WATERCOOLER CHAT: DRAFT NIGHT IN NBA, HISTORIC TENNIS MATCH FINALLY ENDS
BASKETBALL
It was draft night in the NBA — a night that had big implications in this year’s big off-season free agency market. Teams were practically giving away players and draft picks in order to make cap room for some of the big names out there (e.g. Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, and of course LeBron James).
For example, at the last minute, the Chicago Bulls essentially gave point-guard Kirk Heinrich to the Washington Wizards. The reason: This gave them enough cap space to theoretically sign LeBron James AND another big name free agent — maybe Chris Bosh or Amar’e Stoudemire. This is very bad news for the New York Knicks as they were previously the only team that had enough room to sign LeBron and give him his choice of whom he wanted to play with. In fact, it looks like there are only 3 likely destinations for LeBron now: Cleveland, Chicago, or Miami (if he wants to play with Dwayne Wade).
John Wall went #1 overall to the Washington Wizards. This gives the Wizards a big-name franchise player to build around. The Sixers grabbed Ohio State’s Evan Turner at #2, giving them a versatile athlete who can play 3 positions. And the New Jersey Nets nabbed Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors with the #3 pick. It’s unclear how good Favors will be in the NBA, but the Nets fell in love with his “upside” — a term used more at the NBA draft than any other time of the year.
SOCCER
And in the World Cup, Italy, the 2006 Defending Champions, were ousted from the tournament by an extremely pesky Slovokia team. Slovakia was up 2-0, Italy rallied back, but Slovokia had that 1 goal advantage to propel them to the second round. Slovakia 3, Italy 2.
TENNIS
In tennis, the longest game ever in tennis history finally came to an end today. The match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut lasted 10 hours on Wednesday, and was postponed till Thursday due to darkness. In tennis, you need to win your final set by two games — these guys were tied at 58. Well, they played for a while longer, but finally the America John Isner hit a great shot to take the win. Of course, he collapsed when it happened. At the end of the match, each player received a special award for their determination and stamina in this historic match. Congratulations!
