My colleague Alvin Lai likened himself to Dusty Rhodes, “pinch hitter extraordinaire.”  I have to admit, when I first read that sentence, I thought “Duh, Yea.  The American Dream!”  Blonde hair, yellow polka dots, and “Sweeeeeeet Saphire!”  Heck, even wikipedia lists him before the baseball player…c’mon, Al!

Where am I going with this?  Well, I’m going to set you back to Game one of the 1988 World Series.  Dennis Velasco was set to take the swings at this pick.  But it’s a team effort here, and when one of us can’t take the cuts, we step up.

Allow me to limp up to the DroppingDimes plate as none other than Kirk Gibson.  Vin Scully, take it from here… “Look who’s coming up…”

Round 7, Pick 11: Sam Cassell, PG, Los Angeles Clippers

The logic behind building this team seems pretty solid. 

1) Address the hustle statistics first by shoring up blocks and steals (Ming, Kirilenko, Artest)
2) Attack some small-ball categories like assists and threes (Hinrich, Felton), and then
3) Mix in a money-grubbing Alaskan power forward just for fun and chest hair (Boozer)

The first five picks are solid contributors to their respective categories.  The sixth, I’ll just choose to ignore….similar to a pitch in the dirt for my “Kirk Gibson” persona.  So, with the seventh round pick, I feel that Dennis chose to address the guard position for a few reasons.  One, the two guards that he has chosen may likely see some time at the shooting guard slot, affecting assists a bit.  Second, He just wanted to see a picture of Sam Cassell on the site before we went to simply drafting in text form as opposed to blogging out each individual player.

Thus, with this pick, Dennis adds a solid veteran that will be responsible to feed the ball to a very strong Clippers team, predominantly Elton Brand.  Aside from Brand, you have scorers in Corey Maggette and Cuttino Mobley, along with an improving big man in Kaman. 

Yes, he’ll be sharing the court with the young gun Shaun Livingston, so his minutes may decrease.  Even if you take Cassell’s numbers back to 2004 when he was getting under 30 minutes a game, he totaled 14 points, five dimes, and solid percentages in each contest.  Expect more of the same from Cassell even though his minutes may be down a bit from last season. 

Take it from here Vin….

“I don’t believe….what I just saw….”

Now, allow me to round the bases in my moment of blogging history… (fist pump)

Other Team Members:

1.11. Yao Ming, C, Houston Rockets
2.2. Andrei Kirilenko, SF/PF, Utah Jazz
3.11. Ron Artest, SF, Sacramento Kings
4.2. Kirk Hinrich, PG/SG, Chicago Bulls
5.11. Raymond Felton, PG, Charlotte Bobcats
6.2 Carlos Boozer, PF/C, Utah Jazz