Long time, no see, hear or read. Along with everyone else, I took a little time to decompress from the NBA finals, as well as throw myself into the World Cup. But good news, WOH is back with a brand new invention. Or really, just a new podcast with Rob, where we spend 90 minutes, first talking about the rumored Kevin Love deals with Golden State, (I get my Klay Thompson hate ON), break down the Spurs victory in the finals, before finishing up with some World Cup talk. We recorded pre-draft and pre USA NUMBER 1's winning-by-losing effort against Germany, so that's why it might sound dated.

After last weekend's draft combine in Chicago and Tuesday's draft lottery, as well as the several day gap between games 2 and 3 in the Conference Finals, we figured it would be a decent time to talk draft prospects with Dean Demakis of DeanOnDraft. Thankfully, we moved past the fact that I'm a little higher on Julius Randle now than I was earlier in the year, as that could easily have degraded in Kevin Love Debate 2.0, and people got sad when Rob and I appeared to get testy (it was all love, er, Love, no really, it was!) Anyway, audio and download after the jump:

This one is going up a little late, but Rob and I talked with Dean Demakis for about an hour on Wednesday night talking about prospects who could help or hurt themselves with good showings in the tourney. Obviously, some of the discussion is slightly dated (sorry, Jabari) as we're over halfway done with the first round games at the time I post this, but still good stuff from Dean after the jump.

It's not surprising that there are two items dominating the thoughts and tweets (not always in that order) of basketball intelligentsia this week. On one hand can  Phil Jackson SAVE THE KNICKS? (though, I would tweek the question slightly and wonder aloud if Phil Jackson  could save the rest of us from the Knicks?) Meanwhile, today marked the start of the paean to commercialization and exploitation of talent so crass that even the IOC thinks it's gauche, or in shorter form, the first day of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (proper; I like all right thinking people refuse to acknowledge the "1st round" as a real part of the tournament), it's time to fix the draft and end the scourge that is some teams being very bad (even though it's mathematically compelled in a league where some teams are very good).

Really, both issues reduce to one thing: some franchises perform better because they have better owners.  "Better" is sort of a catchall for acumen in hiring and firing coaches and executives, willingness to spend money appropriately, and more often than not, getting the hell out of the way. So, I wonder, why should we nibble around the edges of problems such as tanking, revenue sharing and free agency designed to improve competitive balance? Why not cut to the source?

So to that end, I present my Modest Proposal to fix all that ails the NBA: Relegation for owners.

I haven't regularly watched college basketball since probably the year J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison battled for College POTY. I'm not sure which season was Rob's last as a regular viewer. So, to speak intelligently about the upcoming extremely hyped, but suddenly mysterious draft, we turned to someone who is watching a lot so we don't have to, Dean Demakis from Dean on the Draft.