Rush The Court

Normally the McDonald’s All-American game (rosters here) would only be worth watching for the occasional ridiculous dunk or the lack of defense, but the circus in Lexington and the fall-out in Memphis makes this one pretty interesting. At least 3 potential Memphis commits (DeMarcus Cousins, Xavier Henry, and an uncommitted Lance Stephenson) are playing in this game. With John Calipari‘s decision to ditch Memphis for Lexington all of these guys are in play. Everyone knows that Stephenson will go the the highest bidder still hasn’t announced his decision, but Calipari’s decision puts Cousins and Henry back in play.

Note to Doug Gottlieb (if he’s reading): Nice job trying to bring some knowledge on SportsCenter this morning about how Xavier would stay at Memphis anyways because his older brother C.J. Henry would be joining him, but their father already said that both of them are not going to Memphis.

One more thing before we come back around 8 PM for the game, which will be broadcast on ESPN. John Wall, the #1 overall recruit according to several services, is ineligible since he is a 5th-year senior. I just wanted to get that out of the way before someone starts a rant against him being left off the teams. I haven’t seen much film of these guys outside of YouTube clips where they never commit a turnover, miss a shot, or fail to switch on a screen so if you guys have seen any of them, let us know what you think of them.

8:00 PM: Judging by what Len Elmore and his partner (no idea who he is) the economy has hit ESPN’s clothing budget. Not surprisingly the Memphis commits do not want to talk on camera about the Memphis situation, but Cousins has suddenly listed Kentucky as a potential destination.

8:05 PM: Nice. Derrick Favors lost his starting spot for the game because he forgot to put his jersey on underneath his warm-ups and had to run back to the locker room to find it while they announced the starting lineups.

8:10 PM: Whoa. Len Elmore just said these guys go to school to play basketball. What happened to the academics? The student-athletes?

8:12 PM: “John Henson‘s body type is similar to Brandon Rush.” I was actually going to go with a really tall skeleton, but ok. . .

8:14 PM: Lance Stephenson just double-dribbled on a fast break. How is that possible?

8:22 PM: I missed who that was that chased down the horrible outlet pass, but he must have taken about 6 steps “pivoting” under the basket. I’m guessing that he is going to Duke . . .

8:27 PM: Whatever percent of the vote Mason Plumlee gets for having the best dunk from the dunk contest should just be consider the margin of error (or how many times Josh can click his mouse in 2 hours).

8:40 PM: The fan comments are amazing. I just saw something like “Lance Stephenson is such a large man. How is he still uncommitted?”

8:55 PM: Apparently Josh can click refresh pretty frequently as that awful Plumlee dunk won. The dunk wasn’t even that great. You have to give the credit to the guy who bounced the ball of the side of the basket and got it to go to Plumlee.

9:25 PM: I’m not sure what there is to say about this game other than what Alonzo Mourning just said “They’re not playing any defense”. None of these guys has really stood out tonight. A lot of tall, skinny, athletic guys running up and down the floor.

9:35 PM: When’s the last time a player took let alone make anything other than a 3-pointer or a dunk/lay-up in one of these games? The mid-90s?

9:55 PM: Why isn’t Len Elmore (a lawyer) defending the high school players right to go into the NBA? That seems like a great case for a scumbag lawyer to take.

10:00 PM: That actually ended up being a pretty close game. Fortunately, Mason Plumlee saved us 5 more minutes of no-defense basketball when he  missed a 3.