The Man Who Should Be King

Thursday was a good day.

Pritchard worked his draft-day magic once again and was able to land a top-5 prospect with the 13th pick.

Welcome to Portland, Jerryd Bayless.



Not only that, but when our time came to make our pick, we had two legitimate offers on the table: Augustine and Bayless. Charlotte apparently took Augustine with hopes of trading him to Portland, based on what Pritchard was saying to the media and surely to Charlotte's front office.

Here's the thing - Pritchard didn't even want Augustine. He wanted Bayless, and influencing the Bobcats to pick Augustine guaranteed that Bayless would still be on the board at #11, so the Blazers would only have to trade up two spots instead of four. Was it unethical? Maybe. Should anybody care? No way. First of all, Charlotte was stupid to make the pick before a guaranteed deal was in place. Second, Michael Jordan has been duped countless times during his time in Charlotte, so it would be foolish not to get in on some of that hot action. Now, the Bobcats are stuck with three undersized point guards, two of whom are moody and insecure in the roles, and the other being an unproven rookie who has to live in Charlotte, of all places, for a few years.

Way to go, guys.

Again, Pritchard didn't show his hand, and he got exactly what he wanted. He worked the phones like mad, but didn't make it obvious what he was after. Compare him to Kevin McHale, who gushed about Kevin Love for weeks before draft day, and made it obvious to everybody that he wanted Kevin Love on his team more than, say, peace in the Middle East. This was no smokescreen; McHale wanted Love, he told everybody, and he ended up with him. He actually lucked out and made a pretty good Mayo-for-Love swap by dealing with Chris Wallace, possibly the only GM in the league more incompetent than McHale himself.

Addition by subtraction was the order of the day, and by that measure, we added some great tools. For example, Jarrett Jack is... wait for it... NO LONGER A PORTLAND TRAILBLAZER. It feels so good to write. We also purged resident court jester Josh McRoberts, whose greatest attributes were being Greg Oden's friend and being white. We actually didn't directly reduce the amount of guaranteed contracts on our team, essentially replacing Jack with Bayless and McRoberts with Ike Diogu. James Jones, high on mushrooms at the time, opted out of his deal, though, and we still have very valuable trade assets that could be put into play in the next couple months.

Obviously, Pritchard's not done. Not by a long shot.

Other highlights from the draft:

Eric Gordon's white-as-snow butler suit... Sacramento being just plain lazy and picking a guy at #12 who they could have traded down for and nabbed at #22... Stephen A Smith desperately trying to be taken seriously... a behind-the-scenes look at behind the stage where David Stern always walks out of to announce the picks... New York and Sacramento fans giving their team executives a grade of 'F' for the night... OJ Mayo wearing glasses trying to look like a guy you could trust your 17-year-old daughter with... and Robin Lopez trying to fit his hat on top of his Sideshow Bob haircut.

Here's to Kevin Pritchard, the toast of the town. Again.

TJH