Basketball from a fans perspective                                                                                         
The trade
Kyrie Irving has been traded to the…………Celtics?  Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Aizic and a 2018 first round pick are headed to Cleveland.  We believed Irving would be traded prior to the beginning of the season however this is strange.  How do you complete a trade with your chief rival in the Eastern Conference?  In the words of the old Nike commercial you “Just do it”.  

The teams swapped point guards along with Jae Crowder and Ante Aizic adding bench strength for the Cavs.  On the Celtics side rookie Jayson Tatum and second year man Jaylen Brown will gain additional playing time.  Back to the Cavs a moment, I’d forgotten point guard Derrick Rose signed with the Cavs on July 25.  In addition to Rose and Thomas they have point guards Jose Calderon, Deron Williams and Kay Fielder on the roster.  Tyronn Lue’s got quite a coaching job in front of him.  

A winning coach
The hope in Columbia (MO) is Cuonzo Martin is long-term and he rebuilds the basketball program at Mizzou.  Elements of the game may have passed him however long-time Coach Norm Stewart established winning at Mizzou despite never advancing to an NCAA Championship.  Stewart was forced into retirement and replaced by Quin Snyder the belief was the winning would continue into the future.  

Unfortunately the Jazz coach you see now is not the Snyder who coached at Mizzou.  Snyder resigned rather than be fired in 2006; Mike Anderson was hired and came in cleaning up much of the mess left by Snyder.  He placed the team on a winning path however Anderson always appeared to have one foot out the door.  Anderson’s dream job Arkansas eventually opened and he headed south in 2011 and was replaced by Frank Haith.  Haith won but never built the program and then an old NCAA issue from his Miami days cropped up, Haith departed for Tulsa after the 2014 season.  

Reaching back to the past AD Alden replaced Haith with a link to the days of Norm Stewart, his former player and assistant coach Kim Anderson was hired as head coach.  This Anderson was never able to translate the success he produced at University of Central Missouri to the Mizzou program.  Anderson was fired at the end of the 2017 season to be replaced by Cuonzo Martin. This I found curious despite the number of coaching changes Kim Anderson is the only hire of the four with a losing record, Snyder, Mike Anderson and Haith all had winning records. 

Urban schools   
Once upon a time it seemed urban schools ruled the basketball landscape.  We can name just a few of them; Cincinnati, St. John’s University (NYC), DePaul (Chicago), Marquette (Milwaukee) and Bill Russell’s University of San Francisco Dons.  It’s not my contention these and others dominated the game.  These schools basketball programs allowed them to contend for the NCAA or NIT championship year after year. 

Nowadays it appears other than UCLA and maybe Louisville there are few urban schools in contention.  In the 80’s and ‘90’s we could mention Georgetown and Syracuse in the conversation. There are few “urban” schools that appear to contend on a consistent basis.  The three Philadelphia area schools, Villanova, Penn and St. Joseph always turn out good teams but I’m unsure if I could claim basketball domination.  

He was number last   
In 2005 Amir Johnson was the 56th pick in the second round by the Pistons; Johnson now plays for the Sixers.  The significance of that draft was the last year high school players were drafted in the NBA.  Technically we could say Thon Maker (2016) drafted by the Bucks was the last high school player.  Maker was able to circumvent the rule because he turned age 19 by the time the draft occurred.  A total of 44 high school players have been drafted by NBA teams throughout the years.  We can debate the success or lack of success of the number.  Could you build an All-Star team?  I can:

Kobe Bryant-guard
LeBron James-guard
Shawn Kemp-forward
Tracy McGrady-forward
Kevin Garnett-center

My team has no requirement for a true point guard with the passing skills of Kobe and LeBron, LeBron is placed as Kobe’s back court mate.  Power forward Garnett becomes the team’s center.