Our experts league draft was held on Wednesday, October 22, 2008. Ron and I were lucky enough to land the first overall pick. We went fanboy and drafted Chris Paul, even though our mock draft here has picked LeBron James for three years running, and we both think LBJ has an awesome season ahead of him.

The league has 14 teams, so after we pick, 26 players come off the board. Amare went third, ahead of Kobe. Ron and I hoped to land a reliable center, siince this league has two center spots in its starting roster. Elton Brand went sixth. Dwight Howard led off the second round. Chris Bosh went right after him. Then Al Jefferson. We were hoping for Tim Duncan…

...nope, he got picked right after Al Jeff. I would not say we were panicking at this point, but we did start to wonder whether we would just have to bite the bullet and take Yao Ming and all of his injury risk. Nope, he was selected after TD. We did not really want Marcus Camby, because in a large league, picking a player in the first few rounds who does not score could prove quite costly. Just as we were discussing it, Camby gets picked right after Yao. Danny Granger broke up the center run. We were down to two options. 1)Pau Gasol, who will be sharing the court with Andrew Bynum this year, and 2) Carlos Boozer, who was not ideal since even though he was a center, he does not block shots. Gasol was taken at pick 2.8 and Boozer went shortly after at 2.11.

We were not ready to anoint Andrew Bynum as a top 30 pick, so we went in a different direction and drafted Rudy Gay and Joe Johnson. For the curious, Bynum was taken with pick 3.7 by Brandon Haraway of Dropping Dimes and the Fantasy Lounge. At this point plan B (actually it’s more like plan I or J if you are counting), we were hoping for this Australian center who was drafted first overall a few years ago to be available at the end of the fourth round. Alas, we would lose out on the next run of centers, as Rasheed Wallace, Andris Biedrins, Bogut, Chris Kaman, LaMarcus Aldridge and Mehmet Okur were all selected in the fourth round.

Bogut mostly logged a career year in 2007-08. He averaged 14.4 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 0.8 steals and 1.7 blocks, with everything except the assists a career high. He shot 51.1% for the year, which was his lowest season average to date, and his free-throw form is still crooked since he only sank 58.7% of those attempts. Bogut would have been great for our team, adding to assists from a center spot.

Oh well. Hmm…maybe we should have drafted Amare #1 overall?