sporcle blog

Well, in terms of picking order, there weren’t and really big shockers. A few trades made the evening interesting, but in general, we won’t know how well any team did (including Seattle and Portland) until the players have had a chance to play in the NBA for a few years. Potential is great, but what matters most is how you perform in the real world. We could give you a rundown of the first round, but King Kaufman over at Salon does a quite humorous breakdown of the first 30 picks, and pointed out all the things we found funny, so hey, go read that. It sums things up quite succinctly.

As for the little contest on Sporcle, Congrats to ‘Kregmo‘, who scored the most points in the NBA Draft prediction game. He picked 6 players exactly, and also picked 19 of the 20 players picked in the top 20, missing only Sean Williams. Also congratulations to Riken Patel, who started strong, and ended up getting the most players exactly right, which was 9.

You can check out the leaderboard, as well as the final predictions and ranking of the draft picks, to see how well sporcle.com users predicted the draft.

This evening, the 2007 NBA Draft gets underway. All the mock drafts and arguing and preparation finally comes to a close, and it’s time to actually make the picks. We’ll wrap up some of the biggest pre-draft questions, rumors and predictions.

#1 Already wrapped up? ESPN The Magazine (and many many others) are reporting that Portland has notified Greg Oden that they will be selecting him with the first pick. Perhaps this is true, perhaps it isn’t. What I don’t understand it is…why would you do that? What possible gain can there be by telling all the other teams (especially Seattle) what you’re going to do? Was all the secrecy of the past couple months for nothing? Wierd.

Hawks looking to dump #11 pick? All week there have been rumors that Atlanta is looking to trade the #11 pick for a player-actually-playing-in-the-nba. There was the Luke Ridnour for #11 with Seattle rumor, and more recently, the Garnett/Stoudamire 3-way blockbuster trade. Neither rumor has so far had much legs, but they both make clear Atlanta’s intentions to trade one of their numerous 2007 Draft picks for a proven NBA player.

‘Mock’ Mock Draft. There are an insufferable amount of Mock Drafts coming out leading up to the final day of guessing. We found this Bill Simmons - Chad Ford argue-fest quite an entertaining read however. Maybe it won’t give you the right answers, but at least it should make you smile.

And remember, with the draft starting at 7:30 EST tonight, you have until about 7ish to fill out your own mock draft. Will anybody get the first 20 picks right? Will it be you?

Well, we’re less than a week away from the 2007 NBA Draft. The players have visited many of the teams they might be going to, doing workouts and the like. There haven’t been any major trades yet for pick jockeying, but there’s a good chance there will be some movement on draft day.

Over at sporcle, you can track the relative draft pick positions of the first 20 picks, tracking live based on what sporcle.com users are picking.

Here’s a list of some various Mock Drafts, if you’re still in need of some inspiration.

Chad Ford, ESPN: Mock Draft, version 5.0
Bill Simmons, ESPN Page 2: The obvious guy’s lottery predictions
CBS Sportsline: Three mock drafts from their experts
Chris Ekstrand, CNN SI: Mocking the entire 60 picks

Well, the 2007 NBA Playoffs finished last night, with the amazingly exciting San Antonio Spurs beating the Cleveland LeBrons in 4 straight games. Maybe the Cavaliers GM will go out and get some other basketball players to surround King James. There’s nothing quite so much fun as watching 4 guys stand around and wait for LeBron to make something happen. It’s almost as much fun as watching him pass it to them, only to have them do something crazy and screw it up.

Check out this brilliant maneuver from Varejao (otherwise known as Sideshow Bob) from game 3:

Over at the sporcle.com NBA Playoff predictions, only 7% of users picked the Spurs to win it all. Congratulations to Alec Bradbury, who not only correctly picked the Spurs to win it all, but also correctly picked the Warriors to beat the Mavericks in the first round. Having only missed 5 playoff matchups, he beat out 80+ other prognosticators to become the sporcle.com 2007 NBA playoff winner. Better luck next year for the 42% of us who thought Dirk Nowitzki might bring his magic to the playoffs.

Your team not make the playoffs this year? Maybe the draft will get them the next Tim Duncan. Or maybe they’ll draft the next Michael Olowokandi. Ya just never know, but head over to the 2007 NBA Draft picking page, and make your predictions. Lots of mock draft sites try to predict what will happen. Now it’s your chance.

Well, the NBA draft is about 3 weeks away, which will give you plenty of time to make your predictions for the draft order for this year’s class, and then change it 20 times before Portland’s first pick on June 28th. Go make your picks now.

When picking, be wary of mock drafts you see out on the internet, as one can never quite comprehend the actions of an NBA GM when they’re on the clock. You’d think with all the time they have to prepare, scout, plan, they wouldn’t make such consistently boneheaded choices. Remember, Atlanta and Philadelphia have picks in the top 20, so, expect something crazy there. Check out Docsports for the 10 potential 2007 draft busts. Yes Noah, we’re looking at you.

Good luck to all.