Will Giannis win MVP?

THE official 3rd annual National Basketball Association (NBA) Awards will be held on June 25 (Manila time) at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. The ceremony will be hosted by four-time NBA championship star and Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal.
The Greek Freak, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, is expected to win the Maurice Podoloff Trophy that goes to the NBA awardee, beating out the 2018 winner, Houston’s James Harden, and Oklahoma City’s Paul George, in the balloting by a 100-member media panel.
The Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic, a 6-foot-7, 20-year-old Slovenian guard, is favored to beat the Atlanta Hawks’ 6-foot-2 point guard Rayford Trae Young in the media balloting for the Eddie Gottlieb Trophy that goes to the Rookie of the Year winner. The two were traded for each other during the 2018 Draft Day, with Doncic being selected by Atlanta at No. 3 and Young being corralled by Dallas at No. 5.
Other individual awards that are to be given on that day include the following:
Most Improved Player (selected by a 100-member media panel) – A favorite is Cameroon-born forward Pascal Siakam of the newly-minted NBA champion Toronto Raptors.
Sixth Man Award (selected by a 100-member media panel) – It looks like the Los Angeles Clippers’ Lou Williams, the NBA’s highest-scoring substitute during the 2018-19 wars, will romp way with the award for a second consecutive season.
Defensive Player of the Year (selected by a 100-member media panel) – Me thinks it will be the Utah Jazz’s French mastodon Rudy Gobert who will win this one.
Coach of the Year – I like the chances of Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer, who piloted the Bucks to the NBA’s best regular record at 60-22).
Executive of the Year (selected by NBA executives) – The top executive from the Milwaukee (Bucks general manager Jon Horst) or Toronto (Raptors president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri) looks to take this award.
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In preparation for the acquisition of Murray State point guard Ja Morant as the No. 2 selection in the 2019 NBA draft, the Memphis Grizzlies agreed to send high-priced 6-foot-1 playmaker Mike Conley to the Utah Jazz for veterans Kyle Korver, Grayson Allen and Jae Crowder, the 23rd overall draft choice and a future first-rounder.
The deal cannot be finalized until July 6 when the NBA-mandated labor moratorium concludes.
Conley, who turns 32 in October, is set to receive $32.5 million next season and $34.5 million in 2020-21. It’s strange why the Jazz would want him for that much. Is this only the first step to a two-pronged scheme to later ship him to a third team? Or is it just a one-year experiment for the Jazz before shipping Conley again?
The move can only mean that Spanish point guard Ricky Rubio, an impending unrestricted agent, is on his way out of the Jazz den. Reportedly, Rubio is interested in joining Boston.
Just hours before the NBA draft commenced, the Atlanta Hawks acquired the No. 4 overall choice just hours before from the LA Lakers via the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for the No. 8 (1st round), No. 17 (1st round) and No. 35 (2nd round) picks of the Hawks.
In the trade, the Pelicans are also shipping veteran Solomon Hill (for salary cap relief), their No. 57 selection in this year’s draft and a future second-rounder to the Hawks.
Additionally, Atlanta jettisoned Cleveland’s heavily protected first-rounder in 2020 to New Orleans.
The Phoenix Suns traded their No. 6 overall draft choice to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for forward Dario Saric and the Wolves’ No. 11 overall selection.
The Suns also peddled overpaid T.J. Warren (three years and $35 million left in his contract) and the No. 32 choice (second round) to the Indiana Pacers in a salary cap relief move. In return, the Pacers will send cash to the Suns.
The trade will be finalized on July 6. By the time, Indiana will have the cap room to absorb Warren’s contract and still own around $31 million in cap space. The Pacers intend to sign Spanish playmaker Ricky Rubio, Utah’s unrestricted free agent.
Phoenix has $21 million in cap space. That will jump to $29.5 million if the Suns decline to re-sign Kelly Oubre Jr., who is a restricted free agent.
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Expectedly, the New Orleans Pelicans grabbed 6-foot-7, 285-pound power forward Zion Lateef Williamson out of Duke University with the first selection in the 2019 NBA draft held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York last June 20 (June 21, Manila time).
Williamson, the consensus U.S. College Player of the Year awardee in his lone season with the Blue Devils, has been compared to a young LeBron James although his play resembles that of Hall of Famer Charles Barkley (Auburn University, 1984) at his prime. Williamson turns 19 on July 6.
The Memphis Grizzlies picked Murray State’s 6-foot-3 point guard Ja Morant at No. 2. He, too, cried after his selection. As a sophomore in 2018-19, Morant became the first player in U.S. NCAA Division I history to average at least 20 points and 10 assists in the same season, norming 24.5 points and 10 dimes an outing (assists became an official NCAA stat only in 1983-84). He posted a triple-double game during the 2019 NCAA tournament. His draft stock jumped after the tournament.
The LA Lakers, picking on behalf of the Atlanta Hawks via the New Orleans Pelicans (NO acquired the pick from the Lakers in the Anthony Davis trade then shipped it to Atlanta in a trade hours before the draft commenced), grabbed NCAA champion Virginia’s 6-foot-7 forward De’Andre Hunter at the No. 4 slot. It is Virginia’s highest-drafted NBA player since 7-foot-4 mastodon and Hall of Famer Ralph Sampson went No. 1 in 1983. With the No. 5 choice, the Cleveland Cavaliers corralled Vanderbilt’s 6-foot-2 point guard Darius Garland, the son of former NBAer Winston Garland. With Garland on deck, incoming sophomore Collin Sexton may slide to offguard. (More on the NBA draft next time.)
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Rui Hachimura was nabbed by the Washington Wizards with the ninth pick in the 2019 NBA draft. A product of Gonzaga University (the alma mater of Hall of Famer John Stockton), the 6-foot-8 Hachimura is a lottery selection (up to the first 14) and the first Japanese-born player to be selected in the first round of an NBA draft.
The 21-year-old Hachimura, who has a 7-foot-2 wingspan, was born in Toyama Prefecture of a Beninese father Zakari and Japanese mother Makiko. (Benin is a French-speaking West African country where it’s said the voodoo religion originated.)
Yasutaka Okayama, a clumsy 7-foot-8 national team player for Japan during the time of Sonny Jaworski and company), was the first player from the Asian country to be drafted in the NBA when the Golden State Warriors took fancy of him (for promotional gimmickry) when the Bay Area outfit picked him 171st overall or the 10th selection in the eighth round of the then 10-round process (the draft has since been reduced to two rounds in the last few decades).
The Osaka-born Okayama, the tallest player ever to be drafted in NBA history, did not sign with the Warriors and never played in the NBA.
Two Japanese have since seen action in the world’s ultimate rpundball forum – 5-9 guard Yuta Tabuse (2004 Phoenix Suns, four games) and Yuta Watanabe (2018-19 Memphis Grizzlies, 15 games, George Washington University alum).
Both Tabuse (2002) and Watanabe (2018) went undrafted in the year of their eligibility.
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The Los Angeles Lakers are interested in bringing back a pair of former players — Brooklyn All-Star point guard D’Angelo Dante Russell and Milwaukee center Brook Robert Lopez — via the NBA free-agent sweepstakes, which commence action at the strike of July 1, 6:00 a.m., Manila time.
In the summer of 2017, the lefthanded
6-foot-5 Russell was criticized by then Lakers executive Magic Johnson for a lack of leadership and was traded to Brooklyn along with Russian behemoth Timothy Mozgov for Lopez and the 27th overall choice in the 2017 grab-bag, which turned out to be University of Utah’s Kyle Kuzma. In contrast, Johnson profusely praised the Lakers’ No. 2 draft acquisition that year, playmaker Lonzo Ball out of UCLA who said his No. 2 jersey would be retired by the Lakers once his pro career was over. (After two injury-filled seasons at Tinseltown, Ball is set to be peddled to the Big Easy that is New Orleans as part of the trade package that will send All-Star frontliner Anthony Davis to LA.)
With just a year left in his contract upon his trade to the Lakers, the 7-foot Lopez became an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2018 and hooked up with the Milwaukee Bucks this past campaign on a one-year deal.
The 23-year-old Russell is a restricted free agent — meaning the Nets can match any offer to him by other teams within two days (it used to be five days) and retain his services. The 31-year-old Lopez, whose twin brother Robin has played with the Chicago Bulls for the past three seasons, is an unrestricted free agent and can strike a deal with any team with the Bucks gaining no compensation at all.
Another player on the Lakers’ free-agent radar is center Hyland DeAndre Jordan Jr. The 6-foot-11 southpaw, who turns 31 on July 21, split time with the Dallas Mavericks and New York Knicks last season. Jordan, an unrestricted free agent, played his first 10 NBA seasons with the LA Clippers and reportedly wants to return to the LA area.
Either Lopez or Jordan could be signed to a veteran’s minimum contract, especially if the Lakers are unable to convince the Pelicans to delay the consummation of the Anthony Davis trade until July 30 (so they could have a cap room of $32.5 million) instead of July 6. In the latter case, the Lakers only have $23.7 million remaining in salary cap space to round out their 2019-20 roster with second-tier veterans.
With that development, where does that leave 7-foot JaVale McGee who toiled with the LA Lakers last campaign after gaining a pair of NBA title rings with the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. The 31-year-old is an LAL unrestricted free agent along with Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Tyson Chandler, Mike Muscala and Reggie Bullock.
The LA Lakers also are looking for a third veteran assistant coach in newly-hired top honcho Frank Vogel’s coaching staff.
The Lakers, who so far have two one-time championship players and former head coaches as assistants to Vogel in Jason Kidd (Dallas 2011) and Lionel Hollins (Portland 1977), are aiming for Golden State’s defense-oriented assistant Ron Adams. The 71-year-old Adams has been an NBA assistant coach for 25 seasons, including the last five with the Warriors under Steve Kerr.
Kidd is the highest-salaried assistant coach in the NBA today at nearly $1.8 million per annum.