You may have thought that the rest of the trades leading up to the draft would have more significance than Kris Humphries being traded by the Utah Jazz to the Toronto Raptors for Rafael Araujo.

Well, you would be wrong.

After the Toronto Raptors traded their under-sized and under-performing young center Rafael Araujo to the Utah Jazz, they turned around and traded Matt Bonner and Eric Williams to the San Antonio Spurs for correct-sized but underperforming aging center Rasho Nesterovic and the rest of the three years at $8 million per year that were left on his contract.  The two people that they traded away were in the last years of their contract.

For San Antonio, the trade made perfect sense.  Nesterovic wasn’t getting much playing time, especially after having to share time with Nazr Mohammed.  And neither of them played much because Gregg Popovich was often forced to go with a smaller line-up to match up with other quick teams in the West anyway.

For Toronto, they do get an experienced center to play with a bunch of young players including whoever they choose to pick first in the 2006 NBA Draft coming up.  Paying $8 million per year for the next three years seems a little steep for a center whose best years are behind him, but maybe Colangelo knows something that we don’t — he did well enough at Phoenix, after all.

The other question that this seems to answer, unless we see even more trades, is the type of player that Colangelo is planning on picking up in the draft.  With Nesterovic, Villanueva, Bosh, and Humphries, it seems more likely that Colangelo will go after a guard or small forward than another big man.  With three of the top four projected picks playing power forward and center, it therefore seems likely that Toronto will either trade down a few picks to where the guards are projected to go or pick Adam Morrison with the first pick in the draft.

I guess we’ll see.

The Miami Heat won the NBA Championship, even though I didn’t think they could beat the Bulls in the first round.

Dwyane Wade won the MVP, and deservedly so.  Heck, I haven’t seen so much lack of help since the Jordan days where he was practically single-handedly beating all of the other teams.  He probably deserves to get all 15 rings.

There has been quite a bit of talk of bad officiating, but, honestly, if the Dallas Mavericks were that worried about officiating they shouldn’t have let the games get so close.  The officials never have a chance of influencing a game in the last minute if one of the teams is up by 20 points.  And the Dallas Mavericks, if they hadn’t been whining so much, would have been capable of doing that.

I still think Dallas Mavericks were the better team over the last year, but they certainly weren’t over the last two weeks.  And that’s what really matters.

Now that the season is over with, us fans of the other 29 teams can get on to what we have been waiting over a month for (or if you’re a Knicks’ fan, what you have been waiting since December for).

Let’s talk about who our team is going to draft, who we are going to trade for, who we are going to pick up in free agency, and how good we are going to be NEXT YEAR!

The Utah Jazz are rumored to be trading Carlos Boozer….for apparently nothing.

The Chicago Bulls are sending their two first round picks (2 and 16)…for apparently nothing…, er, I mean, Lamar Odom.

Indiana is trading Jermaine O’Neal for either WAY too much or WAY too little, depending on if the sports writer writes for the state of Indiana or somewhere else.

Everybody is moving up in the draft, and the only ones talking about moving down are the Toronto Raptors, who don’t appear to be willing to drop more than a few places anyway.  And all they’re saying is that they are “exploring all their options”.

I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Tis the season for the crazy trade rumors.

They’ll become more believable as the NBA Draft nears, so the 28 areas that DON’T have a team playing any more are going to have to just wait to hear about any real or, at the very least, really plausible trades.

There is one thing I find odd about Carlos Boozer’s name being so prominent in a certain rumor with Memphis.  Who is Memphis trading in return?

Since the time that Boozer went down with an injury and remained down for quite some time, fans in Utah have been getting restless.  Rumors of the Utah Jazz trading Boozer swirled around the trade deadline, and they continue to swirl now.  With Okur developing into a very good power forward with a constant presense on the floor with no significant injuries, and with Boozer and Okur really being too short to play center, Boozer has become expendible for the Utah Jazz.

Add into the mix the fact that they just picked up Rafael Araujo, who is also a little too short to play center, and probably will never be more than a very good backup at the the forward and center positions, and you really start thinking that Boozer’s salary would be better spent on another position.

The big question that I have with all of the trade rumors that have Boozer going to Memphis is that none of them actually have any sort of trade.  Apparently they figure that the Utah Jazz will just ship Boozer off without anything in return.

I did find one guy mention a suggestion in a blog that they might ship him and Giricek off for Eddie Jones’ expiring contract.

I suppose that’s possible, but I think Boozer could do much more for the Jazz than a possible free agent a year from now, especially considering the fact that the Jazz have a terrible time attracting free agents.

I don’t imagine that Pau would be traded, so I don’t really think that Memphis offers much in the way of a trade EXCEPT for an expiring contract, which Utah would be a fool to take.

If I were the Jazz, I would be talking with the Chicago Bulls about working out some way of getting Ben Gordon for Boozer, if I was thinking of trading Boozer at all.  Obviously there are some serious cap problems involved with that trade which would have to be ironed out, but that kind of trade would benefit both sides.

Then again, if Boozer can remain healthy, you have the 14th pick in the draft, 2 second round picks, and Deron Williams and CJ Miles continued and promising development to look forward to.

Assuming they can financially manage it, they should just stick with what they have.

If you scour the web looking at Mock Drafts there are four things that are certain.

The first thing that everybody knows is what the strengths and the weaknesses each team are.  From those strengths and weaknesses it is pretty easy to see what types of talent need to be brought into remedy the shortfalls and complement the strengths.

The second thing that is for certain is the current draft order.  Now obviously that can change, but currently everybody knows who is picking in which positions from first pick to the sixtieth pick.

The third thing that is not in doubt is that every NBA team has a thorough scouting report on almost everybody who is remotely draft worthy, and often years and years worth of these scouting reports.  You used to be able to pick a sleeper in the draft based off of doing extra homework.  The only thing that management has a tough time with now is figuring out which players are capable of translating previous success into NBA success, and which players are going to collect several million dollars at the end of the bench and fade into the sunset.

The fourth thing that is for certain is that nobody writing Mock Drafts has any idea of anything else.

In order to gain every competitive advantage there is more smoke-blowing this year than there ever has been, and teams are bringing in tons and tons of college and foreign players for workouts, whether they are really interested in them or not (sometimes they serve as a good measuring stick on which to judge players that they really ARE interested in, and sometimes they serve to confuse the competition).

Complicate this matter further by throwing in the fact that there are no consensus picks anywhere in the draft (except maybe a consensus of those players which have no chance of being drafted).  It seems like this is the first year where the top three to five picks change widely between drafts, and often widely in the same Mock Draft from week to week.
It should be noted, too, that we always have the same fun problem that we have every year in making draft predictions.  Trading of personnel and/or picks muddies the draft waters by ruining two of the certainties that we do have.  It alters the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and it messes up the draft order.

Even with all of that, though, it sure is fun to look at all of the Mock Drafts.