Durant = playoffs, Oden = conference finals

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Poor Man's Commish doesn't usually let me argue about NBA teams and what they should do, because normally we like to leave the rantin' and ravin' to the myriad of blogs out there, but when I brought this up, he didn't think anybody had touched on it, at least not the way I'm about to.

Now that Portland and Seattle are #1 and #2 in this year's deep NBA Draft, which will lead to this year's best Vegas Summer League ever, you have to be asking yourself: Greg Oden or Kevin Durant?

Ballaz everywhere will, of course, lean towards Durant because we can all "be like Kevin". You have to be much taller than everybody else around you to be like Greg. And it's hard to pass on a guy who scored 30 ppg in the college format. What if Oden is to Sam Bowie as Durant is to Michael Jordan?

But haven't we seen enough in the NBA Playoffs this year? You look at the Warriors and you go, "Plenty of swingmen. They need a Carlos Boozer, Kevin Garnett, or Elton Brand. They need a tall guy in the middle who can score, rebound and draw defenders to kick out." You look at the Suns and you go, "Something's wrong with the system. The Spurs closed down everything and let Amare Stoudemire get his. The Suns need another Amare." You look at the Spurs and you go, "Who the heck can guard Tim Duncan and not be forced into a double-team?"

Now, there are plenty of teams that merely need a Durant to get to the playoffs. Or a Yi Jianlian, who is simply a freak-of-nature inside-out pick a la Dirk Nowitzki. In fact, we've already seen the better playoff teams neutralize opposing fives made up of mini-Durants (think Leandro Barbosa and Stephen Jackson in their team systems) and, of course, MVP Dirk.

Remember, it's a team game. Granted, Durant maybe can disrupt a Jazz, Spurs, or Pistons defense enough to significantly alter their pack-it-in styles. But that seems like more of a risky prediction as we sit on the verge of the NBA Finals these next couple weeks.

If you want any chance of getting to the conference finals, you must pick Oden.

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Dish on Yi Jianlian makes it good to have Insider today

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[Believe it or not, I actually compare Yi Jianlian to a dreamleaguer...read on!]

If you're a fan of Yi as we are, today's ESPN Insider article by Chad Ford makes the Insider subscription worth it (even though we got ours at a major discount, ha!).

Ford witnessed workouts by Yi over two days in LA and had rave reviews. Here are some samples, for those of you blocked out of the Insider wall...

• Don MacLean (former UCLA star and current trainer for Nick Young, draft prospect out of USC): "Have you seen the Yi kid yet? That kid was amazing."
  
  
• Joakim Noah, who was also training in LA, about Yi's workouts: "Something to behold. Where did that guy come from?"...

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I dunno, Colangelo, I just don't know

Jemele Hill of ESPN Page 2 just interviewed Jerry Colangelo. Here's some bread-and-butter of what he said about Team USA:

"When that game ended against Greece, in the locker room, I know how they all felt. We don't ever want to feel that way again as long as we're together. I think that's going to bond us even more...It had nothing to do with the player-personnel (or)...having the right talent. We did a poor job in preparation in defending the pick-and-roll against Greece. It's as simple as that. And a team beat us that shouldn't have. They deserved to win because we didn't get the job done. If we played them 10 times, we'd win nine out of 10."

Sounds a lot like our Dream League All-Star squad, which coming off a heartbreaking championship loss to the L.A. Tigers Blue in 2005, went down to Vegas for the 14th Annual LVI this past September 2006 and promptly got slapped in the face by Arizona Desert Jade. Two consecutive weeks of open gym run/practice (heh, it'd be a crime to call them practices!) for our guys leading up to the tournament proved to be a non-factor.

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