From the AP: It was a shocker when the Cavs selected Eyenga in the 1st round of the 2009 draft -- he had barely been playing in Spain, and was so unknown that there wasn’t a name card available to put on the draft board when the Cavaliers selected him.
The Oregonian’s Joel Freeman has some surprising news on the health of Blazers guard Wesley Matthews: Matthews averaged 15.9 points on 40.7% shooting from beyond the arc in his sophomore campaign.
The Heat Index’s Tom Haberstroh has an interesting article up today wondering whether we’ll see the Miami Heat get out in transition more next season: Haberstroh goes on to talk about how the Heat didn’t cause many of the turnovers that would allow them to get easy transition opportunities: despite finishing 5th in defensive efficiency during the regular season, the Heat ranked 26th in opponent turnover rate.
Our own Ira Winderman of the Florida Sun-Sentinel has the story: Jones filled in for the injured/ineffective Mike Miller for most of the year, and did a great job of doing it.
The sad saga of former Boston Celtics forward and NBA All-Star forward Antoine Walker continued today, as Walker pled guilty to felony bad check charges.
According to Doug Lesmerises of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Chris Jent will be leaving the Cavaliers to take an assistant coaching job with the Ohio State Buckeyes.
One of the big trades on draft day involved the Portland Trail Blazers acquiring 27-year old point guard Raymond Felton, who had what was perhaps the best season of his career last season while playing for both the Knicks and the Nuggets after he was sent to Denver in the Carmelo Anthony trade.
Ever since the Warriors’ new management team took the club over from former owner Chris Cohan, they’ve been making moves to try and signal to the fans that things will be different in Oakland now that there are some new sheriffs in town.
Earlier today, ESPN.com’s Kevin Arnovitz had an interesting article on a potential ancillary effect of the upcoming lockout -- you won’t be able to see current NBA players on team websites: If there is a lockout, team website editors will have to remove all mentions of current players from their websites, which puts all the men and women who work on those websites in a major bind.
After the Miami Heat defeated the Chicago Bulls in five games behind some incredible offensive, defensive, and crunch-time performances by LeBron James, former Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen went on the radio and said that he believes LeBron “may be the greatest player to ever play the game.”
Here’s an interesting bit from CNBC’s Darren Rovell: Even though the Heat weren’t involved in any way, the NBA continued to break previous ratings records.
This comes from Waiting For Next Year’s Scott Sargent: The 7-foot Hollins appeared in 70 games for the Cavaliers last season, and averaged 5.3 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 2.8 fouls in 17 minutes per game.
Via The National Post’s Eric Koreen: Valanciunas was projected as a top-five pick in the weeks leading to the draft, but news that a buyout agreement would keep him from playing in the NBA for at least one season was supposed to send his stock tumbling to the back half of the lottery.
According to multiple sources, Heat president Pat Riley said earlier today that he expects veteran swingman James Jones and veteran guard Eddie House to pick up their player options for next season, which are worth a combined $2.66 million next season.
If top high-school prospect Jeremy Tyler had played all of his cards right over the last two years, he could easily have been a top-5 pick in last night’s draft.
It’s hard for a 57th overall pick to make headlines less than 24 hours after being drafted, but Timberwolves draft pick Tanguay Ngombo has managed to do that for all the wrong reasons.
Here’s another bit from Draft Express’ Jonathan Givony, who’s been an invaluable resource in the weeks leading up to the draft: Well, it looks like there’s at least one team who isn’t frightened by Biyombo’s potential buyout issues.
The “most intriguing rumor/report award” of the day so far definitely goes to DraftExpress’ Jonathan Givony, who gave us this cryptic tidbit a little earlier: Okay, that’s kind of a new one.
Here’s another tidbit from the invaluable Adrian Wojnarowski, this time concerning the #2 pick: There has been speculation about Utah trading the #2 pick ever since they got it, but David Kahn’s asking price seems to be too high for most teams -- the one offer we know Kahn has made for the #2 pick is the pick and Michael Beasley for Lakers Center Andrew Bynum, which was more than likely laughed off by the Lakers’ front office.
