04/26 Quickie: Draft Winners, NBA Playoffs

Love the Scott Sicko story. That guy will get more attention for not playing in the NFL than he ever would have for playing in the NFL.

Speaking of the NFL, the Monday after Draft weekend is for the post-mortem: Winners, losers, projections, notable UFAs and more.

As I lead in today's SN column, Pete Carroll is off to a good start; Detroit is starting to look respectable; and Jason Campbell is starting in Oakland.

And even though Tim Tebow won't start in Denver this year, I think he can win Offensive Rookie of the Year, because Josh McDaniels has a vested interest in getting Tebow TDs near the goal-line.

(There's my Monday-morning contribution to the "Tebow exceptionalism" argument I made at the Teblog on Friday to make the point that we should default to his success, not failure.)

I know many of you are gagging on your Wheaties over that prediction, so let's move on...

The NFL hits a hiatus (before mini-camps and, undoubtedly, more Tebow-Mania... and not just by me), just in time for the NBA Playoffs to get really, really interesting:

I am loving this Spurs-Mavs series, with San Antonio on the verge of bouncing out Dallas, the 2-seed. The 5-seed Jazz are on the verge of bouncing out the 4-seed Nuggets. The Suns and Blazers are a total toss-up (particularly given Roy's return), and you can't have watched even a little bit of the Thunder win over the Lakers in Game 4 and not been at least a little bit intrigued that OKC is not going to go down easy.

Oh, and then there's LeBron's triple-double and Wade's 46, for the only reason that Heat-Celtics series is still interesting.

At a minimum, Lakers-Thunder Game 5 is a must-see.

There's a bunch more in the column, including why the Rays are the best team in baseball right now and why Oregon hoops is a tough job, even for the qualified Dana Altman.

Complete column here. More later.

-- D.S.