Geoff Petrie. President of the Sacramento Kings? Yeah him. He balled. True. He played in the NBA. Not only did he play, he was good. Seriously good. We’re not talking Rick Carlisle good (Note – we love Coach Carlisle), we’re talking balling good.

Petrie was a three sport athlete during his days at Springfield High School in Pennsylvania. Plenty of talent, he was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to attend Princeton University where he averaged 18.3ppg in his Tiger career before entering the NBA.

Petrie was drafted eighth in 1970 by the expansion Trail Blazers and signed to a three-year, $150,000 contract. He averaged 24.8 points an outing and was co-Rookie of the Year with Dave Cowens. Petrie was a long-range bomber before the league had long-range bombers. With range out past the three point line (a line that didn’t exist at the time), Petrie was a two time All Star and twice dropped more than 50 points in an NBA game. If you ask anyone who had to guard Petrie back in the day they will all say the same thing… that he was a killer. If not for injuries, he would have been one of the greatest of all time. Furthermore, he was the first NBA player to ditch his Converse & Adidas for a pair of Nikes.

It was late in the fall of 1971 when Petrie started to be grounded… “Tore my ACL in my left knee, never was the same,” according to Petrie. “It really got to me later in my basketball career, because the surgery to repair such an injury was very experimental at the time.”

As the years went on, Petrie’s knee became worse and his game had to change. ”I was taking a lot of anti-inflammatories and having the occasional injections,” Petrie said. “The cutting, the jumping, the planting, I couldn’t do it …what happens is you start to play around with things. By my sixth year, I was really struggling.” In the 1975-76 season, Petrie averaged 18.9ppg (struggling?) and at the close of the season he was traded to the Atlanta Hawks. Petrie never suited up for the Hawks, and instead retired from the NBA.

Over the next several years, watching basketball was tough on Petrie. He dabbled in real estate, managed the office of the Trail Blazers’ team doctor and took over the basketball team at Willamette College in ’83-84 when the coach went on sabbatical. “I missed my prime, and there were times when I thought, This just isn’t right,” says Petrie. He’s asked how good he could have been with a healthy left knee. “That’s not for me to judge, I guess. I was frustrated and was not prepared to stop playing at age 28. It was a difficult time, but the flip side is that I got to start for six years and play a lot when I was healthy. I wish we could have had a little more team success, but I had some individual success. Some of my knee injuries probably went all the way back to 9th grade football. I moved on but would not trade those six years for anything.”

What’s Geoff Petrie’s life now? He’s the President of Basketball Operations for the Sacramento King. Yeah the Kings are in a rebuilding process at the moment but let’s not forget that under Petrie, the Kings have drafted Peja Stojakovic, Jason Williams, Gerald Wallace, Hedo Turkoglu, Kevin Martin, Spencer Hawes, Jason Thompson, Tyreke Evans and Demarcus Cousins. He engineered the Mitch Richmond for Chris Webber trade bringing C-Webb to Sac-town, then two years later traded the overrated Jason Williams to the Grizzlies for Mike Bibby. In a few short years, Petrie turned around a franchise with a 27-55 record to a powerhouse that won an average of 56 games a season from 2001 to 2005. Petrie won the NBA’s Executive of the Year Award in 1999 an 2000 and perhaps may have earned the Kings a ring if not for a team called the Lakers and a guy named Tim.

These are probably things you know about Petrie’s career in the front office of Kings. But we bet you didn’t know he once was one of the NBA’s best, an NBA Rookie of the Year, dropped 50 points in a game and was one of the few powerhouse players to come out of the NCAA’s Ivy League? Now you know…

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We don’t get into the habit of defending Lebron James very often, but all the talk (much of it coming from Deshawn Stevenson) about Lebron ‘checking out’ in this Finals series is all a bit much. Granted, he’s not played at his usual standard offensively. The numbers tell that alone where James’ scoring has dropped to 17ppg down from the 25.8ppg he averaged against Chicago in the Eastern Conference Finals. Hate away, but in the end…..he’s defending well, he’s playing hard, he’s competing. He IS deferring to Wade more, yes. But if we took a poll with Miami Heat fans as to ‘who do you want taking a big shot at the end of the game?’…we are guessing that Dwayne Wade would receive more votes. And we’d agree. So Lebron is deferring offensively to a guy who is a better option? And what’s so bad about that?

Even so, Chris Sheridan from ESPN recently said ‘I asked Lebron if he could break a dollar and he said he could only give me three quarters.’

The Mavs are 3-0 in the NBA Finals against Miami…. when Brian Cardinal plays.

The New York Knicks recently held their free agent camp with Javaris Crittendon and Bonzi Wells both playing extremely well.

Allen Iverson wants to return to the NBA, but he couldn’t even muster a full season in Turkey? Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to see AI back in the NBA but we just don’t know he’s got enough in the tank.

We don’t want Isiah Thomas involved with ANY NBA team, but if it has to be the Pistons to keep him from destoying the Knicks again then we’ll live with that. Reality is, Joe Dumars is a better GM than Isiah Thomas will ever be a coach so the NBA is safer with Thomas in Detroit.

While we are talking about coaches, we would love to see Larry Bird back on the sidelines.

But we’ll settle for Mark Jackson… YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!! Could we be happier?  Probably not…

Portland are in talks with Sacramento &  Toronto in an attempt to move up in the NBA Draft. Apparently the Blazers have Andre Miller on the table with their 17th pick with the plan to move up and nab UCONN’s Kemba Walker.

While we’re on the draft, we’ll go out on a limb and say Kentucky big Enes Kanter is overrated. He has some serious range for a big guy, but when you’re his size you are going to score points in college. We’re hearing top 3 from some places, but we see him more as just outside the lottery.

We won’t dwell on Game 2 of the Finals too much. There’s PLENTY of good journalism on ESPN and other networks to dig into the results of Dallas’ epic come-from-behind win in Game 2 against Miami. But for us… Shawn Marion. Yep, Dirk was amazing in the fourth quarter. Yes, Tyson Chandler was great. Rick Carlisle did a phenomenal job managing the minutes. Especially for Chandler (38 mins up from a post-season average of 31.5) and Jason Kidd (38 mins up from 34) who both looked fresh everytime they were on the floor. But Marion. Shawn Marion. The guy made a tonne of big plays. There were nine times in the game where Dallas were scoreless for more than a minute. Four of those times, Marion broke the drought. Not to mention, Marion was also guarding Lebron James in the fourth quarter (James shot 0-3 in the finalperiod, missing all three of his jumpshots in the final 3:27). Shawn Marion.

Goodbye Shaq, we’ll miss you.

Gilbert Arenas is back on twitter.

Donnie Walsh is out of NY, is Mike D’Antoni next?

Steve Nash was in the crowd for Game 2 in Miami and mentioned afterwards that it was the first live NBA game he’s attended since he was in College at Santa Clara.

We really thought better of the LA Lakers organisation than to hire a coach without talking to Kobe Bryant. Now, let’s be realistic…the Buss family own that team. They can hire, fire, do whatever they please. Kobe is an employee so they hardly need his approval. BUT, out of respect for the guy you are paying $30m to and helped get you 5 x championships…maybe you should have made a call and say ‘Hey Kobe, you like Mike Brown as a coach?’

If Isiah Thomas ends up back in the Knicks organisation, James Dolan should be taken away by the men in white coats to a ‘special hospital’.

Mike Brown will be telling Kobe what to do from the Lakers bench… What do you think about that? We like Coach Mike Brown, but aren’t sure if he’s in the Doc Rivers category (nice guy, nice coach but not great) or the Greg Poppovich category (Coach extraordinaire – see also Phil Jackson). We’re really looking forward to seeing what Mike Brown can do with that Laker team.

There are four types of Dallas fans right now:
1. Fans who love Dallas.
2. Fans who love Dirk, therefore love Dallas but would love any Dirk-team.
3. Fans who are die hard Western Conference fans so at this point in the season, Dallas is their team.
4. Fans who hate Miami and are ordering their Mavs jerseys to wear during the finals as we speak.

Steve Nash, once again showing why he’s one of the best people in the NBA with his genuine support of NBA players having freedom of sexual preferance and his support of gay marriage in the USA. Love your work, Steve.

Jamal Crawford, even at age 31 has to be one of the most sought after guys this offseason.

We still don’t get why the Blazers fired GM Rich Cho. The guy made the biggest mid-season trade of 2010-11, bringing Gerald Wallace to P0rtland. That trade made the Trailblazers SO much better. Granted, they traded away some height but Wallace is a recent All Star who flourished in Portland after the trade. Then, when the season is done….they fire the guy who made it happen? Must be some serious personality conflicts in that front office. 3MW has learned one example of this, that when Brandon Roy complained of court-time late in the season, Cho was pushing internally to fine Roy for his public comments. Unfortunately for Cho, Blazers owner Paul Allen and President Larry Miller saw it differently and veto’d Cho’s attempts to punish Roy for his negative comments.

Back to the NBA Finals with the Mavs & Heat, we’ve got ANOTHER rematch on our hands. No doubt every reporter and analyst will talk of this, but we’re having our say too. Doing the research, these aren’t that rare in the whole scheme of things. 30 teams in the NBA, 15 teams per conference and we still have plenty of rematches in NBA Finals history. We’ll limit it to a 5 year window so we can include the current Finals and go back 40 years… check it:

2011 – Mavs v Heat rematch from 2006 (Heat won in 2006)
2010 – Lakers v Celtics rematch from 2008 (Lakers won the rematch after Boston won in 2008)
1998 – Bulls v Jazz rematch from 1997 (Bulls won both finals series)
1989 – Pistons v Lakers rematch from 1988 (Pistons won the rematch after LA won the 88 Finals)
1987 – Lakers v Celtics rematch from 1985 (Lakers won both finals series)
1986 – Celtics v Rockets rematch from 1981 (Boston won both finals series)
1985 – Lakers v Celtics rematch from 1984 (Lakers won the rematch, Boston won in 1984)
1983 – 76ers v Lakers rematch from 1982 (Sixers won the rematch, Lakers won in 1982)
1982 – 76ers v Lakers rematch from 1980 (Lakers won both finals series)
1979 – Bullets v Supersonics rematch from 1978 (Seattle won the rematch, Washington won in 78)
1973 – Knicks v Lakers rematch from 1972 (New York won the rematch, LA won in 1972)
1972 – Knicks v Lakers rematch from 1970 (Lakers won the rematch, NY won in 1970)

Draw your own conclusions on that one and let us know here at 3 Man Weave.

So, who’s going to write a book about the Maloof brothers and this current debacle with moving and not moving the Kings? We’d love to read that.

Dirk deserves a ring. We know, we know…he’s playing for Dallas. They are the official ‘old man brigade’ of the Conference Finals and seeing Mark Cuban on an NBA Championship float through the city of Dallas would be a little weird, if not disturbing. But Dirk…that dude deserves a ring. He’s always done things the right way, he’s a gun (averaging more than 23 a game for the last 10 seasons), has played through many different Dallas teams who were potentially winning Championships but hasn’t gotten there. We’d love to see him win a ring.

Grizzlies v Thunder Game 7…who you got? Is KD going to step up and get it done? Is Z-Bo gonna throw down and put OKC away? Who would have thought at this stage of the season we would have been talking about Memphis and Oklahoma City?

We will miss Phil Jackson, there’s no one like him.

Lebron and Wade both thought about joining the Bulls…who cares! Chicago could never have brought the pair of them into the Windy City (financially) and it’s Derrick Rose’s team anyway.

We are glad Kobe is getting some rest. He and Pau must be exhausted. You can say, ‘no excuses’ you can say that the Champions will get through it. But since the end of the 2007 season, with the 2008 Olympics, regular seasons, playoffs, finals and 2010 basketball championships…Pau & Kobe have played more games & minutes than any other NBA player. No wonder they couldn’t get it done against the Mavs, Three-Peats are hard work!

Carlos Boozer was quoted recently as saying ‘nobody was talking about us at the start of the season’ trying to paint a picture that the Bulls have come outta nowhere and ‘shown them all’. Yeah right, are you kidding? EVERYONE was talking about Chicago ALL SEASON. Pack your ego away, Carlos…you are a nice player, but you are fighting above your weight as it is.

Derrick Rose is leading all scorers in the playoffs with a 28.8 per game average, that’s a little surprising, but somehow not.

OKC’s Serge Ibaka is leading the NBA in blocks per game in the playoffs with a whopping 3.82 swats a game. That’s huge.

We love Greg Monroe.

We love Coach Brett Brown, the Australian Boomers coach who is also assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs.

We love that Shane Battier is relevant again in Memphis.

That is all…