NBA Roundup

Seemed like the year the Hawk talk was especially loud about drafting a shooter…they drafted John Battle. I can’t remember what positions the players who have already committed to Tech play, or if any of them are shooters. Seems like USA Today has a Jeremy Lin story every day.

Do you think the egos of LeBron / Wade / Bosh led the Heat to purposely go after Lin, so a national audience wouldn’t see the latest wunderkind embarrass the big boys? Can all teams shut down Lin in same way? Shouldn’t the Knicks high-dollar players be able to step up and shoulder the load?

Too bad that rookie from Tech got hurt, Shumpert. Supposedly in the Slam Dunk Contest Shumpert was going to leap over Lin to dunk…while Lin was “sleeping” on a couch. I hear Spike Lee has been sitting courtside at MSG wearing either Lin’s Harvard jersey, or his high school jersey. I almost bought a red HEAT shirt last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

Read about Jeremy Lin’s consecutive Sports Illustrated covers in USA Today. He’s not the first: eleven others have achieved the feat since 1990. Dirk Nowitzki was the most recent, during the 2011 NBA Finals. Michael Jordan is the only one to be on three straight SI covers. I’ve been subscribing to Sports Illustrated since the late 1970’s. Can’t say I blame SI. They say Lin-mania is twice as big in China, that he could make more than Tiger Woods did in his prime.

Whenever UConn is on, we watch Jeremy Lamb. Hopefully one day Tech will play good games all the time. Gotta remember that this was a rebuilding year. What will the expectation be for next year? Improvement, perhaps, and maybe a middle of the pack finish?