Josh Smith May Be Walking In Memphis Soon…

Atlanta Hawks forward Josh Smith has signed an offer sheet with the Memphis Grizzlies today. The deal is reported to be 5 years and $58 Mil. The Hawks have 7 days to match it.

Friday’s Free Thoughts

Kevin Love brings his game to Minneapolis

The NBA Draft wrapped up at 1 past midnight this morning as Adam Silver was being greeted with chants of “We want Russ (Granik)”. Classy fans I tell you, classy. Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley went 1 and 2 respectively, there were a couple of trades, and the draft can be recapped here. The biggest deal was made after 2am, when Minnesota, who probably realized that they could have had OJ Mayo teamed up with Al Jefferson and thought “Wow, that would make sense, we better fix this quick” and made a trade with the Grizzlies that sends the draft rights to Mayo, Marko Jaric, Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner to the Grizzlies in return for the draft rights to Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal and Jason Collins. The analysis? this gives the Wolves a great frontcourt anchored by Big Al and Love, a shooter in Miller, and dead weight contracts in Cardinal and Collins. The Grizz get a franchise player in Mayo who could actually put people in the seats, Antoine’s wiggle (which has 3 or 4 more year remaining, yeesh) and not much else. Jaric and Walker have AWFUL contracts, so this one is a head scratcher to me. I do believe that the Wolves won this deal, of course if Mayo becomes Lebron 2.0 it may look ridiculous one day, but I doubt it. Score one for the long-armed GM. By the way did I mention the Grizzlies GM is Chris Wallace?

The Celtics draft highlight was trading for K-St forward Bill Walker. If this kid is healthy, watch out.

In other news the Yankees and Mets are playing a Day/Night doubleheader today at Yankee Stadium and at Shea, which will be the last dual location day/night DH for the two ballparks, as they are due to close down at the end of the year(in case you hadn’t heard). Dan Giese and Sidney Ponson will start for the Yanks, who may be putting Hideki Matsui on the DL with a knee injury. The Mets will counter with Mike Pelfrey in Game One and Pedro Martinez in the night cap.

Why was Erin Andrews not at the NBA Draft last night?

On a show and site note, we had a great time at Chicago Dogs in Scarborough, ME for the NBA Draft last night. You can listen to the show in the Talkshoe Widget at the top of the page, it’s the “NBA Draft Special”, it was a great time on The Sports Vortex last night.