From ESPN and John Hollinger, some key free agent moves over the past few weeks:

• Ron Artest to the Champs — and Trevor Ariza to fill his shoes in Houston
• Clippers trade Zach Randolph to Memphis for Quentin Richardson (who was traded by NY to the Grizz just last week for Darko Milicic)
  
• Ben Gordon to the Pistons, and the Bulls didn’t even try to stop him
• Charlie Villanueva moves to the division-rival Pistons
• Old news, but Cleveland shipped Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, & other goodies to PHX for the Shaq Daddy
• On draft night, Orlando picked up Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson from Jersey in exchange for Tony Battie, Rafer Alston and Courtney Lee.
• Ex-Buck Richard Jefferson to the Spurs for Kurt Thomas, Fabricio Oberto and Bruce Bowen
• Jamal Crawford from Golden State to Atlanta for Acie Law IV and Speedy Claxton
• Mike Miller and Randy Foye from Minnesota to Washington for the No. 5 pick (Ricky Rubio), Etan Thomas, Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov

Here’s a new concept for posts that I’m rolling out this week, in honor of the long NBA offseason really starting in earnest. Basically, the idea is that I go to our lovely “Frivolities” page and click on the “Random Page” function, sending me to the page for “a randomly selected player, coach, team, or league”. Whatever turns up, I write a little essay about it, no matter what it is. It’s kind of a takeoff on what JKL is doing over at our sister blog, the Pro-Football-Reference.com blog — he’s basically writing what comes to mind when he thinks of a certain player, like our colleague Doug Drinen did back in 2002 for PFR:

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Following up on his excellent draft previews, Ed Weiland of HoopsAnalyst offers up his grades on last Thursday’s draft, including an interesting comparison between the bevy of point guards in this year’s draft class and the iconic group of quarterbacks taken in the 1983 NFL draft. (Ty Lawson = Dan Marino!)

No, that title shouldn’t be interpreted as a particularly butchered way of writing “The 223 Club”… It’s about guys who made at least 220 3-point field goals in a single season.

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Laughs (at poor Luke Walton’s expense) courtesy of The Onion:

“While coach Phil Jackson said losing to the Celtics by 39 points in Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals motivated Bryant to succeed, he acknowledged that Kobe could not overcome Walton’s utter lack of talent alone.

‘Kobe certainly put up big numbers, but he also rallied this young group of players and took their play to another level with him,’ Jackson said. ‘Winning in the Luke Walton era took a total team effort. They should be proud of what they accomplished. You have to be at the very pinnacle of your game to rise above a player of Walton’s caliber.’”

Here’s the final part of Ed Weiland’s draft coverage over at HoopsAnalyst:

NBA Draft 2009: Centers
NBA Draft 2009: Power Forwards
NBA Draft 2009: Combo Forwards

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On Monday I assigned expected values to the top 60 picks in the NBA draft, both in terms of career value and value in their first four seasons, and on Tuesday I looked at some of the biggest draft busts since the merger. Today I am going to turn that around and look at some of the best draft picks in history.

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On Monday I assigned expected values to the top 60 picks in the NBA draft, both in terms of career value and value in their first four seasons. Today I would like to use that information to look at some of the worst draft picks since the merger.

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Hate how the NBA’s age limit creates automatic “one and done” situations for colleges? Here is ESPN’s Steve Delsohn’s report from Monday’s Outside the Lines, regarding the impact of the rule on the NCAA game, focusing on how exactly coaches are supposed to deal with players who have great talent but are not in the program for the long haul. Meanwhile, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett — two of the more notable preps-to-pros of the past 15 years — have led their teams to NBA titles in back-to-back seasons. So does the one-and-done rule make sense for the pros or college? What do you think?