The 2009 NBA Draft Is Only 3 Weeks Away, Plus Other Meaningless Rumors

By Sean Mackey

The NBA Draft is three weeks from today. Who the Chicago Bulls will be picking at #16 and #26 is still completely up in the air. Every mock draft that I've been keeping track of including NBAdraft.net's and Chad Ford's has had the Bulls picking different guys almost every week. The only real no brainer in this draft is that Blake Griffin is going to be a Clipper, anything can happen after that. Unlike last year's rather uneventful draft, I suspect that this one is going to be very heavy on trades. Teams are trying to cut corners every way possible to make room for the 2010 free agent sweepstakes and are willing to do anything just to be able to make a pitch to Wade or LeBron.

Nobody with the exception of possibly DeJuan Blair is going to make a decent enough impact for the Bulls at the PF spot. Mock drafts over the last few weeks have had the Bulls picking Ty Lawson, Earl Clark, Tyler Hansbrough, James Johnson, Tyler Smith and the dreadful BJ Mullins.

It's been made pretty clear over the last few weeks that Kirk Hinrich will be traded no matter what. It's a sad truth but his contract is just way too ridiculous for the Bulls if they want a shot at re-signing Ben Gordon. Maybe Chicago will revisit the Hinrich to Wolves trade by possibly getting the #6 pick out of it, that way we could get Blair and make a decent offer to BG.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing the Bulls pick up Tyler Hansbrough with the 16th pick. He did very well at the NBA Draft combine in Chicago last weekend. He's a guy (although goofy like Noah) who's going to give you everything he has out on the floor and will be hellbent with forever improving his game. A Noah/Hansbrough combo would give us possibly the most hated front court in the NBA. They could also compare infamous offseason pictures too! Noah's bar pics with topless women vs. Hansbrough's insane jumping from a balcony into a pool at a frat party pic. Putting all this aside, Psycho T also fits the classic John Paxson mold of picking a proven college winner. The guy can rebound and steal balls but he's not much of a post up guy. If Noah can put on say 30lbs of muscle this summer, the Bulls should leave the posting up to him.

I sincerely doubt that Chicago is giving a whole lot of consideration for BJ Mullins. Yeah, he's worked out with the team and stuff but picking a project center up this late in the game would just be ridiculous. I have a strong feeling that the 26th pick will be traded somewhere with another deal for Kirk Hinrich or possibly Tyrus Thomas. If they are gonna keep it and actually draft someone, they'll probably have to chose from Tyler Smith, Derrick Brown or DeJuan Summers....yuck.

Onto to the rumors that have absolutely no legs (yet).....

On Wednesday, July 1st at 12:00 a.m., you can bet that representitives from the Detroit Pistons and the OKC Thunder will be on the phone trying to get through to Ben Gordon to offer a pitch for the 5 year guard to jump ship. Both teams are not so privately expressing that they want BG so this is something to worry about. Chicago doesn't want to lose this guy for nothing but they're gonna have to pay him a lot to stay. Reinsdorf either needs to sign off on a trade for Hinrich to clear up room or go over the cap and into the luxury tax....it's just for one season and they're gonna be paying teams that don't matter anyway so why not?

The Chris Bosh rumors were just starting to heat up but are temporarily being put to rest by Toronto saying they plan to build around Bosh again. To me, this means nothing and that Bosh does want out of Toronto. He's recently expressed that he'd "love to play with Wade" down in Miami. Plus, I'm sure that he'd like to get out of the cold weather and be near South Beach, who wouldn't? They could trade Beasley, Haslem and James Jones straight up and get him. A Wade, O'Neal & Bosh starting lineup would be pretty hard to cover.

Now with Cavs being unceremoniously elimated by the Magic this last week (congrads to Orlando by the way), it's hard to say what LeBron is going to do next. Does he bail for Brooklyn and join up with Devon Harris and Brook Lopez in 2010? Who knows. The only thing that's for certain is that he won't be signing an extension this summer, Dwayne Wade on the other hand might.

Hopefully by this time next week we'll have possibly a better idea of what Chicago's game plan might be, until then, we'll just have to wait and speculate.