E.K. NATION

...we have the enviable task of choosing whoever we want in this summer's NBA Draft.

Now, to me, this one is a no-brainer. Greg Oden just might not wind up being the greatest center of all time. And he might have been trumped in the stats department in college by the smaller, lankier Kevin Durant. But when you have a chance to grab a potentially dominant big man, you gotta go with him. They don't come around very often. (And I am certainly not including Sam Bowie in that list of big men, nor forgetting that the Blazers used my very same advice to take him over Michael Jordan.)

We're definitely looking a few years ahead, but right now, a front line that includes Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, and, what the hell, maybe Zach Randolph, looks pretty good. Throw in a top-notch point like Brandon R.O.Y. and you got yourself a nice contender in a couple years.

And of course, you have the requisite whining about how the draft lottery is unfair, and also, amazingly, you have Jet fan Celtic fan complaining that they got jobbed yet again. Yo, guys: You are not cursed. Let's go ahead and assume that your claim to a curse ended when the Sox won the World Series in 2004. Never mind that claiming the Celtics are cursed is one of the most ridiculous things since, like, yesterday, if only because people say stupid things all the time. You had Larry Bird. You had the mystique of the Garden. You guys won something like 48 championships in 31 years.

So the other L.B. didn't pan out, choosing instead to celebrate his entering the NBA by snorting coke. So you didn't get Tim Duncan. Boo-frickin'-hoo. Winning all the time doesn't mean so much if you don't lose every once in a while. And anyway, how hard are you trying? The Blazers gave up on a player (Sebastian Telfair) and you picked him up. I repeat: The Blazers saw fit to release a guy and you went after him.

And please, can we stop with all the conspiracy talk? What the hell is that? Yeah, David Stern wants nothing more than for the top two rookies to spend all their time playing basketball in the Pacific Northwest while it's midnight on the East Coast. Yeah, he doesn't want any talent clogging up the vacuous Eastern Conference. Yeah, he wants to reward the Jail Blazers and a team that is about to pack up and move somewhere else.

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Here's a fact you won't find anywhere else but here, at least until others see it and pass it around: The E.K. Nation Research Team (me) has discovered that this year's Stanley Cup Finals, featuring the Anaheim Ducks and the Ottawa Senators, marks the first time in any of the four major sports' histories that any of their championship rounds (Stanley Cup Finals, World Series, NBA Finals or Super Bowl) will be contested by two teams whose respective cities both start with a vowel. You could look it up. But you don't have to; I already did.