The 2007 NBA Draft was touted as the best since the one that brought us the stars of the league's Christmas offering, Cleveland's LeBron James and Miami's Dwyane Wade. The first two picks of the recent draft, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, figured to be so great that they were scheduled to play the national televised holiday nightcap.
Oden looked great in his red velvet blazer, didn't he?
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| While Greg Oden can't show off the goods on the court, he's able to look sharp on the bench. (Getty Images) |
Durant is averaging 20 points per game, has won a game at the buzzer and is only getting better with experience. He shot under .500 in 13 of his first 15 games, but has steadily picked up his production, putting together the first three 30-point games of his career over the last 12 entering Thursday's encounter with Boston.
Everything he does looks smoother. His 7-foot-4 wingspan no longer looks as gawky on the break. He's always going to look different, because 6-foot-10 wings of his size and abilities come along, oh, once in a lifetime, but it's starting to appear more conventional, or at least seems that way.
He's going to be the jewel of this class. Perhaps Oden will join him, but if the first two months of the season are any indication, this isn't going to be anything like 2003.
If Durant is like James, who's Wade? Or Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Josh Howard, Kirk Hinrich or T.J. Ford? There might be a Darko Milicic here and there, guys we have to wait on to see if they produce, but there is no one else who is going to captivate the league from the get-go as the '03s did. Even two months in, that's clear.
This draft class looks far more similar to last year's, which was predominantly dragged through the mud for how weak it supposedly was. Like Durant, it had its can't-miss star in Portland's Brandon Roy, a few promising big men in LaMarcus Aldridge, Andrea Bargnani and Tyrus Thomas, as well as an x-factor in Rudy Gay, who has blossomed into a potentially special player in Memphis.
The X (Yi) factor: The hype on Yi Jianlian began way before draft night. Some teams felt that he was definitely the top prospect behind Oden and Durant. Others were lukewarm on him. Milwaukee was one of the organizations which fell in love with him, taking him in spite of his representation's lack of enthusiasm with having the Bucks draft him.
As it turns out, they made the right choice.
"He's been good," Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak said. "Going into this thing we knew it was going to be difficult for a rookie, number one, and then we thought when you've got a culture difference in a different league and not much familiarity with it that was going to be another obstacle, but it's probably been just the opposite. He's probably been a lot further along then we all expected. He continues to get better."
Yi is starting to figure out where to he needs to be in order to make the most of his opportunities, and his teammates have responded by looking for him more often and figuring out where he's most effective. Yi has logged career highs twice in the past two weeks, including an exceptional 14-for-17 effort against the Bobcats on Dec. 22 that saw him finish with 29 points and 10 rebounds, his first career double-double.
"There was probably a period a couple of weeks ago where he might have hit the wall a little bit, playing four or five games in a week, lot of different opponents, different hotel rooms, things that are different for him, not to mention all the stuff he's got going on off the floor," Krystkowiak said. "He leads our team in work off the floor and we've kind of tried to taper things back from him. I think he's catching his second wind."
