| | I have seen the future of the Vancouver Grizzlies.
|  | | Commish David Stern will see that Swift, the No. 2 pick in the draft, has mad game. |
And I like The Future.
This past Monday night, the Grizzlies unveiled the second pick in the
draft, the second pick in the draft who actually WANTED -- unlike Steve
Francis -- to stay in Vancouver, Stromile Swift.
And I'm here to tell you, the dude can play.
He's got serious hops.
He's got handles.
He's got some nice interior moves.
The only things he doesn't have are a lot of weight, a lot of experience
and a lot of natural drive.
When he gets them, though, look out below.
"I can see why he was drafted so high," Seattle SuperSonics coach Paul
Westphal said after he watched Swift cram a few nuggets on his players'
craniums.
I'm telling you, there was one sequence where Swift -- by the way, how
great is that name? Stromile Swift? It just flows -- probably sold about
2,000 season tickets for new owner Michael Heisley.
New Sonics center Patrick Ewing was posting up on a play that he first
ran when Swift was still a gleam in his Daddy's eye. Swift came from the weak
side, appeared over everybody's head out of nowhere and capped Ewing's shot
like it was toxic waste.
It started a fast break the other way. Brent Price had his shot blocked,
but Swift grabbed the ball and flushed it like a spider in your wife's shoe.
"I mean, you saw it," new Vancouver head coach Sidney Lowe said. "He's a
high flyer but he glides. It doesn't look like he's going hard but all of a
sudden he gets there."
"That's just something I bring to the team," Swift said. "Some
excitement. I'm just looking forward to doing that all through the season."
He's not starting now, but he might be soon, if he keeps playing like
that. It's hard for him to start at power forward because he only weighs
about 220 pounds. And that brings up another issue.
Word from his teammates is, he's lazy when it comes to the weight room.
He'll run all day on the court, but he eschews the other part of developing,
and it has his coaches concerned.
| |  | |
| Harrington |
Plus, there's another concern. Othella Harrington is in the starting
lineup, and he, too, can see The Future. Already, Harrington is griping about
playing time. He was taken out the other night, and he started whining to the
statkeepers. It's preseason, Othella, lighten up.
That may be a reason the Grizzlies are not as good as they could be this
year. They have a pretty good starting lineup, particularly with Shareef
Abdur-Rahim, Michael Dickerson and Mike Bibby. And now, with Swift coming off
the bench, they have some power in reserve.
But if Harrington is causing problems now, imagine as the season wears
on. It might be time to cast him off like a stiff sailor on a small dinghy
and change Swift's status to The Now.
Western Wandering
With the Hall of Fame Enshrinement ceremonies coming up this weekend,
I've got to wonder: Where's James Worthy?
By the NBA's own admission, Worthy is one of their 50 greatest players of
all-time. He is listed in the NBA Register as one of the all-time great
players. He has six seasons of averaging 20 points a game. And he has three
championship rings.
And yet, he will not be present in Springfield, Mass., this weekend, while
the cat who invented the 24-second clock will be up on the dais.
What gives, NBA?
The Suns say that Tom Gugliotta's rehab from knee reconstruction is
coming along quite well, thank you, and they expect to see him in uniform by
mid-December. Incidentally, that will be a new uniform he will be sporting.
The old ones weren't selling at the sporting goods stores.
| |  | |
| Mercer |
This should be an interesting year -- at least antagonistically. First,
you've got the whole Mark Cuban-Phil Jackson feud boiling over. Now, it's
Denver's Dan Issel and former Nougat Ron Mercer going toe-to-toe in the papers.
"Ron Mercer is not a Nugget because of anything I did," Issel said.
"Andy Miller (Mercer's agent) came to my office a month before the season
and said, 'If you cannot guarantee a maximum contract then you better trade
him.' "
When told of Issel's statements, Mercer called Issel, well, a liar.
"I never said anything about the max," said Mercer, who signed a
four-year, $27-million contract with Chicago. "I wasn't happy there. None of
that ever crossed my mind as far as the max.
"(The ownership) was basically (a factor), and the team. We were
struggling. We were winning games and losing games. Those were the major
factors ... All of the other situations as far as money? None of that is
true."
The Houston Rockets' arena referendum seems to have a real chance to
pass Nov. 7. It was defeated by nearly 10 percentage points last year and no
one has ever
turned around a defeat that great. But with a bit of tweaking to the deal,
last
year's opponents have endorsed the deal.
Frank Hughes covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune. He is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | |
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