“Have you heard the chatter that Westbrook or Green and OKC’s #3 pick could be up for trade to the Clips for 1st overall? Ft. Worth paper reported it and The Baseline reposted it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I see Jeff Green as having a better pro career than Griffin- he’s got way more skills and is a more versatile piece that I could see doing a lot for a good team in the future, where Griffin seems like a rotation PF, maybe a career starter at best.”

Mostly, I think we disagree on the immediate future of the OKC Thunder. Look, you if put Rip Hamilton on this team tomorrow, they still won’t make the playoffs for 3 years at the earliest (median age of Green/Durant/Westbrook in 2010: just under 25, which would be the youngest of any this year’s playoffs teams’ starters.) That means you get a Rip who’s helped mentor the younger guys (maybe) at a weak seed, tehy lose first round, and then Rip retires at, say, age 36.

My problem with Thabeet is not really the franchise’ recent bad luck with bigs (that was a dig at Leah), but rather the fact that he is, by nobody’s estimation, the anywhere near the best prospect available at #3 or later in this year’s draft. Nobody is projecting him to be Motumbo, let alone Hakeem. If I drafted him, I’d be happy if he turned into the Samuel Dalembert from a couple of years ago, at best (which would be nice, just not a value equal to the 3rd pick overall.)

The Thunder have cap space and youth. Why not trade down a couple of spots? A swap of the #3 pick for Washington’s #5 and Javale McGee has been floated, according to Chap Ford. Why not use 2009 to grab another best-young-player-available or 3 with their absurd number of picks, and see where the Thunder are in another year? This team will improve no matter what (the core players are too good and too young not to, just look at their progress this year) and taking, say, Demar DeRozen or Jordan Hill at #5 would be, in the absolute worst case scenario, another addition to your hand full of trading chips.

The Thunder have too many options availablet o them to settle on Thabeet at #3. If Rubio won’t play for OKC (as his agent has threatened), there are other ways to develop the team.

They can’t be afraid of drafting Thabeet because of the Sene/Petro/Swift picks; the Detroit Lions have struck out something like 10 times trying to draft a franchise quarterback, but that doesn’t mean they should stop trying and shouldn’t have drafted Matt Stafford. As for option 3… that essentially amounts to a depth pick, right? Jeff Green and Kevin Durant are the starting 3 and 4–any true PF pick is just depth, and that’s usually not what you’re looking for with a top-three pick.

I completely agree with you on Hasheem Thabeet. He will be in a thunder uniform this summer. I love the guy and he has great upside. He’s pretty impressive for only playing basketball for like 6 years and he can only improve from here.

There’s always the option #3, not mentioned by you: Draft another young player for either offense (James Harden) or upside (Jordan Hill.) Any thoughts?