Don't miss the poetry contest finals just below, but the main story of the day is the opening of the official Blazersedge draft board. We're going to go position by position through the draftees and solicit your thoughts/analysis/best guesses about the candidates. You can use any source you want: stats, scouting reports and expert analysis (please give credit), your own observations, astrology...whatever you can come up with.
We're going to start today with the center position. Who do you think are the best centers up for grabs? Remember the goal is to end up with an entire draft board, so even though most everybody will have Oden at the top don't forget to mention other candidates you know or have read about. Give us as much analysis and go as far in depth as you can on as many players as you can. (What exactly do you think Oden will do, how soon, in what kind of system...things like that.) Don't be afraid to duplicate others' analysis if you agree with it because that will add weight to a candidate.
Hopefully by the end of the day we'll have some kind of pecking order and be able to say, "If the Blazers were going to draft a center, these would be the guys."
Because there is considerable blurring of lines between power forwards and centers nowadays try to be conservative. If you think a guy is a power forward who could play center in the right system wait and mention him as a power forward. Let's reserve centers for obvious center candidates.
Also remember that in this area I have relatively little clue. Of course I will study up before the draft but for right now I am completely dependent upon your collective wisdom to make this work.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)