Despite the infusion of Euros, the NBA Draft remains the only really fun draft of the big three sports. The baseball draft isn’t even on TV, and if it were we wouldn’t know anybody who got picked anyway. The NFL is too long, the only thing they ever trade are draft picks and Chris Berman sweats and yells at you four eight hours a day. Who needs that?

But the NBA Draft? Well, that’s just cool. Or, at least it was when Ernie Johnson and company were running things.

But after years of comfy viewing on TNT, we get jolted to a new network (ESPN) and a new night (Thursday). How will you, the home viewer adjust? Gone are Ernie, the Jet and the Chuckster. In are DJ Stu Scott, Kevin Frazier and Jay Bilas. Will Rick Pitino be around to call somebody “mono-versatile?” Will Rick Majerus be there to sweat through his golf shirt in 15 minutes? Will anybody have the good sense to let Quin Snyder’s hair make an appearance?

We don’t know. What we do know is that you can catch it all right here, starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday night with yours truly sitting in the “anchor” chair for the third straight year (we’ve been covering the draft for six years now–just three “live”) along with Desipio college hoops expert Jake Potter and all-around NBA bon vivant Kelly Dwyer. Oh, and Karry Ling has something special planned.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

As for the actual draft, don’t believe the hype when you hear rumors that the Jay Williams tour de oops cost the Bulls a shot at Carmelo Anthony. The guys on the Score would have you believe a trade was all but done that would have sent Jay, and Marcus Fizer and the number seven pick to the Nugs for Carmelo. Kiki Vandeweghe may be odd, but he’s not that stupid.

So who do the Bulls draft now? Given that I have spent hours practicing how to correctly misspell Dwyane Wade, I hope it’s Chicago’s very own shooting guard. It’s interesting that the two guys the Bulls are most interested in at the seventh spot are guards who made a name for themselves this year by lighting up Kentucky. Dwyane did it in the regional finals, in triple-double style. Georgia guard Jarvis Hayes did it in an SEC upset of the Wildcats. I like them both, but there’s just something about Dwyane. Consider it a mulligan for Pat Kennedy being too dumb to recruit him to DePaul.

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Sunday was the one-year anniversary of the death of Darryl Kile. Matt Morris celebrated by giving up 57 runs in a loss to the Royals.

Look, we’ve been through this before and it usually goes like this. I say something insensitive about Kile, one of you posts that I’m a jerk and we move on.

So, it’s probably going to happen again.

ESPN did a piece on Kile’s family on Sunday. It was nice. His wife seems like a very strong, very determined lady. Their oldest son, Kannon, the unofficial Cardinals’ mascot could use some Hooked on Phonics tapes. And why Mark Schwartz thought it would be useful to interview a six-year old (or however old the kid is) is a mystery. This is the same guy who had that in-depth interview with Darren Baker in spring training. Nice niche you’ve got there, Mark. What, you couldn’t get one of the Sosa kids to comment on the corked bat?

In that piece, Kile’s agent, Barry Axelrod was quoted as talking about the tragedy of going to Kannon’s little league games and seeing him be the only kid who can’t play catch with his dad.

OK. Let’s consider this a second. On Kannon’s team none of the other kids have dads who left their mommy for the secretary and drove off to Monterey to leave the kids behind? On Kannon’s team none of the other kids are the product of a night of too many Budweiser’s a faulty condom and mommy waking up with a headache, a vague remembrance of having sex with a truck driver and no idea who the guy was? On Kannon’s team, the only dads who ever die are the millionaire pitchers? On Kannon’s team none of the kids’ are the product of two loving lesbians who walked into a sperm bank, (or David Crosby’s bathroom) grabbed some sperm and voila, a baby!

I wish I’d played on Kannon’s team. None of the ones I ever played on looked like that. We even had a kid whose dad would show up to the games drunk, like Shooter from Hoosiers and drop f-bombs from behind the backstop.

Oh, well.

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Rosey with an interesting proposal for inter-city, interleague play.

John Paxson doesn’t want Lamond Murray. I don’t blame him.

Eighteen years ago a trim (not really), handsome (God no), happy (never) Jerry Krause made his first draft pick.

The Sox are off to Minneapolis to get swept back to reality.

Jay Williams is sorry. I’d be too if my pelvis was in three pieces.

Paul Sullivan wonders if Jim Hendry will be gun shy about trading pitching prospects after watching Dontrell Willis go nutty in Florida. That won’t make him gun shy, but watching Matt Clement and Shawn Estes roll sevens this week might.

Groucho on the draft.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to put this whole Jay Williams into perspective. No, not really. Does Jay ever read his columns after he writes them? Do they even make sense to him? What a gawdawful, talentless hack this troll is.

If The Farns gets suspended for “ending” a fight that Paul Wilson started, it’s time to start a search for the commissioner’s knutes.

Can Josh Paul really be any worse than Paul Bako?

Why doesn’t the Wizard of Roz just change his name to, “I hate Sammy”?

This Barry Bonds guy is pretty good.

Peter King with some good stuff.

Marty Burns’ mullet has been replaced with a tepid combover and it says the Blazers are looking to deal.

A North Carolina woman robbed a man at antler-point.

Well, here’s the mother of the year winner!

Suicide by bandsaw? Eww.

You’d think a Wisconsin kid could hold his liquor better.

Let’s just be glad El Pulpo’s mom didn’t try this stunt.

Even God hates Nebraska.

America’s finest news source says some EIU moron thinks his college radio show is popular. At least secretly.