Off Season Madness, The Womens World Cup Football on the Horizon.   With all the championship series wrapped up we are on to the fun of the off season.  The idea that every teams has the chance to get better.  To build their team for the next season.  Some will win the off season game and others will lose it.  For some losing it may be what they wanted.  It is interesting to see how each team has a different approach to the off season.  The Womens world cup is in full swing.   LOL  see what I did there?   So far it has pretty much gone as expected.   Now that we are in the knock out stage things could change a bit.  Of course each day we are getting closer to the NFL and College Football seasons.  The seasons that most of the sports fans in the United States just can’t wait for.  All this and more in the Week that Was.

NBA Draft and Trades

After the NFL the NBA has the best draft.  Since there are only two rounds it is done in one evening.  Short, sweet and to the point.  The NBA draft is like a one off hit show.  The NFL draft is like a mini series.  Both have their merits.  While I do think that the NFL draft over all is better the NBA draft packs a lot into its two rounds.  This year the trading was fast with 11  of the 30 first round picks getting moved around.  The thing that confuses me is how they can’t actually make the trades or rather complete the trades at the time.  So you get things like De’Andre Hunter putting on a Lakers hat with the fourth pick even though the Lakers had nothing to do with the pick other than turning in the draft card.  It is a little strange but maybe that is part of what makes it interesting.

At the top there were no surprises.  The Pelicans took Zion Williamson, The Grizzlies took Ja Morant and the Knicks took RJ Barrett.  That is really the way that most people thought it was going to go and it did.   All three teams got a great player that is going to help make their team better.   The Pelicans taking Williamson could be one of those transformational picks.  From what we have seen it really looks like he is that good.  The Pelicans have had this before they were not able to keep Davis.  However this pick could really work out much better for them.  Is looks like Williamson really wants to be with the Pelicans and it looks like the Pelicans are going to do their best to put a team around him.

The rest of the draft was pretty low key.  As the second round usually is.  I say low key but 16 of the 30 second round  picks were moved.  So there was a lot of action as teams tried to get some value picks.  I cannot find a lot of reliable numbers out there for the success of second round picks in the NBA.  I am not for this post going to take the time to crunch the numbers.  I found a post from The Cauldron that examines the second round picks from from the 2003 to 2013 draft.  Of the 330 picks in that ten year period 86 of the players made the team that drafted them or signed with another team later and made some impact.  That is about 26 percent.  Not a great number.  Of course there will be the exception.  Draymond Green was a second round pick and he has turned out alright.  So it can happen.

As with any draft it is difficult to grade a draft when it happens.  You really have to wait 3 – 5 years and see what happens with the picks.  The average NBA career is about 4.8 years.  So will will have to revisit and see how it turned out.

Kawhi Should stay a Raptor

Kawhi Leonard declines player option for $21 million he may decide resign with the Raptors.  He could sign with one of the LA teams or with one of the New York teams.  Either way it is a smart move on his part.  He is worth more than the $21 million and playing in Toronto has been great for him.  He brought them something they were not sure they could ever get.  He can pretty much write his own ticket in Toronto.  Even if he leaves they will love him forever.  I am not sure what his plans are and he will do well where ever he goes.  He found something in Toronto that few players find in any situation.  I think that for the league it would be really good if he decided to stay in Toronto.   If not there somewhere in the East.  If he stays with Toronto that would make a great rivalry between the Raptors and the Bucks.  It be better all around if he did not migrate to the West.  The West is already over loaded with talent and we need at least some good in the East to try and balance things out.  Leonard has eared the right to do what ever he chooses.  I hope he stays in the East and North of the border. How ever it goes the Off Season will be very interesting.

NHL Ready for an interesting Off Season

The NHL Off Season is a little different.  With the NHL draft is in the books it takes a bit longer than in the NBA so find out how the picks are going to turn out.  Of the drafts I would put the NHL one third after the NFL and NBA.  Mainly because of how long it takes players to make it to the league.  One of the things that is very interesting is that a player can get drafted and then still continue to play with what ever team they have been playing with.  They can also go to college and play. The only player that I am certain is going to start from day one is Jack Hughes.  Like Zion he is a generational talent.  The Devils really lucked out to get the first pick in the draft.  Hughes would have been the first pick no matter which team had the first pick this year.

The rest of the draft was difficult to judge.  The Detroit Red Wings had 11 picks in this draft.  Basically able to draft half a team.  Nice to have for Steve Yzermans return to Detroit.   With their first pick they took Moritz Seider.  Not a lot of people knew a lot about him.  The Wings have a history of making picks like this that have turned out pretty well.  One of the most notable one was drafting Nicklas Lidström with the 53 pick in teh 1989 draft.  IF Seider only turns out to be half as good as that pick was he will have a pretty good career.

NHL Draft Winners

The Devils, Rangers,Avalanche and Wings all had good drafts. They all should see reward from this draft fairly quickly.   Of course the Devils draft would have bee alright even if they had not more picks after the first pick in the draft.  The Ranger by getting Kaapo Kakko was a great deal for them as well.  The shear number of picks that the Wings has will add to a base that they have build over the last two years.

NHL Draft Losers

The losers in the draft the Blue Jackets and Islanders.  The Blue Jackets came out losers just due to the fact that they traded almost all their picks away.  You can’t blame them for going for it this year. It did not work out and they were left with no picks.  They did the best with what they had to work with.  They are gong to lose a lot in free agency this year and will have a ton of cap space to they will have to try and add through free agency.  Who knows what The Islanders wer e thinking.  Who knows maybe they knew something no one else did and a few years from now everyone will be saying the Islanders had a great 2019 draft.  LOL  Not likely.

Golf Has a Major and Tiger problem looming

In Golf the majors are everything.  We know this because all the talking heads beat this down our ears over and over and over.   It has been beaten down so hard that the players fully believe it now.  There are many players that are saying they don’t care about the other tournaments.   The only ones that are important are the majors.  I can fully understand this way of thinking.  In the long run this is a huge problem.  The other problem that Golf has is that Tiger is not going to be able to play for ever.  At this point there is no one who can take his place.  The past few years he has not played much but when he did play there was a huge spike in the ratings.

The other issue is that some players are only intersted in winning and playing in the Majors.  Brooks Koepka has said this a few times that the only thing he is really interested in is winning Majors.  That is fine but if more players do that and only want to play in limited tournaments and go for the majors that will create a huge problem. In order to survive golf needs the other tournaments as well.  Golf would not be able to make it if there was only attention being paid to the majors.

NFL Who has done What in the Off Season

Teams are starting to settle in with who they are going to be for the start of training camp.  The NFL Off Season is almost done.  Most teams will be headed to training camp in about a month.  Not too much else will go on as far as trading or signing players now.  Everyone is just trying to figure out who is who and what is what.  Interestingly enough at this point a lot of people have the Chiefs listed as their top team.  I am not sure.  There are a lot of unknowns that are going on here and Patrick Mahomes could have a slip this year.  I do think that he is the real deal but really do you expect him to follow up what he did last year with the same or better numbers?  I am not.  I am expecting a little slip but now a significant slip.  It could be enough to keep the Chiefs at the top.  I would not be surprised if the Chargers beat the Chiefs out for the top spot in the AFC West.  It really is too bad that the Chargers are playing in a city that just does not care about them.

It was interesting that Hard Knocks decided to follow the Raiders.  I really thought that they would want to do the Raiders next year when they move to Vegas.  Doing their last year in Oakland will be really interesting and the Raiders have some very interesting people to follow.  Many times it is difficult to figure out how Hard Knockes decides what to show but with the Raiders there will be enough interesting stuff so it will be a good program.

On the Tube TV not You

Being in the TV Off Season things have been a little slow.  Last week we talked about BattleBots and it is something we look forward to every Friday.  We did start to watch the new John Taffer show Marriage Rescue.  If you are a fan of reality type shows then you will like it.  If you like Bar Rescue you will probably like this show aw well.  It is not quiet as involved as Bar Rescue but the couples they find for him to help are interesting and his approach usually seems to make sense.  Other than that not a whole lot going on in this area this week.

You can find last weeks Post for The Week that Was Here  

I am looking for people that are interested in writing posts on biglakesports.net If you are interested you can send me an email at jbigalke at biglakespots.net and we can go over what I am looking for and see if you are a fit.  There would be no pay at this time but you would be able to put your writing out there and could post it on other sites if you wanted to.