I could start this off by talking about how the idiots out there are acting like it's such a conspiracy that the team with the fourth best odds -- and, even then, just one fewer chance than the team with the third best odds -- ended up winning the 2012 NBA Draft Lottery but I'll leave that for another place and time. Well, maybe not another place but definitely another time. For those that don't know, I follow the NBA Draft throughout the year and actually updated the potential 2012 NBA Draft order after play each day. I kept it up to date and always do a big board to rate guys on how I view them. No, I don't get paid for it. Yes, I wish I did. Either way, I still plan on doing stuff like this until I (a) either get too bored or (b) can't take it anymore. So, with that said, here is my initial 2012 NBA Post-Lottery Mock Draft. And we'll start it off, of course, with the team that defied the odds ... so to speak.

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Wins Produced Per 48 Minutes. That's what WP48 stands for. It's a measure devised to essentially tell you who the most valuable players have been throughout the season. It tells you who helped produce the most wins per game for their team which means they did positive things on the court. A positive WP48 means you helped your team. A negative WP48 means you hurt your team. It's pretty simple to understand. In this measure I decided to look at only players who recorded 1500+ minutes this season and I did it by position classification. For instance, I couldn't have LeBron James and Kevin Durant on the team together. If this were an All-NBA team then I'd have designated positions -- i.e. PG, SG, SF, PF, and C -- that the players had to fit into. That's what I'm going to do with this one. So it's among players with 1500+ minutes played and no overlapping a position. Here we go.

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In my thirst for more basketball knowledge, I become a bit of an idiot. I can admit it. I mean, when one searches for more meaning they usually have to dumb themselves down a little bit in an order to let the new information wash over them. It's a sponge tactic, so to speak. Gotta rinse it out before you can soak stuff back up. My point with all this is that I thought I knew who the best jump-shooters in the NBA were. And I'm talking about this past season. I knew that Al Horford was one of the most efficient shooters for big men. I knew that Dirk Nowitzki was strapping mid-range jumpers in people's faces all season long despite his early season struggles. I knew that Kobe Bryant, while he was taking some bad shots, was still making a solid percentage of his jumpers. What I didn't know actually shocked me. So, without further ado, I present the most prolific jump-shooters in the NBA from this past season.

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When the trade was first announced, I'm sure everyone was met with a rather large dose of euphoria. As fans we were pumped that the Clippers, our beloved Los Angeles Clippers, were able to swindle a talented, young wing scorer away from a disastrous team and front office for practically nothing. In the interest of fairness, I'm not calling Brian Cook nothing. He is something. He's an expiring contract. He's just not anything more, though. And, while it will ultimately result in a player years down the road, the second round pick (courtesy of New Orleans) that the Clippers gave away means nothing to the team right now. Nor should it have. The Clippers were a talented wing player away from being a legitimate threat in the Western Conference and now they have it. They have their starting two guard for the rest of the year at the cost of a player who wasn't playing anymore and a second round pick that wasn't even their own in the first place. In return, the Clippers got a scoring machine that, while he may be a tad too trigger happy, can light it up when called upon. I'm sure a lot of people are wondering just what Nick Young helps the Clippers do better. Well, let me tell you.

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Since Kenyon Martin's arrival on the Clippers, Los Angeles has given up an average of 85.5 points per game. No team has scored 100 points on the Clippers in that span and only two teams have touched 90 points. Only one team has shot above 45% in that span and that was Cleveland which was the first game for Kenyon Martin as a member of the Clippers. There has been 532 total possessions in those six games. The Clippers have given up 513 total points in those 532 total possessions. That comes out to 96.43 points per 100 possessions. That'd place them in the top five in the NBA in Defensive Efficiency. And in that same time span, the Clippers are +65 in total rebounds. They're +30 in offensive rebounds. For those that don't know, the Clippers were getting killed on the glass for a while this season. Now they're turning it around.

I never thought one man could make such a difference but Kenyon Martin really has. He's also made Blake Griffin into a pretty good defender. Now, before I get into the stuff that will make me sad, such as not being able to retain Kenyon Martin after this season (most likely), let's all realize how important the man has truly been already for us. The athleticism, toughness, rebounding, and defense that he brings solidifies our front line as one of the toughest in the league. Plus, it's always nice to know that when he's in the game you're going to see a show one way or the other.

So I was sitting here, looking at salaries for next year and seeing who would be interesting trade partners (and candidates). I came across Erick Dampier. I totally forgot that his $13,078,000 salary for next season his completely unguaranteed. That means that you can cut him at any time during the offseason and save that right off the top. Would anyone be at all interested in trading for him and then just cutting him in order to acquire that cap space? Better yet, what about trading Chris Kaman for Erick Dampier and a first round pick? I know that the trade looks stupid, and it really is, but it'd give the Clippers $30 million in available cap space. That's taking into account all the guaranteed salaries for next season. The Clippers would have $26,075,553 on the books for next year. The Clippers would have a huge hole at center but they'd be able to offer a max-contract as well as another substantial contract. It's a dumb idea but just something to keep my mind spinning as free agency is about to start.

In an age where people are always looking at the here and now, it seems almost presumptuous to say that LeBron James leaving Cleveland and signing somewhere else would be the biggest move in the history of NBA free agency. However, taking everything into consideration, it's pretty simple to see it that way. The only other free agent move that could even be deemed in the same stratosphere as LeBron James going elsewhere would be the departure of Shaquille O'Neal from Orlando and heading to Hollywood back in 1996. That's the only one. And, even then, Shaq wasn't from the Orlando area and only played the first four years of his career there. A poll that was posted on a billboard outside of his mother's office building was the last straw for Shaq. Orlando fans wanted to keep coach Brian Hill more than they wanted to keep their franchise center. Well, this is an entirely different situation. The fans want to keep LeBron and they already ousted their head coach. This offseason is the most pivotal and influential offeseason in NBA history.

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I frequent another forum and someone recently created a topic for discussion that was titled "Top Three Best and Worst Run Organizations." The Clippers, naturally, were on everyone's Three Worst list. It started to get me thinking, are the people running the Clippers really that bad? Have the moves they've made recently been atrocious? So, I decided that today was the day for me to go back and look at the last two year's worth of moves, or attempted moves. I'll only be looking at June 2008 through June 2010. That's recent moves, at least in my mind, for the front office and qualifies as something that has to do with the current state of the NBA. So, let's go.

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