With NBA veterans beginning their pre-season
preparation over these next few weeks, here are five players in the
Eastern Conference who could be preparing to have their breakout
seasons in the NBA and their stat lines from 2007-08:

Joakim Noah has an interesting sense of style. The Blazers would’ve made all 60 picks if David Stern allowed it. Spike Lee likes Zach Randolph a lot more than Channing Frye. And Stephen A. Smith isn’t a big fan of Jason Richardson.

But of all the things I learned during the NBA Draft, this is what I learned the most…

The draft
is finally upon us, which means the speculation will be swirling and may be a
little more substantiated as it has been the past four or five weeks. It’s kind
of strange to write a column leading up to an event that, within a span of three
hours, will disprove about 90 percent of what was written in this space. But,
the links are heating up and I am here to provide them. Expect everything below
to change before 7 p.m. tomorrow.

Today’s
links are a little light. Not only are there not that many but after the Spurs
took another step towards a Finals sweep I anticipate an epic flood of draft
links from NBA writers desperate for a story once the Finals are over, so there
are plenty to come. If you ever wanted a 1,200 word feature on Kyle Visser, your
time has come.

There seems to be an unusually
high amount of fallout from the NBA Draft Lottery the other night. I’m assuming
part of it is because of Durant/Oden and another part of it is Spurs/Jazz/Cavs/Pistons
(although last night’s horrible officiating should help detract the talking
heads from the lottery for a second). The majority of the reactions fell into
two categories. The first: Hooray, we beat the lottery, our franchise is saved!
The other: The lottery screwed us, the lottery sucks, our franchise is doomed
for the next 30 years. There was really nothing in between.