Are you ready for the NBA Draft tonight?  What's that you say, you've been too busy volunteering at the soup kitchen and reading to sick children at the hospital to do your draft preparations?  No problem, I've got you covered - here's your quick guide to this year's NBA Draft.  Do a cram sessions so you can impress your friends and colleagues with your immense draft knowledge.

Before the NBA Finals started, Bloguin's basketball writers put their collective craniums together to vote on the top 10 players participating in this year's Finals.  Now that the final buzzer has sounded and Kobe Bryant gets fitted for ring number five, let's take a look at how our player predictions turned out in real life.

The basketball world lost a great ambassador today, as 7'7" Manute Bol passed away.  Bol was more than just a basketball player - he was a great humanitarian and an all-around good guy.  In honour of him, enjoy this video of Bol doing what I enjoyed watching him do the most during his career - knock down 3s.

This might come across like I'm speaking ill of the dead, but as a Suns fan I'm not sad to see GM Steve Kerr leave the organization.  Besides the fact that I enjoy him as a television commentator far more than a basketball executive, I never had confidence in him that he had a feasible plan for the team or was even a competent GM, for that matter.  Sure, the team had a great season this past year, far exceeding expectations, but the success seemed to be in spite of Kerr.

Fret not, Lakers fans - all is not lost.  I know things are looking pretty grim right now, but no need to panic.  Which might sound like a weird thing to say, what with the Boston Celtics leading the Los Angeles Lakers 3-2 in the NBA Finals, but it all depends on how you look at things.  Is the glass half-empty or half-full?  That's your call.

We spend so much time analyzing the play of the Kobe Bryants and the Paul Pierces of the world that we can overlook what often makes the difference between a team winning and losing a NBA title.  I'm talking about role players.  And while every team needs stars to win, it often comes down to the play of the off-the-radar players on a team's roster when the chips are down.  Michael Jordan wouldn't have won all his NBA titles without John Paxson and Steve Kerr knocking down 3s.  Or look no further than the ultimate role player - Robert Horry - and his seven championship rings.

Which brings us to this year's NBA Finals, which is turning into a showcase of role players.  While the Lakers won Game 1 mostly on the backs of their star players, the past three games of the Finals have been all about the lesser talents.  Game 2 was all about Ray Allen and his 32 points and eight three-pointers.  I know what you are saying - Ray Allen, a role player?  While that is a stretch, it's a fact that Allen isn't a star for the Celtics anymore - in fact, when ranking the top 10 players in the Finals heading into this series, the Bloguin writers ranked Allen fourth best on Boston.  So, yes, Allen should be considered a "lesser star" if he is only the fourth best player on his team. 

This might seem like an odd time to write this, what with the Boston Celtics beating the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 2 and, in the process, stealing home court advantage in the NBA Finals.  But history states that the Boston Celtics are history in this series - the Lakers should leave the Finals as champions once again.  And we're not just talking about an obscure historical stat from the annals of basketball history pointing towards a Lakers championship - we're talking about three key L.A. advantages that should swing the outcome of the rest of this series.

We lost the greatest basketball coach of all-time (and a fine human being) this weekend as legendary UCLA coach John Wooden passed away at the age of 99.  Here's a nice retrospective on the man that first aired during the 1988 NCAA Final Four.

One thing the long wait between the end of the Conference Finals and the start of the NBA Finals has afforded is the time to debate several trivial issues.  While some of the arguments are ridiculous (Kobe Bryant is better than Michael Jordan), some of them do have merit, such as 'who are the ten best players playing in this year's Finals?'.  In that vein, we tapped into the brightest basketball minds in the world today (otherwise known as Bloguin's NBA writers) and voted on that issue.  So, without further ado, here is our rankings of the top ten players in this year's Finals.

For the 42nd time in a row, the Phoenix Suns season has come to a disappointing conclusion. The 42-year drought, in fact, would make the Suns the longest tenured NBA franchise without a NBA Championship (if you count Denver's time in the ABA, they've gone 43 years without winning a title). Yet long-suffering Suns fans aren't shown the same level of pity as other fans of perennial losers, like say Cleveland or .... Cleveland. But it is not just the fact that the Suns always lose the big one - it's the heartbreaking fashion that they tend to lose it in that is the real kicker. Let's reminisce on some of the greatest kick in the gut moments in Suns history.