Who said the season’s over?

The season might be over but there’s plenty of news emanating from the NBA ranks. And there are videos to accompany all three storylines:

Shaq O’Neal told us how he really feels about Kobe Bryant, and even the mainstream media is picking up on it. While it should be chalked up as an over-the-top freestyle “performance” to fuel an NYC nightclub crowd, it was nice to hear an athlete speak the truth about a hot topic like the Kobe-Shaq saga. Why it took all these years, I don’t know. What I do know is that what Shaq said is true, “Last week, Kobe couldn’t do it without me.”
The NBA Draft is on Thursday. Who do you go with? Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley. I’d take Beasley. He’s left-handed, 6-8, 240 pounds. And he grades out with 9s or 10s in athleticism, size, strength, quickness, jumpshot, rebounding and post skills. Just watch his high school highlight reel and imagine where he could be in a couple more years. How do you guard that guy?
And with the Celtics winning the NBA title last week and the NBA Draft on the horizon, it’s hard not to remember Len Bias, who died in 1986 after suffering a cardiac arrhythmia stemming from a cocaine overdose just two days after being selected by the NBA champs. In 2003, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski had this to say about Bias: “: there have been two opposing players who have really stood out: Michael Jordan and Len Bias. Len was an amazing athlete with great competitiveness. My feeling is that he would have been one of the top players in the NBA. He created things. People associate the term â€˜playmaking’ with point guards. But I consider a playmaker as someone who can do things others can’t, the way Jordan did. Bias was like that. He could invent ways to score, and there was nothing you could do about it. No matter how you defended him, he could make a play.” Imagine Bias playing on those Celtics teams in the late 80s and early 90s.