ALMOND JOY

The Utah Jazz drafted 6-6 guard Morris Almond out of Rice. He's another one of those "so-underrated-he's-overrated" dudes.

Let's face it. It's yawn time of the NBA draft. Unless someone picks Ann Meyer again just for kicks, the drama's over.

But there was some good drama. We had the best one-two picks since I don't know when? 1984?

Good News: Arash Markazi of SI just stopped by. Love Markazi. He's always in a good mood. We just watched Aaron Afflalo get chosen and Arash had a good observation: In the NBA draft, you can just show up (as a lower-round pick). So when you get chosen as a late first-round pick, or 2nd-rounder, you may just be out sitting in the peanut gallery, and you have to kind of stand up and wave your arms ("I'm here! I'm here!") or else they'll just give your draft position to someone else.

Oh, and Arash and I were talking about the Yankees (currently desperately hoping to avoid going 1-8 for this roadtrip). Here's one more difference between this year's Yankees and those of the previous five seasons. Home runs.

Take a look. This year, despite having baseball's most prolific home-run hitter, Alex Rodriguez (28 home runs), New York has just 77 home runs as a team. And they're only four games shy of the halfway point of the season. A-Rod has more than one-third of the team's home runs. So project that out, and the Yankees are looking at about 161, 162 homers this year.

Now let's look at the past five seasons:

2006......210 HR (2nd in AL)
2005.....229 HR (2nd in AL)
2004.....242 HR (T-1 in AL)
2003.....230 HR (3rd in AL)
2002....223 HR (2nd in AL)

So far, at 79 homers, New York is 8th in the AL in that category. This isn't an argument that New York would have a much better record if Giambi were in the lineup. Because he's not hitting taters that much any more, either, even when he is in the lineup. No, this is just an argument saying that 1) there was a certain something that made all teams, not just the Yankees, hit more homers in the first half of this decade and 2) those home runs that the Yankees clouted blotted out a lot of fundamental mistakes the Yanks made during the regular season. In the postseason, when they faced premier pitchers and sound ballclubs, they were exposed for who they are: a beer-league softball team. This Yankee club cannot escape jams with the three-run clout the way the teams of recent vintage have. Just one more reason why they're struggling.

That, and Bernie Williams' absence has robbed them of their mojo.

Phoenix is up again (they don't say "on the clock" in the NBA draft; yet another reason to like it). They took cash the last time. This time I think they're going to pick an IRA. Or a government bond. No. They select Alando Tucker of Wisconsin, the Big Ten Player of the Year.

Oh, and one pick earlier, the San Antonio Spurs selected Brazilian seven-footer Tiago Splitter. Nice to see San Antonio finally overcoming its chronic xenophobia.

Okay, first round is done. David Satan has just informed us that he will not be conducting the second round, so I'm outta here, too. How can I expect to accost and berate him if I'm seated here?

Oh. Last thing. I'm not making this up. I think I just saw two NBA stage crew dudes raise the height of the podium...now that Stern's gone. Seriously.