HE started slow last year, too and had a better second half. However, I am finding harder and harder to believe that Ryan Gomes was worth signing in the offseason. Losing Brewer and having to give minutes to Gomes has to really bother McHale. If Brewer were healthy, I think Gomes might be getting DNP-CD and sitting right alongside Bassy.

… but anyone who has watched all the games (and watched a lot of Memphis games) disagrees. Love is overmatched and plays the same position as our best player, Miller is 28 and injury-riddled, and Mayo is a star on the rise. I like the statistical look at the trade, but we’d all like a do over. McHale isn’t even playing Love anymore, and Brian Stensaas reported a couple weeks ago that Jefferson, Mad Dog, and Collins were dominating Love in practice. It just wasn’t a good trade from any perspective but Memphis’.

 Although I think the trade was a mistake and I agree that it would be nice to have our SG position filled by Mayo and address other needs in the draft, I’m warming up to the idea of drafting Harden. Harden looks like an NBA player out there – at least he did against BYU – but I can’t tell whether he’s going to be a big time player or the next version of Cuttino Mobley. I just don’t think there are as many “sure things” in this draft as there were in last year’s, when I thought Rose, Beasley, and Mayo were all very likely to be upper tier players or stars. In this year’s crop, I think Griffin is the only sure thing, and we just don’t need him because we’ve already got the Big Al/Love problem. On the bright side, (presumably) McHale won’t be making the choice, so we have a lower chance of doing something profoundly wrong.

… I’m with you that Gomes has been disappointing. And I don’t think his defense on any of the big guns he’s been assigned to has been as good as McHale makes it out to be. We really miss Brewer, who I think would’ve benefited a lot from McHale system, er, lack of system, as Brew seems to thrive amid chaos.