It’s the SLAMonline stimulus plan!
First of all, I need to say a brief word to our friends here at KING magazine. You may or may not have heard that KING magazine ceased to exist yesterday, yet another in a seemingly endless list of publications hit hard by the current economy (or lack of an economy). Regardless of what you may have felt about the content in KING, it always sucks to see a lot of good people suddenly out of work. Hang in there, KING folk.
Now, on to the NCAA Tournament. I know, I know, I’ve historically been against the NCAA Tournament. Someone recently asked me on Twitter who I was picking for the Final Four, and I said the Lakers, Spurs, Cavs and Celtics. That’s my Final Four. I understand the excitement of the games and the allure of cheering for your favorite schools, but I mostly watch college basketball as a scouting device. (If my college, the University of Georgia, had anything even loosely resembling a consistently competitive basketball program, I’d probably be more into college hoops. But they don’t, so I’m not.) And the NCAA Tournament is a great way to see most of the best NBA prospects in a short timeframe. I finally saw the guys who’ve been rumored to drafted high all year. I watched James Harden (unimpressed) and Dajuan Blair (Tractor Traylor II?) and BJ Mullens (who just declared for the Draft, which could be an epic fail on his part). All in all, I was really disappointed with the level of talent in college basketball, and I agree with the pundits who say the Draft will be down this year. The one guy I really liked? Toney Douglas from Florida State. He’s 6-2, can play the point, can shoot from the outside, can shoot off screens, can create his own shot, gets to the foul line, defends the ball (he was the ACC Defensive Player of the Year). “He’s my favorite non-Duke player in the country,” Coach K said after Duke beat FSU in in the ACC Tourney final. “I love that guy. I talk about him a lot to our guys. They’re probably mad at me. He’s as good as there is in college.”
And yet Douglas, for some reason, isn’t considered a top NBA prospect. NBADraft.net has him going mid-second round, DraftExpress has him ranked 67th out of all seniors, and Chad Ford doesn’t even have him in the Top 100 prospects.
Why? I have no idea. Either my eyes were lying to me or I’m a worse talent evaluator than I thought.
Anyway, with the economy the way it is and everything, I thought maybe we should give away some free stuff. Because who doesn’t like free stuff?
Our friends at Original Retro Brand have just come out with a very cool line of classic NCAA Tournament t-shirts, which not only have the classic Final Four logos on the front but a patch from the winning school on the sleeve (you can check that line out here). And with the Final Four about to tip-off this weekend, the guys at Original Retro Brand came to us with some shirts for a giveaway.
So, we have four shirts, one from each Final Four school (UNC, MSU, UConn and Villanova). In the comments section below, tell us which school’s shirt you’d want and then tell us why you should win that shirt. What makes you your school’s biggest fan?
We’ll pick four winners, one for each school. You’ve got until the end of the day Friday, at which point I’m turning off the comments. One t-shirt per person (so don’t enter multiple times or for multiple schools).
That’s it. Let’s go…
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