Dee Brown's
NBA career has come to a close. When thinking of Dee, one vision of him
comes to mind: standing in front of a worldwide audience and reaching down
to pump up his Reebok Pump sneakers in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. Dee's
final career stats were 11.2 points, 3.7 assists, 2.6 rebounds, and 1.3
steals.
Dennis Rodman
allegedly sprayed a fire extinguisher off in a restaurant. We have to wonder
if that was spontaneous, or a stunt designed to get his name back in the
papers.
Opinions in
California on whether Antawn Jamison was worth all of that money (7-year
$87 million contract extension) appear mixed. His game stepped up a notch
last season. The guy now has range on his shot and has become a bona fide
scoring machine. He rebounds, doesn't hog the ball to the point of teammates
revolting, and is a nice guy. On the other hand, the Warriors haven't improved
since his arrival. While the fact that the team has had more injuries than
the local hospital is a major factor in losing, NBA teams want to avoid
the luxury tax these days to the point of not signing good players just
to stay below the threshold, and giving Jamison all that money now makes
it that much harder to add quality talent around him. The Warriors didn't
want to risk losing him, as next summer he'd have become a restricted free
agent. So now they've got him for good. The next steps are to see how Larry
Hughes plays as a point guard, and to develop rookie Jason Richardson.
If either step is successful, it's at least a step in the right direction.
The 76ers won
the Eastern Conference and went to the NBA Finals. Why mess with success
and trade quality players away for lesser players in return? If the season
started today, Matt Geiger or Tractor Traylor would start at power forward.
Both have slow defensive feet for the position. George Lynch is tough and
can pretend to be a power forward for a minute or two, but he's obviously
not a long term answer at the 4-spot. Tyrone Hill may have had a lousy
post-season, and teammates tend to find him rather annoying ("high maintaince,"
to be exact), but the guy rebounded and did the dirty work that every team
needs. Philly better make another move in the next month or two.
