Even for people who have no taste for the NBA, you have got to love the situation that the Portland Trailblazers find themselves in at the current time.

Let me set this up for you.

Darius Miles had a career-ending injury that required micro-fracture surgery. There are certain rules in place by the NBA and by insurance companies insuring the teams that will prevent horrible injuries to players from damaging teams and their viability as a contender in the league for longer than a couple of years at the most.

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I finally had my Fantasy Basketball Draft in my 10 team league. I’m not really sure if my players are going to manage enough points to stay competitive, but I think I did well in a lot of the other categories including, amazingly enough, turnovers.

I had the 6th pick in the draft which precluded me from drafting Chris Paul, who I was most interested in.

Here are my 13 players (10 rotation players and 3 bench players), including the order that I drafted them:

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We normally get rebounds when we draft power forwards and centers. The more power forwards and centers we can draft, the better we do in rebounds (and often field goal percentage and blocks), and the worse we do in assists (and often free throw percentage and steals). As we draft for rebounds, however we need to be very careful about some of our other statistical categories and that we are not doing irreparable harm to them for this season.

Let’s take a look at a few of the players who lead the league in rebounds and which ones you should keep an eye on and which ones you should simply avoid, despite their aptitude on the boards.

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As far as NBA Free Agency goes, this has got to be a summer to remember.

The summer begins with 90% of the teams over the cap and armed only with mid-level exceptions.

Philly, due to trading Korver away for nothing at around the trade deadline, had a little money.

Memphis, due to the fact that nobody wants to play there, also had a little money (but apparently isn’t really choosing to spend it).

So nobody has any real money unless they don’t re-sign some of their top free agents.

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I am used to seeing lots and lots of articles where sports analysts complain that the league has been watered down by too many teams.

That’s why I was surprised to see an article the other day on why there aren’t enough teams in the NBA. As evidence of this, the writer supplied the names of young NBA players who were very good, but, as of the writing of the article, had still not found a team. Some of them were restricted free agents and others just didn’t have enough spots on their current team for them AND for the players drafted in the off-season. The writer also noted that there were several retired players looking to make a return to the NBA, taking up roster spots that might have been used by these unrestricted and restricted free agents.

The arguments were persuasive, Read the rest of this entry »