For the #3 pick, you typed "Charlotte Hornets" in the bold heading.

This is the kind of column that keeps me coming back. I was laughing and grinning the whole way through, and I don't even like basketball. It's in big part thanks to your columns that I have become somewhat of a football fan, and now look forward to each Steelers season so I can watch with my stepdad.

Your columns are always educational, at least to me, since I've never been much of a sports fan other than motorsports. I have to say, if you wrote about underwater basketweaving I'd read it; you've got a way with words, man. Heck, if it wasn't for Since You Asked (what can I say, I like to watch human trainwrecks), Table Talk, and your column, my Salon subbie would have canceled long ago.

Thanks for the good reading, King!

The draft is in New York, because New York is where you get the most publicity. Plus its the BIG APPLE. I really could not get that excited about heading to Cleveland for the Draft, talk about bush. Finally, Knicks fans have a right to be dolts, casue the fish rots from the head.

Stephen A. Smith is exactly the sort of person who gets his middle initial stuck in there, consistently, every time you hear his name. It's like the period in that sucker is a pin prick, you know? The man is an overstated, tasteless pinky ring on the manicured hand of ESPN's NBA coverage. Next to Mr. Smith, Howard Cosell was not only brilliant (remember, I said next to Mr. Smith), he was also incredibly sensitive.

We do "get" the shtick with pundits and columnists, they're meant to provoke a response and all. What personal photos does Mr. Smith have in a safety deposit box somewhere, though, that we've been subjected to his Gilbert Godfried act for so long? He screws himself into a lather on the air, never saying anything so much as he pronounces it, as if he was channeling some oracular wisdom. He never has the grace to even attribute his prophesies to anything other than his own pipsqueak ego, either. How cow, what a... what a dork.

After the whole Laker blowup, Kobe Bryant's first big interview was with Smith. Kobe chose someone he'd look good next to, I guess. There was a narrow field of choices, and Kim Jong Il must not have been available.

There's no room for Dan Rosenbaum-style stats mavens in NBA coverage, there are no Mel Kiper Juniors (speaking of people whose names carry with them a tiny measure of their grating quality), but we get Stephen A. Smith?

If you have ESPN insider check out the always good John Hollinger's article on him.

He points out that unlike Darko or Tskitishvili, Bargnani played good minutes for his European team, 21.2 a game which is more than it sounds since European games are only 40 minutes long. Adjusting his 10.9 ppg scoring average for the slower pace of the European game puts him at about 21.1 points / 40 minutes, one of only 12 players to have a rate that high in the Euroleague.

Using his own methodology he projects him as posting a 14.25 PER, 15.8 ppg, and 9.3 rpg, which are excellent numbers for a 20 year old rookie.

You missed the best part of the Knicks pick: Spike Lee suddenly proclaiming "He's a sleeper!" Um, Spike? I've used that line to describe my 2nd running back in every fantasy football draft I've ever participated in.

with dragondawn. I don't even care how accurate the analysis is. Anyone who can make NBA draft prognostication entertaining deserves a little saccharin in his mailbox. Great column King.

Analyzing the NBA (and NFL, and MLB, and NHL) draft: The sports fan's equivelant to analyzing who will win "Best Picture" in the Academy Awards.

Why bother? Let's just watch the regular season and see how it pans out. No one has ever been to consistently predict what players will succeed and what players will be a bust. It's a waste of time.

P.S. To Stephen A. Smith: Quite frankly, your show sucks.

I'm convinced that Isiah drafted based on trying to get the number 1 pick next year, Greg Oden. Or maybe he was confused, thinking he drafted Rolando Blackmon of the 1980's Dallas Mavericks instead of Renaldo Balkman of the perennial NIT powerhouse South Carolina Gamecocks. His other pick makes about about as much sense as his Starbury/ Stevie Franchise backcourt debacle. Makes the Jerome James signing look like managerial genius.

Mister C: Thanks for the Hornets correction. I type "Hornets" every time I type "Charlotte" in an NBA context, and most of the time immediately catch myself.

I also type "Charlotte" every time I type Hornets, and have to change that too.

Dragondawn and lezzbo: Thank you for the kind words.

Baseball instead: Zzzzzz. Analyzing the NBA (and NFL, and MLB, and NHL) draft: The sports fan's equivelant to analyzing who will win "Best Picture" in the Academy Awards.

I disagree. I think analyzing who will be taken by what team before the draft is the equivalent to analyzing who will win the Oscars. The NBA draft itself is kind of fun. It moves along quickly, five minutes per pick, in theory, and if you follow basketball you've at least heard of most of the people involved and seen some or all of them play. Proclaiming this team or that one to have "won" or "lost" the draft, or grading their performance, yeah, I'm with you. Let's wait and see. But the TV show itself is fun, and would be more fun with Sir Charles.

The NFL draft, though, I'm right with you. It's like sitting in a two-day offsite meeting at someone else's company.

Richinohio: I'm convinced that Isiah drafted based on trying to get the number 1 pick next year, Greg Oden.

I'm sure you're kidding, but remember, Isiah's got one year to fix the Knicks, so even if getting the top pick weren't pretty much a crapshoot even for the worst team, this wouldn't make sense. Even for Isiah.