It's not just the young guys like Michael Beasley and Mario Chalmers who are expected to show considerably improvement this season with the Miami Heat.
The old guy thinks he'll improve more than anyone else on the roster, making him the determining factor in a better-than-expected season in South Florida.
Center Jermaine O'Neal, going into his 14th NBA season, understands the skepticism, but he also believes there is another All-Star season awaiting him.
When searching for sleepers at the point guard position you are usually after two things: steals and assists. Sure, a healthy free-throw percentage helps and some three-pointers would be nice, but as Jason Kidd has shown it's not all about scoring.
In the first two rounds there are 10 eligible point guards who should fall off the board: Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Deron Williams, Brandon Roy, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Jose Calderon, Devin Harris and Joe Johnson. If you are able to grab one of those top-tier point guards, congratulations. Now you just need to find a second point to bolster and fill out your categories and a third for, well, good measure. If not, I would suggest loading up on fourth- or fifth-tier point guards -- Rajon Rondo, Tony Parker, Russell Westbrook, etc. -- where you can find plenty of star power.
Using the average draft positions (ADPs) as reported by Mock Draft Central (MDC) and Yahoo! Sports (Y!), the following five point guards are all sleeper candidates as third, and in some cases second point guards.
It's almost unfair to judge a draft after one year, but this is what we're going to do. The final edition of our Revisiting the Draft series examines the 2008 Draft and believe or not, there are teams already harboring regrets from their picks.
Despite the extensive scouting, workouts and interviews involved in the draft, teams still make major mistakes and these days, prospects don't get three years to develop. Of the 14 lottery picks in 2006, six have already changed teams and players such as Patrick O'Bryant and Mouhamed Sene are not guaranteed jobs next season.
The NBA waits for no one, especially if they are taking too long to make an impact. So while teams won't freely admit they made mistakes 12 months after draft night, they will privately admit they overestimated talent and heart, and sooner or later, that will cost front-office jobs.
The Miami Heat made it official on Wednesday. They're the worst team remaining in the NBA playoffs. That's just one conclusion you can draw after Atlanta won Game 5 over Miami 106-91 to go up 3-2 in the series.
How can the Heat be anything other than the worst team remaining when they came into the playoffs as an underdog and, now, Dwyane Wade is not 100 percent? Hey, it's just another way of saying that coach Erik Spoelstra is doing a great coaching job.
Miami was down 23 points at halftime, and the only reason to watch the remaining 24 was to find out who was going to commit the next hard foul and who was going to be on the receiving end of it.
Atlanta 106, Miami 91: Recap | Box Score Atlanta Leads Series 3-2 | Next Game: Friday @ Miami
This is too easy, right? You watch all year as Memphis rolls through Conference USA without a challenge. You listen to the debates about whether it'd finish any better than sixth in the Big East. You ponder its tournament seeding, weighing the impressive lack of losses against the unimpressive quality of the competition against which the record was built. And then Memphis gets smacked in the mouth and knocked out in the Sweet 16 by a team from the Big 12 and you get to say, "See?? See?? We TOLD you they couldn't play with the teams from the real conferences! Oh-ver-RAY-ted!"
Hey, I was ready to buy the ticket, take the ride, too.
Even as a staunch skeptic of the Utah Jazz' legitimacy as a title contender, twelve wins in a row is twelve wins in a row. The Jazz definitely looked like they'd turned the corner and were putting all the pieces together that Ziller so eloquently laid out when he warned us all of the coming Jazzocalypse.
Jason Williams was ahead of his time -- if YouTube existed when he came into the league, he'd have made at least a couple of All-Star games simply because of fan popularity. Even so, he had a nice run in the NBA, evolving into a solid shooter after injuries robbed his ability to play at his old breakneck speed.
He's had a devil of a time staying healthy the last several years (he missed nearly 20 games a year during his time with the Heat) so it wasn't a huge surprise when he announced his retirement last September. But, as it so often happens with athletes pushed out of the game after frustrations with injury, he's changed his mind, filing paperwork with the league earlier this month in hopes of getting the green light to come back.
It can be frustrating talking to NBA veterans -- they're so used to being in front of the camera that they've become conditioned to speak in cliches, making it nearly impossible to get them to say what they're really thinking. But rookies? As Mario Chalmers proved earlier this week, that whole "talking in front of a camera thing" is hardly second nature:
Did he think he was on the radio? These "NBA Arena Link" things seem to be done via web cam, so I suppose the camera could be easy to miss. But still, they teach this at the NBA Rookie Symposium, right? Didn't you go to that, Mario? Oh, wait ...
Stephon Marbury and the Knicks might still be haggling over the details, but there's little doubt that a divorce is coming soon. So what then? Is he really so poisonous that there's not a single team in the league willing to take a flyer on him?
I don't think so. Playing for one of the league's most dysfuctional franchises in the country's biggest media market can make anybody look bad. I'm not trying to absolve Marbury of fanning the flames, but there are a lot of players around the league who are just as much of a head case but manage to fly under the radar simply because they don't play in New York.
Plus, when he does hit the market, he'll almost certainly be on his best behavior in hopes of salvaging his reputation. And with the Knicks on the hook for most of his salary, he'll likely sign for a prorated share of the veteran's minimum. Despite all the controversy surrounding him the last few years, he'd be a low-risk gamble, especially on a team with strong locker room personalities willing to keep him in his place.
It doesn't seem that long ago that the Southeast was an afterthought. I'm aware that sounds stupid as this division attempts to rise to serious L-bound prominence, but it's true -- before Dwight Howard and before Dwyane Wade and before Josh Smith and before Jeff McInnis ... what was there?
It doesn't particularly matter now; the division is still only an erstwhile powerhouse; you would never see a prediction coming that any one of these teams can contend for the NBA title right now, and that's what matters in these sort of things.
Of course, Orlando is a different story of sorts. Maybe. At least we have to wonder: Does Hedo Turkoglu Still Have the Special Sauce?
It's not just the young guys like Michael Beasley and Mario Chalmers who are expected to show considerably improvement this season with the Miami Heat.
When searching for sleepers at the point guard position you are usually after two things: steals and assists. Sure, a healthy free-throw percentage helps and some three-pointers would be nice, but as Jason Kidd has shown it's not all about scoring. 
FanHouse fixes a decade of draft-day blunders in Revisiting the NBA Draft.
The Miami Heat made it official on Wednesday. They're the worst team remaining in the NBA playoffs. That's just one conclusion you can draw after Atlanta won Game 5 over Miami 106-91 to go up 3-2 in the series.
This is too easy, right? You watch all year as Memphis rolls through Conference USA without a challenge. You listen to the debates about whether it'd finish any better than sixth in the Big East. You ponder its tournament seeding, weighing the impressive lack of losses against the unimpressive quality of the competition against which the record was built. And then Memphis gets smacked in the mouth and knocked out in the Sweet 16 by a team from the Big 12 and you get to say, "See?? See?? We TOLD you they couldn't play with the teams from the real conferences! Oh-ver-RAY-ted!"
Hey, I was ready to buy the ticket, take the ride, too. 
Jason Williams was ahead of his time -- if YouTube existed when he came into the league, he'd have made at least a couple of All-Star games simply because of fan popularity. Even so, he had a nice run in the NBA, evolving into a solid shooter after injuries robbed his ability to play at his old breakneck speed. 
Stephon Marbury and the Knicks might still be haggling over the details, but there's little doubt that a divorce is coming soon. So what then? Is he really so poisonous that there's not a single team in the league willing to take a flyer on him? 
