Monday, February 6, 2012

No Regard Preview: The Myth Can Overwhelm

One Game We Will Definitely Watch Tonight: Portland Trailblazers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder

You have to assume that the Trailblazers probably put a lot of thought into who they were going to take with the first pick of the 2007 NBA draft. I envision an entire team of analysts bustling around a Willy Wonka-esque lab, filling beakers and peering through microscopes to determine who would be a better fit for their franchise. In this probably-pretty-close-to-real-life scenario, I am going to hypothesize there were certain members of their committee who very much pushed to draft Oden over KD: "Big men like him don't come around very often. He's the next Tim Duncan, but a better shot-blocker."

No matter how hard the Durant camp pushed with articulate arguments, great data and sound logic, the Oden people refused to budge from their mindless trope: "You just can't pass up on big men like him in the draft. It's not every year someone with his size comes around, you know."

The Oden proponents were relentless in their pursuit: "It's a no-brainer when it comes to big men and the draft, you simply have no choice."

In the end, the Odenites and their big man argument won out. They popped champagne and toasted to the future the Trailblazers: "Here's to the next 20 years in Portland. We just drafted the best big man of all time. Can you say 'dynasty?'" They spent the rest of the night drinking and talking about how great it was to have a dominate big man in a league where there are so few: "They just don't come around very often in the modern game."

When MVP candidate Kevin Durant runs into the gym in his fresh OKC warmups tonight, I imagine the Oden people will look at each other, sigh, and remark: "I stand by our decision. Dominate seven-footers don't grow on trees."They're right: They sure do not.

One Game We Definitely Will Not Watch Tonight: Washington Wizards vs. Toronto Raptors
No offense to John Wall, Rudy Fernandez or any of the other players competing in this game tonight, but I'd be a lot more interested in tuning in if we were watching actual wizards play actual raptors. Also, I'm aware that Harry is fighting a dragon in this picture above, so you don't need to mention the inaccuracies of the photo. It's the closest thing to a wizard fighting a raptor I could find on the Internet. I expected better also.

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