FanHouse Wilson Chandler

The NBA referees seem to be on their way back to work, according to Howard Beck of The New York Times. What a perfect way to open up a post about those who are undervalued. This is not only good news for Dwight Howard and Mike Dunleavy, but it's also fantastic news for NBA fans in general. No disrespect to the replacement refs, but you don't want a pediatrician performing heart surgery.

All order has been restored in the 2009-10 season, so it's time to put the referee situation behind us and talk about those fantasy players who are not getting the respect they deserve.

Using the data from the fine gents over at Mock Draft Central, I identified 10 players whose average draft position is well below their value.

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FanHouse fixes a decade of draft-day blunders in Revisiting the NBA Draft.

Hard to believe that several NBA general managers can have regrets after two years, but it's true. The results of the 2007 NBA Draft are slowly reaping, which should teach a lesson to their 2009 brethren on Thursday about taking chances on raw college players, international prospects and even those who are allegedly "proven."

The biggest debate two years ago was whether the Portland Trail Blazers should take Greg Oden or Kevin Durant first overall. Oden was a franchise center out of Ohio State while Durant was the smooth scoring swingman from Texas. Durant had the better workout with the Blazers, apparently blowing the mind of coach Nate McMillan. Yet, the Blazers stuck with conventional thinking and took the big man.

I don't know why, but sometimes I find little anecdotes like this more amusing than actual analysis:

Nate Robinson had seen enough, and he wanted out - away from the chaos, the congestion and the cameras. His locker stall, squeezed between those of Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph, was prime territory for reporters staking out the Knicks' burly big men. The nightly swarm had become intolerable.

Last week, Robinson got his wish, migrating to the other side of the room, in a locker swap with the rookie Wilson Chandler.

That's from the New York Times in an article that goes on to analyze whether the on-court pairing of Randolph and Curry will ever mesh. It's a legitimate question, but I'm more curious in the circumstances surrounding NateRob's locker swap. Did money exchange hands? Or bartering, say, in exchange for immunity from any more rookie hazing? Or was the switch an example of rookie hazing in itself?

I've been in NBA locker rooms after games, and I've been in the often difficult/impossible position of trying to maneuver my way into a scrum of reporters surrounding a star player without overtly invading the space of another's player's adjacent locker. There's etiquette involved: if you're not going to care enough about a player to ask what he thinks about the game, the least you can do is give him room to put on his (free) socks. And while the pint-sized Robinson doesn't take up much physical space, I'm guessing getting stepped on and then ignored was too much for his ego to handle.