The Drafts

To me the best part about being a sports fan is watching drafts. Wondering who they will take, who's gonna get traded, who is the big sleeper. And here in Canada they get really giddy about the NHL Draft, i also get giddy about it. But not this year, Yet another hole in the NHL's quickly sinking ship is that their young prospects this year were never exposed. I had never heard of Patrick Kane until i did research about the draft and looked at mock drafts. That had not been a problem for the casual hockey fan in recent years. Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby had brought a lot of attention to the draft and the NHL is its floundering times.

The only name I did know coming into this draft was Angelo Esposito. It was a name that was praised and lauded as soon as the 2006 draft ended. But he wasn't picked until the 20th pick, held by a team that does not lack in young big name talent. I would have preferred to see him go to a bigger market, either New York or Toronto. There he would not have gotten overshadowed by names like Crosby, Staal and Malkin.

But I digress from the purpose of this post. I want to talk about the actual drafts. The clear winner of the best draft to watch is the NBA, with the NFL a close second, the NHL a very distant third and then the MLB draft. Now why do the NBA and NFL have such great drafts? That's easy, their prospects are being watched by millions. The NCAA does a great job of putting those kids on TV for the general public and more important the casual fan. That fan who only watches March Madness or a handful of Bowl Games. Unfortunately or very fortunately for the young NHL and MLB they don't get the exposure they maybe should get.

Now that has it's advantages and disadvantages. Now they don't get the exposure of the hoop stars and gridiron warriors, which ultimately limits their earning power. But they also do not get caught up in the giant hype machine that is the media. We all know that a can't miss prospect can miss and if he does it is very public and well documented. Don't believe me, then ask Kwame Brown or Ryan Leaf. Now another reason for that is that the NBA and NFL doesn't have a place for these kids to develop more away from mainstream media.


But that is also what drives us to these two drafts, immediate results. We living in the information age want to see what these kids can do right away. We do not give time for development and neither do most of these sports franchises, except for baseball. The baseball system is so well set up that a first round pick might not get any publicity for three or four years, unless they throw a bat at an umprire.

However the downfalls of the MLB are many the biggest was best described by Oakland A's GM Billy Beane, "The draft has never been anything but a f***ing crapshoot. We take fifty guys and we celebrate if two of them make it." Why do so few make it? i think it is a shear numbers game.

1453 players drafted in 2007
30 MLB teams
25 Players per big league rosters
50 players on the roster on any given day

Plus thousands more that are either in the minors or free agents and hispanic players who are not subjected to the draft. And the Japanese players who are starting to come over more and more.


See my point? There is nothing in baseball that is not a numbers game. So to Billy Beane, who loves overlooked stats, there's one for you write down.

Hibachi King

Hello sports fans! For my first blog post I decided to verbalize a recurring argument between me and a friend. The argument arrived during the 2006-2007 NBA regular season and still continues today. The big question is if the game came down to the last shot, which superstar would you like taking the last shot, LeBron James or Gilbert Arenas. I could only think of one word to sum up my feelings, “HIBACHI!!!”

Now don’t get me wrong King James is clearly the more talented overall and I would build my franchise around him instead of any other player. But James’ game seems to implode down the stretch of games while Arenas’ game explodes. While Gilbert turns around while the ball that will decide the game is still in the air, James misses free throws that will tie the game.

Yes I am aware of the ridiculous game 5 performance in the conference final, yet I refuse to drink the kool-aid. James bombed down the stretch of the first two games in such a prolific way that I do not know what to expect from him is the last minute of a game. (Just a note, I think James made the right play by throwing the ball to Marshall in game 1)


And down the stretch of a game is there anyone who plays with more intensity and confidence than Agent Zero? He knows that if he has the ball and Washington has the last shot to win the game, they are going to win. He doesn’t doubt it, he doesn’t question it, he just goes out and makes it happen. Whether he wins or loses his demeanor remains the same and that is why I would like him to take the final shot. I think that LeBron’s confidence gets hurt when he can’t single handedly win the game for the Cavs. And although he made great strides in that during this post season, I still think that Arenas is light years ahead of him.


Now granted I love players that play with a chip on their shoulder, and there aren’t many who carry a bigger one than Arenas. My favourite is him wanting to go back to college to drop 80 on Krzyzewski. I think that Arenas walks a fine line that is between chip on the shoulder and bad attitude. Another example of a player who plays with “the chip”, Denver Broncos wide receiver, Rod Smith, has a big a chip as there is out there. And someone who crosses the line is a guy like Barry Bonds. He is that end of the spectrum, but that is a subject for another post.

What separates the man with too many nicknames from guys like Bonds is that he is so wonderfully weird. His quirks are well documented and even they have a cool nickname, "Gilbertology".