A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON THE NBA 2022 DRAFT

You'll get plently of information from the talking heads about this season's drafts' winners and losers and which of the top draftees will impact from the get-go. They will discuss trades, and endlessly go over Kyrie Irving's inexplicable stalemate with the Nets' management over playing next year for a paltry $37 million plus dollars. Inexplicable to at least 90 % of the American population. (Are we at all bored yet????) The 10 remaining %, given their propensity for greed might understand such behavior. Trump and his minions for example, but even they might wonder about turning down $37 million dollars for a year's work playing hoops. So, what can I add to the palaver? 

How about Paulo Banchero winning the Best-Dressed-Award? Or Jaden Ivey complety brought to tears that he was drafted #5 by the Detroit Piston. Got to say, I love it that his mom played in the WNBA. I could predict that my Golden State Warriors might have landed a possibly great player in 6'9" wing Patrick Baldwin, at the 28th pick, given his injury history is not ongoing. I can say I'm toitaly baffled by the Charlotte Hornets giving up 6'11' Jalen Duren, a pretty niffty pick-and-roll center, who is not simply a rim protecctor or a catch and dunk post. So what if they have two talented centers. Mark Willimans at 7'2" will definatly provide rim protection. Oh well, it is Michael Jordan's call becasue he was a player, he knows, right? I seem to recall a time when Jordan picked a young high school player as the # 1 pick in the 2001 NBA draft named Kwame Brown and paid him huge bucks for zero production. The real problem is the Hornets really only got a bunch of 2nd round draft choices in return for a player with a huge upside. Or, i could congratulate GM Monty McNair of the Sacramento Kings for drafting for need and selecting a future All Star in 6'9" wing defender and 3 point shooter Keegan Murry, while he still has a lot of trade flexibility left and money in the bank. Or I could say that it's time for GM Sam Presti to stop collecting first round draft choices and start building a team that can compete, but the talking heads are all over that subject. 

Instead I want to talk about parents. Back in the day -  as they say - that being before the turn of the century, on NBA draft nights, it was a rare sight when a selected African American player would be joined by his father. Not so, these days. Proud African American dads have joined proud African American moms to celebrate their sons making it into the NBA. It is also worth noting that some of the parents are of mixed racees. How cool is that? How this must gall the racists in our country that still trumpet the cause of white supremacy. Trumpet aa in Donald Trump and his white Republican devotees. And it is not just the NBA, this country is fast becoming multi racial and multi cultural. About frigging time. HooWah!!! 

Not a sports' poem, but one of the great poems about fathers by African Amercian poet Robert Hayden

THOSE WINTER SUNDAY     by Robert Hayden

   

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were earm, he'd call

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferntly to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices.