Points in the Paint 5.28.07: The Dow Jones Edition

Posted by Rob Bonnette on 05.28.2008

Stock Up, Stock Down!

Hello everyone and welcome to a super late Memorial Day week edition of Points in the Paint. This week it's the long awaited stock up, stock down and a lottery crying session. Let's do it!

STOCK UP

The Hornets: I, for one, thought they'd be one and done in the playoffs. I fell for the old 'not enough playoff experience' argument, and picked the Mavericks to beat them. Boy, was I wrong. I didn't expect Jason Kidd to get embarassed like he did by Chris Paul, and I sure expected better out of Josh Howard. Of course, that was before his revelation that he likes to light up 'during the offseason' (yeah, right). But Paul was not to be denied and lit up Kidd something terrible. David West chpped in 22 points and 7 rebounds per game, and Jennero Pargo came off the bench for an unexpected 14 points per game. The series with the Spurs ended in defeat, but I'd say the Hornets have more than proven themselves. And remember: this coming out party is a year late; the Hornets were racked with injuries in 2006-07 that killed enough of their season for them to end up in the lottery. Next season, health willing, sky's the limit. They'll need to beef up the rotation a little to keep up with the Joneses, but there's no reason to think they won't continue to do well for the next several seasons.

Joe Johnson: Johnson had a coming out party of his own during the seven game series against the Celtics. The only member of the team who was consistent across the entire series, Johnson averaged 20 points, 4 assists, and 4 rebounds and had a jaw dropping humiliation of Ray Allen in game four where he scored 24 in the fourth quarter in a Hawks win. The rest of the team was an inconsistent as you could get in terms of home games vs. road games, but Johnson managed to at least stay close. He's been a quiet All-Star twice already, but if the Hawks get off to a quick start expect to see him become a All-Star regular for the next few years.

Joe Dumars: Yeah, I now Dumars doesn't play anymore and I know that everyone's already pretty high on him as a GM already. But he finally managed to erase the one eyesore on his resume this season, which is the drafting of your favorite stiff and mine, Darko! No matter how much you praised his other work, there was always the ‘he took Darko instead of Melo, D Wade, or Chris Bosh' cloud hanging over his head. It got worse when he finally gave up on Darko and dealt him to Orlando for a measly draft pick plus Kelvin Cato, and Darko actually showed some signs of life in last year's playoffs. But of course, like his counterpart Kwame Brown, Darko would not let a stretch of good play completely overturn his sucky career up to this point, and went back to stinking up the joint as soon as this season rolled around. Dumars, however managed tot turn that measly draft pick into Rodney Stuckey, who has become an invaluable member of the Pistons rotation and filled in admirably for Chauncey Billups in the second round series against the Magic. Bravo, Joe Dumars; while I haven't stopped writing about Darko, I will now file him permanently under the ‘even good GMs make some bad choices here and there' category.


STOCK DOWN

Mike Brown: Can somebody please tell coach Brown that it's time to add some new plays to his offense? The ‘give it to Lebron and let him do his thing' offense he runs now is fine for a portion of the game, but not the whole 48 minutes! Seriously, they have some good offensive players other than Lebron, but you wouldn't know it by watching the games. Ilgauskas is a 15-10 guy who has made All-Star teams, and yet he often gets left out of things even though he's pretty much always the tallest guy on the floor and is usually a better player than whoever he's matched up against. They have also have shooters in Daniel Gibson, Wally Szczerbiak, and Delonte West, a guy in Joe Smith who can get 10 to 15 points regularly. And they have guys like Anderson Varejao and Ben Wallace who can get offensive rebounds and keep possessions alive. There is no reason whatsoever why they should struggle to break 90 points, yet that's often the case with them when they play good teams. They really look like amateurs out there, and he's got to take some heat for that. I realize that Lebron may be calling all the shots behind the scenes, but I'm willing to bet that if Brown approached him right they could come up with something that would work better than what's going on right now.

Jason Kidd: Kidd looked old out there in that first round series against New Orleans, really old. Sometimes you can fake it during the regular season because you get to play some games against scrubs who can't do anything to you, but the playoffs tend to expose your age and your deficiencies. And boy, did Chris Paul expose them with Kidd. It's obvious now that Avery Johnson wasn't the guy who pulled the trigger on the deal that brought Kidd to Dallas, seeing as how in his recent studio appearance on TNT he all but said that they would have been better off with Devin Harris because he had the speed to keep up with the likes of Paul and Tony Parker. Kidd is still good enough to be one of the better point guards in the league, but any talk of him as the best is over.

Andrea Bargnani and the Toronto Raptors: Does anyone else think the Raptors might want a do over on this pick? After a regular season that saw him regress from an OK rookie campaign, things got even worse in playoffs. The man who was thought of as a future bookend to the Raptors front line is now looking more and more like someone who should have been picked in the teens and allowed to stay overseas for another year or two. His playing time has actually decreased from one year to the next, and by the time the playoffs rolled around he was getting minutes worthy of a rotation player. He hasn't seen more than 28 minutes of run in any game since March 12, regardless of foul trouble. Next year will be put up or shut up time. His team is at a similar crossroads; in 2006-07 they were able to win the division by default because three of the five teams were bad all season (New York, Philly, and Boston) and their only rival, the Nets got off to a bad start. This season Philly and Boston were both much improved while the Nets took a dip and the Knicks were awful. Any continued improvement by the other four teams could spell doom for a Raptor team that has trouble attracting major free agents and doesn't have a high draft pick for the second year in a row. I bet GM Bryan Colangelo really wishes he could go back and use that first pick on either Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge right now.

The Lottery! You've got to be in it to….end up picking sixth in a two man draft.

You better believe I'm angry about how the lottery turned out. As bad as my Knicks were, we only get the sixth pick? Sixth? Are you nuts, David Stern? We got rid of Isaiah and installed some popular guys at the top like Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni; isn't that what everyone wanted? And now you screw us over and give the first in the draft to CHICAGO? Aaaaahhhhhhhh! OK, back to reality. The lottery isn't rigged; if it was you'd better believe the Knicks would have gotten the first or second pick so that they could have taken Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley. This flat out stinks, I tell you. Now we're going to be stuck with some guy who the analysts say is a good pick on draft day, but goes on to be a bum in three years. Great. Thanks a lot, David Stern.

OK, that's it for this week. Next week it's Finals Preview time!