NBA DRAFT 2024

You would think that, since I’m in the middle of watching every second of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, that’s what I’d be writing about in the Sports category today. But you would be wrong.

Yes, I usually do publish a middle-of-the-tourney article, but I decided to just watch and enjoy this year, as opposed to my usual note-taking and tweeting. (It also might have a lot to do with the fact that my computer recently broke down, and my laptop expired, as well. So I’m sharing Mr. X’s laptop for a while, which means I don’t have round-the-clock access to it.)

All that explains why I’m a tad behind on discussing this year’s NBA Draft, which took place almost two weeks ago. And, let me tell you, it was the oddest one in the two and a half decades I’ve been watching it!

I didn’t take extensive notes on it all, but there are several people and issues worth discussing.

First of all, it’s absolutely ridiculous that they held the proceedings over two nights this year, as opposed to the usual one night. They broke it up into the two rounds, which is sooo unfair to the young men waiting on tenterhooks to find-out if they’d be drafted. (Most of the ones who are assumed to be drafted in the Top Thirty are invited to sit in a “green room” of sorts that night, and a few others who are confident they will be drafted, as well, dress-up and bring their families to sit in the close-by audience section with them. Those who are embarrassed by sitting there when that first round is over still usually get chosen in Round Two, and then get to hug their posse, walk up to the stage for their pic, and then get interviewed on camera.) to the stage for their pic, and then get interviewed on camera.)

My guess as to why they did it over two nights is to possibly not lose the TV audience’s attention by making it one long night, or for ratings somehow. I also think something else big was happening on TV that night with which they did not want to compete. But, no matter why, it was a horrible decision, one the hosting panel creepily kept congratulating themselves on.

The second day was sooooo depressing! Instead of the festive situation of the night before, these families were just in the television studio, with no audience to cheer for them and no interviews. Very upbeat the first day, projected high pick Kyle Filipowski didn’t even come back the next one. (But at least he did get taken second in that round.)

I hope they change it back next year—they need to think of the guys! They need to let them be in the proper atmosphere, even if they sit in the stands instead of the green room. And most importantly, they took away my crying for them all! Shame on them!

On a side note to that situation, I wonder why they changed the waiting area to having long tables instead of the usual round ones. And why tables  at all when it appears they don’t serve food or drinks outside of just individual plastic bottles of water.

As to the guys themselves, this was the sweetest draft class ever!

But the entire draft was like America’s Got Talent these days—it seemed to be mostly foreigners!!! Especially French dudes. Two of them were even the #1 and #2 picks!!! (That country will have a heck of an Olympics team in a few weeks!!! I have a feeling that they will definitely challenge the American men.)

Shockingly, I like Bronny James! He seems very nice and not at all obnoxious.

But…why is everyone so scared of his dad, LeBron James, and their agent, Rich Paul??? One of the panel members, former Warriors GM Bob Myers, who is very close to the people involved in that whole situation, broke the news that Paul called all the other teams who could have chosen Bronny before the Lakers #55 pick, (they weren’t going to choose him with their #7 one because they would just have embarrassed themselves,) and threatened them that if they did not let the Lakers have Bronny, he would play in Australia instead of on their team! And Paul also reminded them that he has several other players he’d keep away from their teams. That entire scenario makes me see red. I was rooting for the James’ to play together, but ugh to the tactics. No one really wanted Bronny and his heart issues, anyway, but still…

I like Bronny, but it’s crazy that the Lakers are pretending he was chosen for his skills, not because of a deal with his dad, when we all know that he was 100% chosen by them to keep LeBron on the team!!! With Bronny’s aforementioned heart issues and lack of college play, he would never have been chosen in this draft!

So, to sum up that particular situation, I’m happy for LeBron and Bronny, but not for the Lakers. That was so slimy of them. (I predicted it all weeks ago right here on INAM, by the way!) But I’m glad for all of us sports fans to witness history—it will be the first time a father and son have played together in the NBA! I also predict that LeBron will then retire at the end of next season. And become…the Lakers coach! That’s most likely why the organization hired Bron’s pal and podcast partner, JJ Redick, as their coach now! He has absolutely no coaching experience, so it’s all very suspicious.

By the way—Bronny is already injured! He missed a game of two (or three) in the summer league because his knee is swollen.

Now to the rest of the guys. There’s the popular TikTok guy, Jared McCain, who always wears nail polish! I wonder if they’ll let him still do that in the pros. They don’t allow any jewelry, except for rubber bracelets, but they do allow crazy hair-dos and facial hair, so I can’t wait to see their nail polish policy.

And Reed Sheppard is so sweet. If I had had a son, and he didn’t have to be a funny kid, I would love it to be this guy. He threw-out the first pitch at the Yankees-Mets game the day before the draft, and the catcher of that pitch was none other than…his mom!

I love that college coaches John Calipari, (late of Kentucky, but starting now at Arkansas,) and Dan Hurley, (two-time champ at UConn,) show-up for their players in the draft.

I so appreciate that eighteen-year-old Ron Holland II said his fave music artist is…Teddy Pendergrass! Talk about an old soul.

I’d still love to know why Purdue’s Zach Edey, who wound-up being drafted ninth, wasn’t there. How can someone who had to know he’d be drafted high miss this amazing opportunity?

All during the NCAA March Madness tournament, the only potential draftee the analysts keep mentioning was Colorado’s Cody Williams, whose brother Jalen Williams plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder. And he did get drafted tenth. So now I’m curious to see him play more than the few minutes I saw I’m do so in college.

The Lakers chose Candace Parker’s favorite college player, Dalton Knecht. I like him, too, so now I may have to finally cheer for the Lakers. But just maybe.

My prediction is that Tristan da Silva will be gorgeous in a year or two.

The Bucks “war room,” (where the draft day decisions were made,) had so *many fewer people that the other rooms they showed, and almost half women. *(I know that “many fewer” sounds like incorrect wording, but there’s no other way to describe that sitch.)

While I was originally down with the hosting panel, they began to annoy me, especially on Day Two. They were bs-ing with each other so much that Jamal Shead and Antonio Reeves, (taken at #s 45 and 47,) didn’t even get to hear their names announced!!! Some others missed that honor, as well, some because ESPN apparently thought that commercials were more important than the most significant moment in these guys’ lives!

Johnny Murphy is so cute, and so young-looking!

Bobi Klintman is from Sweden and played in Australia, but sounds soooo American! Strange.

Why would teams choose players for each other when they have consecutive choices #43 and #44? It makes no sense at all. It’s not like there was a team in the middle who was going to steal their pick! Just pick for yourselves!

Cameron Christie will now be playing for the Clippers, while his bro Max Christie is already a Laker. So they could be roomies in L.A.! I love stuff like this!

That’s it for my thoughts on the draft, in general, and some of the guys. But I have a fun personal story relating to the attire worn by Monica McNutt, the woman who interviewed the draftees during Round One.

So about a dozen years ago, a new friend of mine, the classy Lauren, (who has since become one of my handful of best friends in the world,) invited me to spend a weekend at her house in the Hamptons with her family. So I packed what I thought was my cutest and/or classiest wardrobe, and the first night, we were going to review a well-known restaurant. (I would describe it as “upscale,” but even though people think that everything in the Hamptons is, eateries there are often pretty laid-back.)  This was in the days when I was still thin and cute, so I donned a black mini dress. It was nothing sexy; just a cute, black cotton dress that was short, as all my dresses and skirts were at the time. Not micro-mini, just a few inches above the knee. And it looked great.

And then Lauren came into my room right before we were going to leave, and she said, “Oh sweetheart, you can’t dress like that in the Hamptons!,” because it was way too short, in her Hamptons opinion. So she gave me this wispy, long-ish, pink chiffon skirt to put underneath the bottom of my dress, which looked just like what this woman in the picture to the left did that night of the draft!

Getting back to my new fashion, I thought it looked really stupid, but we were just reviewing a restaurant, so I didn’t really care, and off we went.  Later on in the evening, as I was coming out of the restroom, I heard pounding music, and I walked around the inside corner of the area, and saw a big bouncer there. I asked what was going on, and he very derogatorily explained that it was a club in that half of the building. I couldn’t understand why he was talking down to me like that, as if I would have no idea what a club is, because it had been just a couple of years since I had stopped going to them and running some myself, and I still looked like I had back then. And then I realized that, with that crazy extra material under my dress, I looked like somebody who was too nerdy to have ever even been in a club! And this woman at the Draft looked like that’s what happened to her, as well—like she wore that red dress to the event, and then her bosses at ESPN told her that she needs to add some material to the bottom of it before she interviews the draftees. I swear, I really think that’s what happened there—the bottom material absolutely does not go with the rest of her dress!!!