Elly is on fire, a 2023 NBA Draft Recap and an MLB series in London?
The Saturday morning edition of "Four things to know before 4 AM" is here!
Welcome to another June weekend, everyone. We have quite the fireworks two weeks prior to the Fourth of July weekend; the Wizards made some explosive trades, dealing stars Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis for a treasure trove of draft picks; the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves tallied 21 total runs last night; and I do expect balls to be flying ‘across the pond’ in a two-game MLB series this weekend in England.
1) Can anyone stop Elly and the Reds?
Shohei Ohtani, take a seat. Ronald Acuna, head back to the dugout. Corbin Carroll, time to go back to the batting cage. I can say all of that, because the new car in town, Cincinnati Reds’ rookie shortstop Elly De La Cruz has now become THE most exciting player to watch in baseball.
Last night, De La Cruz did something no player has done in over 40 years: hit for the cycle (single, double, triple and home run) within his first 15 games in the big leagues. He did this in a sold-out Great American Ballpark crowd at home (43,086 in attendance) against the NL East-leading Atlanta Braves (48-27), who were riding an eight-game winning streak heading into last night’s game.
De La Cruz accomplished the feat in only six innings, sliding into third on a routine double for any other ballplayer. He went home-to-third in just under 11 seconds, which is also insanely fast. That triple also propelled the Reds to an 11-10 win, and, most importantly, their twelfth straight win. The NL Central-leading Reds are now 14-2 since promoting De La Cruz from the minors. Insane.
Just to add to the festivities last night, 39-year old Reds’ first baseman Joey Votto also added two home runs of his own in the victory.
2) The wheelin’ and dealin’ Wizards
Blink, and you will miss it. The Wizards, once hamstrung with the albatross contract of local star Bradley Beal (five years, $251 million), turned him and forward Kristaps Porzingis (who was coming off a solid 23 point, 8 rebound and 50% FG season) into a bounty of draft picks and bench assets in multiple trades over the past week under the new overhauled front office:
To consolidate the deal to layman’s terms, the Wizards received two starters in point guard Tyus Jones and shooting guard Jordan Poole, five incoming bench players, a protected 1st round pick, four first round pick swaps with the Suns and eight future second round picks.
Jones has been considered by a large NBA media contingent as the best backup point guard in the league. Poole wore out his Warriors’ tenure this past season, as he tended to freelance away from coach Steve Kerr’s motion offense at times, and regressed from his 2022 season. Poole also received a contract extension prior to the 2022-2023 season (4 years, $128 million or an average of $32 million per year). However, this is a great buy-low for the Wizards, as Poole is only 24 years old and will be the primary scorer for the next four years.
The public outcry initially (and still continuously) was and is that the Wizards did not obtain a single first round pick. But look at the return for an overpaid star (Beal) and another (Porzingis) that was minutes away from becoming a free agent (and the Wizards potentially receiving nothing in return).
Also, the team cleared out a ton of cap space for the foreseeable future by trading away Beal and Porzingis, which was the main focus for the new front office. Only seven players have contracts beyond next season, and one would expect the core of Poole, 2022 first round pick Johnny Davis, 2021 first round pick Corey Kispert, 2020 first round pick Deni Avdija and center Daniel Gafford to remain with the franchise past this coming season.
I would expect the Wizards to continue the phone calls with other General Managers and that they will trade away veteran guards Delon Wright and Monte Morris in the coming days and weeks, as they are great players for a playoff team in need of point guards, like the Los Angeles Clippers and Miami Heat.
However, this is how the public will look at the 2023-2024 Wizards:
3) Overall thoughts on the 2023 NBA Draft
So, the NBA finally announced that seven-foot, five-inch Frenchman Victor Wembanyama is heading to the San Antonio Spurs in Thursday night’s NBA Draft.
However, let’s talk about the other stories circulating around the draft:
The Portland Trail Blazers took potential All-Star guard Scoot Henderson number three overall. Henderson gives off Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook vibes, with his elite athleticism and strong upper body frame and elite passing ability. The pick puts in question the status of veteran face of the franchise Damian Lillard with the organization, as the Blazers just cannot run a lineup of Henderson, Lillard and Anfernee Simons. Even though Lillard has said publicly that he wants to stay in Portland for his entire career, it just does not seem feasible for the organization that has several elite guards and not enough frontcourt help.
The Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar, went fourth and fifth overall to the Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons. Both played for the Overtime Elite league in Atlanta after being high school five-star recruits. Amen is more of the prototypical point guard, while Ausar is more of a wing player that is better defensively. This reminds me when both Markieff and Marcus Morris - both twin brothers were also drafted back to back (13th and 14th overall) back in 2011 to different NBA teams.
After years of staying ‘average’ in the draft (picking players like Avdija, Kispert and Davis in consecutive years), the Wizards finally ‘swung for the fences’ in the Draft. They traded-up from eighth to seventh overall (losing one of the many Suns’ second round picks) to draft six-foot, six-inch guard in Frenchman Bilal Coulibaly. This very raw talent was teammates with Wembanyama at Metropolitans 92 in France, but only averaged 5 points per game and 3 rebounds per game, but did shoot 14 for 31 from beyond the arc (45%) in 27 games this past season.
There are other notes I would like to discuss, like how the Miami Heat picked the perfect pro prospect in UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. (a hard-nosed, physical defender for a team that has the same mantra) and how a Gaithersburg, Maryland player (UConn guard Jordan Hawkins) that won the NCAA title back in April is going to New Orleans, and is now an arm’s length away from his cousin in NCAA women’s champion Angel Reece, who just finished her first season with Louisiana State University (LSU) and transferred to LSU from the University of Maryland prior to the 2022-2023 season.
For the sake of brevity, let’s move on to the next topic.
4) MLB London Series this weekend - and what’s next year’s series?
If you tune on your television to FOX at 1 p.m. EST / 10 a.m. PST-onwards today and/or on ESPN at 10 a.m. EST / 7 a.m. PST on Sunday, you might be wondering why the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals are playing not only that early… But in LONDON.
Well, MLB instituted a “London Series” that first started in 2019 to expand their product globally. That first series took place between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees at London Stadium on the June 29, 2019 weekend, and the Yankees swept the two-game series in two high-scoring affairs, 17-13 and 12-6.
The 2020 series between the Cubs and Cardinals was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, and this is now the first series in London since that epic Yankees-Red Sox series. The games are also taking place at the same London venue.
Next year, as you can see above, two AL East division rivals in the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies will head overseas, on June 8 and 9. The series will have a one-year hiatus in 2025, but will resume in 2026.
That will do it for this Saturday edition of my Snippets. Enjoy the last weekend of June, and the penultimate weekend prior to the start of Wimbledon!
Until next time, signing off.