Joakim Noah and Jeff Green can't dance

Pro athletes are so good at their given field of work that it's always fun to learn that they absolutely suck at something. Well, Joakim Noah and Jeff Green suck something fierce at dancing. This video comes from what I guess was some NBA rookie photoshoot sometime shortly after the draft.

There's nothing amazing in the video, as in no headspins or people doing the worm. Alando Tucker is the winner by far, as his shimmy-shake suggests he's at least capable of busting a move from time to time.

Noah is pretty awful, but worst dancer goes to Jeff Green who does the most horrible robot I've ever seen in my life.

-WCK

JRich No Longer a Warrior? Say it Ain't So!

Well, it was a surprising NBA draft for a number of teams, the Warriors most definitely included in that. First, the upside to the Brandon Wright - JRich trade. Good players with amazing athletic ability that are 6'10 with 7'5 wingspans come around about once a year, at best, on average and there are generally 3-5 serviceable 6'5 2-guards in each draft. That's the good news for the Warriors. The bad is pretty much everything else. JRich has been a representation of the Warriors franchise and fans since he's been here, playing hard, sticking around, believing in the team through ups and downs, and has been the face of the franchise for the first part of this decade. Why not ship him off for a player who slipped in the draft because he's skinnier than Nicole Richie and has a questionable drive and work ethic?

I was talking with a couple friends about this trade earlier and we were trying to figure out when a project player with a questionable work ethic/drive has EVER turned into a strong NBA player. We couldn't think of one. You can come up with a list of players who were supposed to be too small for their position, too slow, bad jumper, questionable background, etc. These problems are associated with certain players every year and they are consistently overcome by superior players who have a strong work ethic and drive. This is the thing about Wright that scares me, I just don't see it panning out and to trade a consistently improving, hard-working, inspiring player like JRich is hard to fathom.

One thing that is clear in my mind after this trade is that Stephen A. Smith has a mental disability. Saying the Warriors fleeced the Bobcats on this is just ridiculous. I like how even the ESPN poll had 51% of people saying the Bobcats got a better deal on the trade and then he continues to go off like this trade was Adonal Foyle for Brandan Wright. Since when is a player who's an established star and considered a very strong #5 pick considered a poor trade for a totally unproven #8 pick? And this Michael Jordan fellow, how would he ever know how to judge the value of a proven shooting guard in the NBA? Clearly Stephen A. is a superior judge of talent! How could all be so silly! Stephen A. Smith represents everything that's wrong with sports broadcasting and sports journalism today. The theory that the more confidently and louder you say something, no matter what it is is superior to actually supporting your arguments and having some rational basis is absolutely killing sports journalism.

And I loved Stephen A's argument that the 2003 draft was deeper than this draft. Dude, Chris Kaman went #6 in that draft out of Central Michigan. You're telling me that Kaman was a deeper pick than Corey Brewer at #7? Or even Julian Wright and Al Thornton at #13 and 14? And if he was so sure Wade and Bosh were going to be superstars he should be scouting right now because I saw both those guys play repeatedly in college and had NO idea they would end up being this good. I doubt many NBA franchises knew this either otherwise trading up for Wade at #5 would have been worth pretty much anyone in the league at that point and nobody did it. Damn, I can't believe I just spent two paragraphs going off on that fool...

I do like the Belinelli pick, I marked him down as my Tony Parker Award for potentially stellar late 1st round pick this year, but other than that I'm not too thrilled about how the franchise went today...

--dwyermaker

Yi Jianlian likes milk...and threesomes

Yep, it's NBA Draft week, which means it's time to check out weird foreign commercials for future NBA stars (or flops). Here's Yi Jianlian in an intensely dramatic and confusing Chinese commercial for milk. Don't worry if you don't speak Chinese. I'm not sure this commercial would make any more sense if they were speaking English anyway. My favorite part is the girl playing the violin that doesn't exist.

I believe the message of the ad is: girls like milk. Or something like that.

-WCK

NBA Draftmas is Upon Us!

Let's be honest. Once you get old enough, generally the "holidays" kind of suck. You're either stuck with relatives that just stress you out or you're spending more time shopping for gifts and spending more money on others than you get back in reciprocal emotional or material benefit. So what do we have left as adult males? Super Bowl Sunday, March Madness, the NFL Draft, and my personal favorite, the NBA draft (which I have grown to appreciate as pretty much an equal trade if not better for us). I have enjoyed the NBA draft so much over the years that I move to declare the NBA Draft a National Holiday (we can officially get rid of that Columbus asshole once and for all as far as I'm concerned).

It's not just the great picks that everyone knows are going to work out (Lebron, Duncan, etc.) that make the draft great, my favorite part of the Draft are those picks who you can see a giant chip placed in their shoulder on draft day (Villaneuva, Josh Smith, Arenas) that you just know are going to kill it along with the shrewd Godfather-esque moves that net teams like the Jazz and the Spurs absolute ballers in the late first and second rounds consistently (Ginobili, Parker, Kirilenko, Boozer - are you kidding me!!). Seriously, those late first and second rounders have so profoundly shaped the NBA over the past few years that the NBA draft and the trades made involving the draft have shifted the power in the NBA far more than drafts in any other professional sport or free agency. Think of the 2nd generation of the NBA Championship Spurs focused on Ginobili (LATE 2nd round pick) and Parker (very late first round pick) playing off Duncan. How did they get those two guys? With amazing draft-day decisions. Before the end of Parker and Ginbobili's run these decisions will have netted the Spurs probably between 3-5 championships. With all the money teams throw at free agents, marketing, and everything else, you would think they'd wise up and start bidding on the top draft scouts like they were Lebron after declaring free agency.

The other part of the draft I absolutely love is the soap-opera drama involving emotionally troubled players like Theron Smith who was a 2:1 favorite to attempt suicide with a bottle of painkillers (unfortunately came through on that one), college players who you've been following for years that barely sneak into the 2nd round (let's call it the Toby Bailey element of the draft), and great players invited to the draft that somehow keep slipping for who-knows what reason (ie, Rashard Lewis). In honor of all of these great subplots to the NBA draft, let's introduce the inaugural 100% Injury Rate NBA Draftmas Awards: First, the Rashard Lewis Award (great player invited to draft that will slip way too far as everyone looks on as if he'd just been hit by a car); Second, the Theron Smith Award (player who you just know things are not going to end well for); Third, the Tony Parker Award (great pick that will go in the late first round); Fourth, the Gilbert Arenas Award (early Second Round pick that will kill it); Fifth, the Manu Ginobili Award (great late Second Round pick) and Sixth, the Toby Bailey Award (drafting of a strong but overrated college player who everyone knows is going nowhere in the NBA).

Rashard Lewis Award
- Goes to Acie Law: with Conley most likely going somwhere in the 4-10 range and Atlanta having clearly no ability to understand when they've been handed a great point guard in the draft (D. Williams, Paul) and rumored to be leaning to Crittenton out of GT, Law could drop into the later part of the first round and fulfill yet another part of his destiny as the next Sam Cassell.

Theron Smith Award
- JamesOn Curry: he may not get drafted but he's already been busted for dealing and that got him released from his North Carolina scholarship and unlike Georgetown where the Thompsons have a rep for helping players with troubled backgrounds (see Allen Iverson), the Suttons at OSU don't seem to have the same success (see Tony Allen).
- Runner-up: Sean Willians, Boston College

Tony Parker Award
- Marco Belinelli: another proven young European player with question marks who could easily turn into the savior of a franchise.
- Runner-ups: Morris Almond, Rice and Aaron Afflalo, UCLA

Gilbert Arenas Award
- Marcus Williams, Arizona: this is just a no-brainer pick. Proven scorer who played against excellent competition at UofA and for some odd reason has dropped in the draft over the last year because of inconsistency.

Manu Ginobli Award
- Taurean Green: both are lefties and both bring an unusual amount of big-game experience and clutch performances with them for their age and could end up being major contributors on Championship teams before their careers are over.

Toby Bailey Award
- Glen Davis: sorry Big Baby but 6'7 or 6'8 players need a bit more than a credit card vertical these days to hang in the NBA and it just ain't in the cards for you. Your consolation prize will be making millions of dollars playing in Europe, perhaps with a team such as FC Barcelona - and if anyone has ever visited and been on the beaches of Spain, I think we can all pick Glen Davis as the true winner of this years draft! Congratulations Glen Davis, if only we could all be so unlucky!

That's it for the Inaugural 100% Injury Rate NBA Draftmas Awards, hope you all enjoy the drama unfold as much as I do!!

--dwyermaker

WCK would like to add that he thinks Afflalo is total garbage. We shall see.

Comin' up short

Elmo: "Your crossover is garbage, don't go into the draft."

Ah, the NBA Draft. It's so close I can taste it. It may be our favorite sporting event every year, even though no one is doing anything athletic. All sorts of hilarious "upside potential" references, and the word "length" is used repeatedly in a rather strange context. Plus Dwyermaker and I always love to take bets on which lottery pick will crash and burn the fastest. I can't wait.

While we're excited, and so will the 60 guys that are picked on draft day, every year people go undrafted for all sorts of interesting reasons. Like selling cocaine as a kid, or being deaf, or just flat out sucking. There are also plenty of guys who seem to stupidly believe they can cut it in the pros when they desperately need a few more years of college ball under their belts.

To help prepare you to recognize these guys, The Feed has compiled a list of players that seem to have had a serious brain cramp when they put their names into this year's NBA Draft. Our favorite is a draft expert talking about a guy coming out of junior college named Robert Earl Johnson.

• "I've heard of Robert Johnson and Robert Earl Keen" said the expert. "But I've never heard of Robert Earl Johnson, which probably isn't a good sign."

No it isn't, it definitely isn't.

-WCK

Can Someone Please Get KD a Hamburger!

While I wasn't entirely shocked about Kevin Durant's atrocious performance on the bench press earlier today, it does remind me of the last amazingly talented 18-19 year old who had a very suspect bench press but still went really high in the NBA draft, Shaun Livingston. And while not necessarily related to his bench press, we all know how that turned out. But, the problem is that there are NBA-ready bodies, there are non-NBA-ready bodies, and then there's Kevin Durant. Granted, the 82 game regular season has devolved into a mere formality with minimal physical play for the most part in the NBA over the past decade and I don't see Durant making the playoffs in the next couple years, but you tell me he runs across a pick from Shaq and it isn't going to look like a trailer for Saw IV? I don't know. As immensely talented as he is and I'm still saying he goes #2 in the draft no question, I almost feel like the Sonics would be best served to put him on the bench for a year, put some meat on his bones and make sure he can hang in the NBA before he does anything to damage his future.

One thing that has made Lebron so successful so early in his career is that he's so big and strong. For example, when Detroit tried going Jordan Rules on him, they didn't realize he's got about 2 inches in height and 20-25 pounds on Jordan and, with his speed and agility, Lebron's the one out there inflicting the pain on the guys trying to knock him down. Anyone fast enough to catch up to him (Prince, Hamilton, Hunter) is about half his size and anyone big enough to muscle him (Wallace, Maxiell, Webber) isn't quick enough to get out of a Marv Albert "serves up a facial" shot. On the flipside, Durant has neither the size nor the speed of Lebron and in any big game is just going to get hammered and this strategy will most likely work on him. 25 years ago, a guy like Durant with his frame could still make it, but Durant is going to have players like Ron Artest and Bruce Bowen guarding him next year in this modern NBA. If you want a visual, just replay the start of the Palace Brawl where Artest pulls down that kid in the crowd he thought threw the cup. If I'm the Sonics and I have a game coming up where Artest is guarding the future of my franchise, I would have serious reservations about sending KD out there. In the meantime, can someone please introduce Durant to American cuisine (ie, McDonalds, Burger King, Carl's Junior (my favorite), KFC) and a weight room? The fate of the NBA may just depend on it...

--dwyermaker

Roy Hibbert is a smart man

Today Roy Hibbert decided he'd go back to G-Town for his senior year. This is an incredibly smart move by Hibbert. It seems like that G-Town education has certainly done him a lot of good.

Hibbert was projected to be somewhere in the range of the 8th to the 12th pick in the upcoming NBA draft. That means he'd be earning somewhere in the range of $1.4 to $1.8 million a year (with slight increases each year) for three years.

Hibbert probably paid attention to the fact that there are two big men who will be going ahead of him if he had stayed in this year's draft - Greg Oden and Yi Jianlian from China.

So why not spend another year in college? He can continue honing his conditioning and skills for another year and then be a top 3 pick in next year's draft. Reasonably competent big men always go high in the draft.

It's also makes sense economically speaking. If Hibbert is a top three pick next year, he would earn an extra $4 million plus from his rookie contract than if he had come out this year.

Although some people are worried that Hibbert might pull a Joakim Noah, I don't buy that. Hibbert has improved every year he's been at G-Town, and unlike Noah, Hibbert is a true center. It's much tougher to find a true center than a tweener forward.

Smart move Roy. Now get in the gym and start running.

-WCK

Other takes on it:
Hibbert investing brilliantly

Not a good day for the NBA

Unless you're a fan of the Trail Blazers, the Sonics or the Spurs, Tuesday was a pretty bad day for most NBA fans. And in the long run, it could be pretty bad for the NBA as a whole.

The fact of that matter is that with Portland and Seattle locking up the first two picks in the NBA Draft, it means Oden and Durant will be headed to the great American Northwest, where watching basketball ranks below chopping wood on the list of fun things to do (although chopping wood is fairly popular).

While there will at least be no conspiracy theories about any kind of rigging of this year's draft, the fact remains that the NBA had two megastars for this year's draft who won't be going to any big time basketball markets. Also bad is the fact that Oden and Durant will spend the majority of their time playing on the west coast, meaning most people won't stay up late enough to watch many of their games. And don't even get us started about teaming up Oden with Darius Miles and Zach Randolph. Let's hope he hangs out with Brandon Roy.

Also bad was that Phoenix missed out on Atlanta's draft pick because it was a top three protected pick. So all of us hoping to see the Suns add Corey Brewer or Al Horford to the mix and challenge the Spurs next year (in a hopefully legitimate series), we're out of luck unless some major trades happen on draft day or the Suns go free agent shopping after Marion is expected to leave.

It was also disappointing to see the Bulls wind up with the number nine pick. I have no clue who'll still be around by then. Noah? Hibbert? Julian Wright? Will any of these guys help them get past the Pistons next year? Doesn't seem likely.

Combine all of this with the fact that the Spurs won yet another snoozer of a game Tuesday, and the fact that ESPN had the draft right before the game in order to try and sucker fans into watching it to beat SpongeBob Squarepants in the ratings, and what are you left with? Nothing worth watching, that's for sure. The NBA seems to be dying a slow death in front of us.

Will Oden and Durant revive basketball in the Northwest? Probably not. Will Phoenix do something to get a key player from this year's draft to get over the hurdle and into the finals? Probably not. Will Atlanta ever draft a point guard? Probably not. Will someone finally deck Bowen when he shoots one of his baseline 3s? Probably not.

So why I should I care? Why should anyone care? Stern and the league seem to be stepping all over themselves right now. If it hadn't been for the Warriors this year, would this go down as one of the worst NBA seasons ever? I just hope Oden and Durant turn out to be awesome pros. Otherwise, God help the NBA. Otherwise it'll soon be on Versus getting shut off for the Preakness.

-WCK

Other perspectives:
Draft Lottery Liquorish Lace
Well, we suppose this ruins Pitino's master plan
Celtics Lottery Bitterness...and crushing conspiracy theories