoudala who could be a leader in 5 years.

I like Jason Smith pick, but why did they have to move up? For those of you who would have rather had Dequan Cook...he won't be productive for a few years. Maybe 5.

I understand why they traded down per se; you don't want three guaranteed contracts when you can get a player one pick down who isn't committed We at 76bigshot feel that the salary cap comes before almost anything unless it concerns a high end young superstar. I like Byers but I really don't know about Herbert Hill...I hope McRoberts doesn't turn into something. Honestly though I've never gotten a 2nd round pick right so why should I have this year.

I'm not expecting much before or during the season...maybe a swap here or there to fiddle with the roster. but unless a fight breaks out with a team and player

So what do we have? Not what I expected.

A first round pick next year and the opening of the cap...It's tough to put all your eggs in those baskets.