NBA BUCKS- not Milwaukee

-Buckeye Fans to Watch the NBA Summer League-

By Adam Kiefaber

Before the ’07 NBA Draft, Michael Redd was the only former Ohio State Buckeye left in the league. In fact, only four Buckeyes including Redd, Lawrence Funderburke, Jim Jackson and Ken Johnson played a game in the NBA during the 21st century.

Now, Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr., Daequan Cook and Ron Lewis are expected to play in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, which begins today and runs through July 15th.

Oden and Cook have already signed multi-million-dollar contracts. Also, undrafted-NCAA-tournament star Ron Lewis signed to play for Houston Rockets’ summer-league team. Currently, the Rockets team website has a poll asking- ‘Which Rockets player will have the best week in the Las Vegas summer league?’- the choices are John Lucas III, Steve Novak, Lior Eliyahu, Aaron Brooks or Carl Landry. Who in the world is Lior Eliyahu? I don’t know, but he has 12% of the vote.

Conley Jr. and the Memphis Grizzlies will take on Team China tonight at 7:30pm Eastern time. Yi Jianlian will be playing for Team China. Jianlian was the sixth overall pick by the Milwaukee Bucks. NBA.com claims that all of the games will be televised on NBA-TV. Many games will be shown by way of tape delay.

At 10pm Eastern time tonight, Oden’s Portland Trail Blazers will face the Boston Celtics. Oden will team up with Florida’s Taurean Green and Duke’s Josh McRoberts. Many NBA experts are hoping to see Oden on the floor at the same time with LaMarcus Aldridge. I wouldn’t call this the official schedule, but the Trail Blazers are set to play Sunday (July 8th) at 4pm, Wednesday (July 11th) at 10:30pm, Saturday (July 14th) at 10:30pm and Sunday (July 15th) at 10pm. (all games given in Eastern time)

Besides tonight, Memphis will play Monday (July 9th) at 6pm, Thursday (July 12th) at 6pm, Friday (July 13th) at 6pm and on Saturday (July 14th) at 6pm. (again all times are Eastern- and the schedule is more official because it was given on the Memphis team website).

Lewis and the Rockets schedule starts on Tuesday (July 10th) at 10:30pm, Thursday (July 12th) at 6pm, Friday (July 13th) at 10pm, Saturday (July 14th) at 8:30pm and Sunday (July 15th) at 8:30pm. (Again Eastern time, but times are from NBA.com, which means some times will change)

NBA-TV and NBA.com are making a slight push at gaining viewers this week for their broadcast, which will be the first look at one of more popular drafts in some time. However, it is disorganized and times are not official on the NBA’s official website. That would be fine if play started a month from now, but the summer league starts today.

So if you have NBA-TV and you want to catch the action, you might have to randomly click over to the station. Personally, I wouldn’t believe what the guide tells you. Good luck.