Millions pt 2. - Exactly What I Was Talking About

Bill Self is furious.

Darrell Arthur is not sick.

And it turns out I'm clairvoyant or something. That last post I "blogged" this afternoon--the one about how disappointing (and financially costly) it can be when a player falls to a lower draft order than he anticipated--couldn't have set the stage more perfectly for a story emerging today about a player, Darrell Arthur, who plummeted from his projected spot in the early teens to the 27th pick. This nosedive down the draft board could have cost the Arthur family as much as a million dollars per year.

The really crappy thing is that this sudden devaluation was fomented by a false rumor of a mysterious kidney ailment. Arthur's coach at Kansas, Bill Self, worked the phones to try to quash the misinformation as he watched one team after another pass on the talented 6-9 Forward who helped the Jayhawks win last year's NCAA Championship. (view the entire AP article here).

Watching the draft with his players at his home in Lawrence, Self wound up making frantic calls trying to help Arthur get things straightened out.

"I was scrambling around trying to get information myself because this was unknown to me until [Wednesday night] and apparently was unknown to many of the NBA teams until the very end.

"They said one minute before the draft, 'Can't take him. Doctors won't let us take him,' which is sad because then somebody really dropped the ball. I don't know what the reasoning was, but hopefully they had a valid reason."

Arthur was drafted by the New Orleans Hornets and eventually traded to the Memphis Grizzlies.

From a Spurs perspective, it is worth noting that we were the last team to pass on Arthur at the 26th pick. If he ends up being a monster in the league for years to come--perhaps motivated to even greater heights by the injustice served to him yesterday--the Spurs will be one of about 15 teams who will lament this Kidney prank even more than he does.

The Last of the Millionaires

The amount of money a rookie makes from his first NBA contract is dependent on the order in which he is drafted. The number one draft pick makes the most of any rookie ($4,822,800 for Derrick Rose this year), and every player selected after the first pick makes less by increments that decrease from about $500,000 between the first and second pick (Michael Beasely will make $4,314,960 per year in his first contract) to about $7000 between the 29th and 30th pick (Indiana will pay DJ White $964,080 a year, while the Celtics owe JR Giddens $957,120).

So when you see some of these guys who expect to be drafted very high fall a bunch of spots (Mario Chalmers, for instance, was predicted to go in mid to late first round even in the latest mock drafts, but he fell all the way out of the first round to Miami by way of a trade with Minnesota--at 34th overall). It's a big deal for them, and not only because of pride. It could mean a difference of several hundred thousand, or even several million dollars.

Hoopshype.com has a chart that lists every salary for the players taken in the first round.

For what it's worth, our man George Hill is the last player in the draft to earn a million dollar payday at $1,006,200.

Please Don't Call Him a Soufflé

I've started my digging to see just who this George Hill cat is. The more I turn up the more exciting the pick seems.

Mike Monroe of San Antonio Express-News has an encouraging report on how excited the Spurs are about this guy:

All you need to know about George Hill, the player the Spurs drafted in the first round of Thursday's NBA draft, is this: There was a celebration in the Spurs' draft night war room when the Houston Rockets made Frenchman Nicolas Batum the 25th selection of the first round, leaving Hill to the Spurs.

He also picks up on the quote from Pop I referenced yesterday about some players needing to be left "baking in the oven" for a while before joining the team, and claims the Spurs think Hill is, as Mike Monroe puts it, a "perfectly risen soufflé."

Another Express-News piece by Jeff McDonald inflicts yet another food metaphor (Hill isn't big on Tex Mex yet), but gives even more detail on how stoked Pop and the other Spurs brass are on this guy.

A 6-foot-2 scorer who played both guard positions in college, Hill is projected as a point guard in the NBA. The Spurs expect him to compete with Jacque Vaughn for the backup position behind Tony Parker next season.

“He's a really solid player at both ends of the court,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “I honestly believe he will make our team better right off the bat.”

No D-League? No 4 years playing for an Eastern Block European team? If you believe Pop, then this is a very un-Spurs kind of draft. And in this case that's actually a good thing.

UPDATE: I may have been a little hard on the Express-News guys for their food analogies, especially considering some of the silly content of my writing so far. I just really, seriously, don't want "The Soufflé" to catch on as Hill's (or anyone's) nickname.

In the Room with George Hill

Here's an interesting blog that gave a live update of how tonight progressed for George Hill and about 50 of his closest associates. It's interesting to get a glimpse into what a huge and somewhat surreal event this is for the people involved. He was hoping to be drafted by Indiana, but seems pretty happy to be a new Spur.

Is There a Draft in Here?

With the 26th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, the San Antonio Spurs select George Hill a guard from IUPUI. I'll find out more about this character (along with what exactly IUPUI stands for) tomorrow.
Other notable draft events that I've caught on ESPN in the last few minutes:

*** The Heat did indeed draft Michael Beasley. That sneaky Pat Riley.

*** The Pacers are making a bunch of trades. Jermaine O'Neal is going to Toronto for T.J. Ford. They're also going to have both of the Rush brothers--Brandon and Kareem--after a trade with Portland.

*** The crazy fans at the draft keep chanting "Silver! Silver!" every time Adam Silver, the NBA Deputy Commissioner, comes to the podium to announce a pick. He looks like he's getting a real kick out of it.

With the 45th pick, the Spurs select Goran Dragic, a point guard from Slovenia.*** The Mavericks just selected Shan Foster with the 52nd pick. The commentators are making a big deal out of how he looks just like Usher and that he even plays the piano. Then they showed a clip of him singing a song that he wrote just for draft day. He was sitting in front of a keyboard while it was playing a preset song (or maybe he had recorded it--but he wasn't playing it at that time), and singing about how "no one shoots the 3 like me / I can't wait to play in the NBA.") It was awesome.

*** The Portland Trailblazers have like 20 picks in this draft.

*** 5 Kansas Jayhawks were drafted this year.

Okay, the Spurs have one more pick at 57 in the draft. That's 4 picks away. Hurry up Houston. You know who you're going to pick, just pick. OK. here comes Adam Silver. Maarty Loonin (Maarty with two a's).

OK, Spurs on the clock. It's the 57th pick overall. That's almost exactly where the Spurs got Manu Ginobili.

And...aw, crap. They made a pick during a commercial. I didn't see who they got. Here we go: James Gist, a Forward from Maryland.
Okay, there we go. That's a draft for me. I have beers that need drinking at Don's with my man Matt Cross.

UPDATE: The Spurs have traded Goran Dragic to the Suns for Malik Harrison, a 6-6 Small Forward from Oregon.

Now Tony's Made It

EA Sports announced yesterday that Tony Parker will be the 09 coverboy for their once-great-turned-sucky-now-getting-good-again NBA video game franchise, NBA Live.

Toros on the Clock

There's plenty of drama at the top of this year's NBA draft. Michael Beasley, a player recently expected to be a lock for the first (Chicago Bulls) or second (Miami Heat) pick, seems to be in danger of goofying himself down a few spots. The kid is a joker, and to me that's great. But evidently Heat Honcho Pat Riley is squeamish about drafting the next Agent Zero or Jerry Sienfeld. David Hyde of the South Florida Sun-Sentinal thinks that's all a smoke screen:

Theory I: Beasley is Riley’s hands-down choice. The Heat keeps throwing off the scent by suggesting through back channels (never on the record) they have issues with him. That’s why they brought in Mayo on Tuesday. Everything supports Chicago’s decision for Rose with the first pick, thus leaving Beasley.

Theory II: It really doesn’t like Beasley’s game (no chance). It really thinks Mayo can play point guard (who cares when Wade’s in the same backcourt?) It even thinks Jerryd Bayless could be The One (come on.).

As you can see, Theory I sounds smarter to me.

I'm not sure if I agree. I could see them taking Mayo, or, more likely, trading the pick. How is he going to draft Beasley now after making such a big deal out of disliking his personality?

Anyway it will be interesting to see what happens.

A little further down the draft board, things get much less interesting.

Today's ESPN Mock Draft 7.0 has Ryan Anderson's stock rising a few places to be picked by the Nets at 21, and claims the Spurs may have focused in on one of Tony Parker's countrymen, 6-8 French small forward, Nicolas Batum. But it's also been reported that there may be cause for concern over Batum's heart health after stress echo test returned in the "borderline" area.

Either way, it's almost impossible to know what's going to happen that late in the draft. And, more to the point, it's sort of hard to get too excited about it. The Spurs stole Manu with the 28th pick in the second round in 1999 and Tony Parker 28th in 2001. But those two, along with Tim Duncan, are the only players in the Spurs active rotation this season who were actually drafted by the Spurs. It's not that the Spurs have drafted poorly: other picks such as Luis Scola (2002), John Salmons (2002), Leandro Barbosa (2003), and Beno Udrih (2004) are all playing well for other teams right now. It just seems like it's hard for a young player to break into the Spurs system.

It also seems like the Spurs foreign farm system is running into more problems than it did when they let Manu develop overseas before bringing him in. The Spurs 2007 draft pick, Tiago Splitter, looked like a steal. But it was announced earlier this month that the promising 6-11 power forward from Brazil is signing an extension with his Spanish League Team, Tau Ceramica, that will keep him overseas possibly until the 2011-2012 season. In an article from yesterday's S.A. Express-News, Jeff McDonald includes a great quote from Pop about why the Spurs have continued to work this way:

High-profile struggles in getting draft picks Luis Scola and, more recently, Tiago Splitter into a Spurs jersey apparently have not made the team skittish about going that route again.

“It’s better to have someone baking in the oven than to take somebody who you know can’t play,” Popovich said.

But, to me, it looks like more and more players drafted by the Spurs will do their baking right here in Austin, with the Toros, the Spurs' NDBL franchise.

Spurs 2005 draft selection, Ian Mahimni, led the Toros to the NBDL Championship this year. He was injured and the Toros lost to the Idaho Stampede. But it looks like he'll be able to contribute to the Spurs this season. And there won't be any hang-ups in getting him to San Antonio.

For this reason, I think the NBDL is a far better system than drafting players who then become pros in Europe. Because the Toros are a direct Spurs affiliate, players can be called up and sent back by the Spurs on nearly a daily basis. Toros players also work in the same coaching system as the Spurs (you were wondering why they went to the Championship this year?); plus they don't get a chance to find out how much stronger the Euro is than the dollar.

So whomever the Spurs pick tonight, my only hope is that they'll either use them in San Antonio right away, or that they send them to Austin to laze around at Barton Springs until they figure out how to play basketball.

I'll find some info on whoever we do select either tonight or tomorrow.

A Shot at J.R.?

At some point during this year's Western Conference Finals, you most likely heard someone say (or maybe it was you that said it) that the Spurs looked old and slow. They looked like they were being out-jumped, out-ran, and, um...out-scored (this one is verifiable) by the L.A. Lakers.

Nevermind that the Spurs did just complete smack-downs of much younger, far more athletic foes during the first and second round of the playoffs in the Suns and Hornets, respectively. Part of what's so important about athleticism for an NBA team is the ability to sustain a level of play over all four rounds of the tournament. The Spurs had what it takes against Phoenix and New Orleans, but really did seem to run out of gas against the Lakers.

A deeper analysis will lead to the conclusion that the Spurs, while already old, are likely to become even more old between now and June of 2009. For Tony Parker, and recent draft selection / Austin Toros star, Ian Mahimni, getting older is likely to be a good thing. For everyone else on their team, it will probably suck.

For other teams this paradigm is reversed: the Lakers and Hornets, for instance, have enough great young players that time is, as the Stones put so well, on their side (yes it is!). They should only be better next year.

So how do the Spurs overcome this obstacle and continue their six-year trend of winning an NBA Championship every odd year? New blood!

The NBA Draft is tomorrow. We'll get three players there, and odds are they'll all be fairly young. The latest espn mock draft (6.0) have the Spurs using their 26th pick to select a player from Cal named Ryan Anderson, a 6-10 power forward with a great outside shot.

If that's who the Spurs pick tomorrow, all well and good. But he (or any player selected with that late of a pick) is likely to be a lot more help in 2010 or 11 than he is in the 4th quarter of game 7 of next year's Finals.

All this sets the stage for an interesting dilemma for Pop and the Spurs front office. How badly do we want to mix things up? Bad enough to sign a talented, athletic 22-year old swingman with 30-foot range who has managed to overshadow his formidable athletic talent with a reputation for dumb decisions and lack of maturity and self-control? If the answer is yes, J.R. Smith may be our dude.

He's a restricted free agent this Summer and, as Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express News points out, he's everything the Spurs need, and nothing they want.

My favorite segment from the article features a quote from former (very former) Spur, and underachieving head coach of the Denver Nuggets, George Karl.

Smith committed such a sequence of selfish, foolish plays in one game that George Karl benched Smith for the finale. “I just love the dignity of the game,” Karl said of Smith's play, “being insulted right in front of me.”

I think the article is probably a little harsh to call Smith an "anti-human," but the dilemma it presents is hard to deny.

Whatever team ends up signing this guy, it will probably be to a fairly lengthy, fairly expensive contract. So in 2012, when Tony Parker is 30, Tim Duncan is 38, and Robert Horry is 57, J.R. Smith will be 26, and at the beginning of his prime as a player. That could be perfect timing for the Spurs. But is he the guy who can carry the torch? Or is he more likely to torch the Spurs cap space and their reputation for the highest standards of character in pro sports?

The easiest comparison--and it's made in the aforementioned article--is Stephen Jackson: a hot-tempered, self-absorbed player who was pivotal in the Spurs 2003 title run; later signed by the Indiana Pacers, where he followed Ron Artest into the crowd to fight with fans; and is now team captain for the Golden State Warriors.

The character arc of "Captain Jack" illustrates the fact that players, like almost all young people, mature at some point. Being on a winning team under a coach who can handle that sort of personality makes a big difference. The Spurs are that if anybody is. But still you have to wonder about this J.R. kid. Could he help the Spurs to Championship number five? Or are his most embarrassing moments ahead of him?

How about a poll to settle Odd Years' official position on the subject? I'll see if I can get it to work.

Vinny the Bull

I think one function this blog will serve is to highlight former Spurs who are in the news for one reason or another. Today it's Vinny Del Negro. Or as I sometimes like to think of him: Manu Ginobili's Dad.

So here's the lowdown: The Chicago Bulls announced this week that Vinny Del Negro will be their new head coach. This is Del Negro's first coaching job of any kind. The 2-year contract at roughly $2 million per year makes him the lowest paid coach in the NBA.

A few facts about Vinny's playing days: (if you don't like boring timeline-stuff, skip over this paragraph. But it couldn't hurt you to fill your brain with a little more totally irrelevant sports information, right?)

(right. So...)

After becoming the Sacramento King's 29th overall pick in the 1988 NBA Draft, Vinny Del Negro played in Sacramento for two years before signing with Benetton Treviso in the Italian Pro Basketball League. He led Benetton Treviso to the Italian Championship in 1992, averaging 25 points a game. He played with the Spurs from 1992 to 1998, and then bounced around to teams including the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Clippers. He retired in 2001 after being traded to the Orlando Magic.

Then he did some other non-sports related stuff, I assume, that isn't mentioned on his wikipedia page or nba.com. And then he became a radio commentator. After working as a radio commentator for the Phoenix Suns, Del Negro was tapped by another former Spur and Suns GM/Minority Owner, Steve Kerr, to be the Suns Director of Player Personnel in 2006. Then in 2007 he was promoted to the position of Assistant General Manager. After the Suns were eliminated this year, yet again by the Spurs, Mike D'Antoni left as head coach. Del Negro interviewed with Kerr for this job, but did not become a finalist because of his lack of coaching experience. But supposedly Kerr really likes him. Apparently John Paxon, Chicago's GM, likes him too. The Bulls hired him, and he now moves from relative obscurity into the spotlight of coaching one of the NBA's largest market teams.

This is interesting for a few reasons. First, to me, Vinny Del Negro is one of the most awesome and hilarious Spurs ever. For some reason (see above image), whenever you mention his name to a Spurs fan, or really to anyone who was paying close attention to the NBA during the mid-90's, you'll usually get a laugh or at least a smile. It's not that he was a laughable player--i mean he wasn't an all-star or anything but he was alright; he's just kind of funny for some reason. My best friend's mom claimed to have a big crush on him at that time, and likened his dapper looks to that of a ski instructor. It's hard to argue with her. Slightly poofy hair, short but neatly trimmed beard, exotic last name: he's the only NBA player past or present that I can imagine playing in a turtle neck.

Second, he's never been a coach before. Ever. He landed this job over candidates like Dwayne Casey, Marc Jackson and Avery Johnson, both of whom are still without coaching jobs for next season. Avery Johnson, another former Spur, was 2 wins away from the 2006 NBA Championship, and now somehow seems untouchable as a head coach. I'm sure the aforementioned small price tag for Del Negro's services figures into this. I'm sure because the Bulls are so bad and so young, they wanted someone who was also young and unproven. If he's successful, great...but if not--and it may be that no coach would be able to do much with this team for a year or two--they can can him without taking too much of a hit financially.

Third, thanks to a strange set of circumstances pointed out by K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, this hiring, coupled with Mike D'Antoni's new job with the Knicks could rekindle a New York Knicks / Chicago Bulls rivalry:

The first curveball came when D'Antoni spurned the Bulls for the Knicks on May 10. D'Antoni signed a four-year, $24 million deal.

And the Knicks-Bulls rivalry begins anew: Word in Phoenix is that D'Antoni's displeasure with management meddling extended beyond Kerr to Del Negro, whom he felt quietly criticized his coaching.

But I guess the rivalry looses a little sizzle when it's between two of the very worst NBA teams in recent memory.

So we'll see what happens. Hopefully Vinny will be fantastically successful in Chi-town. At very least I hope his players can learn a thing or two about proper slalom technique.