A Big Splash From This Talent Pool

It was a throwback draft, the kind of night that can transform a bad team while still allowing a resourceful playoff team picking at the bottom of the heap to come away feeling it might have made a steal.

Finally, the NBA didn't allow itself to be dragged down by unqualified high school players making an early money grab. Yes, any amateur draft is a gamble on potential. But repeatedly last night, even very late in the first round and perhaps in the second, NBA teams were able to select players with credentials, some with impressive entries on their résumés.

It might not be the kind of draft that will rival 1984, the talent pool that yielded Olajuwon, Jordan and Barkley, the one that energized professional basketball globally, reshaped the NBA and to a degree American popular culture. But the 2007 NBA draft, if you care about pro basketball, is something to get excited over, even if you live in Washington and saw the Wizards pick 16th. So many talented players were available, through draft and trade, it's possible even the New York Knicks got better, which amounts to nothing short of a miracle.

But the stars of the night were the teams of the Pacific Northwest, Portland and Seattle. They were totally overhauled less than two hours into the draft. The Trail Blazers made the smart pick and selected 7-footer Greg Oden, then dumped Zach Randolph, the last member of the now extinct "Jail Blazers" for another long, tall talented kid, Channing Frye.

Goodness, Portland's scouts and GM Kevin Pritchard have to be giddy, knowing they'll come into the season with Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Frye, 2007 rookie of the year Brandon Roy, and the Spaniard Rudy Fernandez, a guard with international experience and lottery-level talent. Portland went as far as to draft one of Oden's best friends from back home in Indiana, Duke's Josh McRoberts.

And just 175 miles to the north, the SuperSonics not only took Kevin Durant, as expected, but moved Ray Allen to Boston in favor of Georgetown's Jeff Green. Talk about an impressive young one-two punch, how about starting camp with Durant and Green, two kids from essentially the same big plot of land in Prince George's County? The Sonics also got Delonte West (another Prince George's kid), and shooter Wally Szczerbiak in that trade with the Celtics.

Usually, on draft night you look for three or four "winners" and in a great draft, maybe a half-dozen. But so many teams seemed to help themselves Thursday night, even after Portland and Seattle. As bad as Randolph and his criminal baggage were for Portland, he still represents a huge talent upgrade and new hope for the pathetic Knicks, who can put 6-foot-10 Randolph and his 23 points and 10 rebounds a game on the floor with 7-foot Eddy Curry and their first-round draft pick from DePaul, forward Wilson Chandler.

As much as the Wizards could have used a low-post monster such as Randolph, they did select at No. 16 a major, major offensive talent in Nick Young, a 6-7 guard from Southern Cal who gets his own shot whenever he wants, has great three-point range and can finish strong at the basket.

He idolizes Gilbert Arenas, which ought to mean good things for Young's capacity for work and developing practice habits. And if Arenas winds up leaving after the season as a free agent, then the Wizards will at least have a young scorer who was groomed for a year. Young's not known for playing great defense, meaning he'll fit perfectly with the Wizards in that regard, too.

But if the Wizards are going to continue to try to hang their hat on offense, having Young come off the bench and at times be on the floor with Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison seems a fairly reasonable way to go.

Yes, yes, yes, of course the Wizards need interior size and strength.

They need inside scoring and rebounding more than anything else, but the bigs who mattered were all gone by the time the Wizards picked. Joakim Noah had been taken by the Chicago Bulls. (How happy should John Paxson be, adding to a playoff team a player who would have been taken No. 1 in the draft a year earlier?) Al Horford, Noah's University of Florida teammate, was taken real early, third overall, by Atlanta. The 7-foot kid from the University of Washington, Spencer Hawes, had been taken by Sacramento. Brandan Wright was gone, so were Al Thornton and Thaddeus Young, all inside players. If any one of those kids had been there, one would hope the Wizards would have jumped. But they weren't. So why not add some firepower?

It's up to Ernie Grunfeld, having made another good draft selection, to add that low-block size through a trade or the signing of a veteran free agent. Right after the Wizards picked, the Nets did roll the dice and took Sean Williams, the very troubled 6-10 Boston College forward, who has a ton of game and just as much downside.

The Wizards did help themselves, as did a lot of teams. Don Nelson, usually covetous of an offensive player off the beaten track, found another one in Italian guard Marco Belinelli, a sweet-shooting, high-flyer who the story goes learned how to play from watching Michael Jordan tapes until he fell asleep every night. Speaking of Jordan, how about trading a Tar Heel, Wright, to Golden State for one of those "next Jordan" guys in the acrobatic Jason Richardson?

Picks that intrigue? The San Antonio Spurs, sticking with their absurdly successful formula, took another international player at the end of the first round who will probably be wearing a championship ring in two years, 7-foot Brazilian forward Tiago Splitter. The Suns, sticking with their largely successful formula, took another big-time scorer, Wisconsin's Alando Tucker, the Big Ten player of the year and a possible mega-steal. The Pistons, who might have to deal with the free agent defection of Chauncey Billups, took two big versatile guards, Rodney Stuckey and UCLA all-American Arron Afflalo. The Lakers, one year after taking point guard Jordan Farmar, took another point guard, Georgia Tech's Javaris Crittenton, which is a head-scratcher.

Surprises and reaches weren't the order of the night, and shouldn't have been with so much talent available. It was a welcome break from Kobe Bryant's boorishness, from unknown, overhyped high school ballers walking to greet Commissioner David Stern in their bad suits. Last night, the players all looked good, tailored and appropriate, which is probably a sign of the times as much as anything. Most sounded polished, and seemed ready to enter professional life. Once again, the draft appeared to have done what it was designed to do; infuse the entire league, the bad teams and the good, with talent and optimism.