i know theres a bruins nation. But someone put it up here and us bruins like to drive you insane too.

Though on a bruin related note , do any of you other bruins feel bad hating on baron as a fellow bruin? I started school there the fall after he declared and now i’ve decided he is awful and needs to be traded for a bag of balls..

Maybe the clips should never get an LA point guard ever again. I mean andre, baron, jason hart. All terrible.

See CS, you can do this. Kind of a funny sequence, now that it’s playing itself out. It never seemed true that Sidney was going to hit Howland’s benchmarks.

And it’s also worth looking at what’s going on with Jrue Holiday and J’mison (Bobo) Morgan—and Alfred Aboya, for that matter. There are two things going on with Howland’s resurgent UCLA program: the way that they play and compete and get into the tournament, how they’ve been to the Final Four, and their attempt to win a national championship; and secondly the pipeline to the NBA that has been established, which is a more interesting topic for ClipsNation. (And it partly justifies the original Renardo Sidney post).

It’s not just the Farmar-Affalo-Westbrook-Collison turnover, where Farmar’s solid status and Westbrook’s surprising rise are the hallmarks, but there’s more going on there. The NBA likes the fact that guys come out of UCLA playing defense. You keep hearing it with Westbrook, and we’re sensitive to it because there’s an element of hype, as we look at it in comparison to Eric Gordon. Yes, Westbrook plays defense and rebounds and he’s athletic, but my guess is that people only talk about his defensive abilities because he went to UCLA. Gordon plays really good defense and he’s very athletic, but he goes to the rookie-soph game and the commentators don’t even know who he is, and they’re not looking at his all-around game or his defense. All you notice if you’re ignorant, when you first look at Gordon, is how perfect his shot is. You have to watch him to realize that he’s as athletic as Westbrook and just as committed on the defensive end (we just wish he was as committed to rebounding, but it has been pointed out that Westbrook gets some extra rebounds because he’s not nearly as good a shooter, and thus spends more time around the basket).

Those are just the guards—and I haven’t gotten to Jrue Holiday yet. First, Collison. Collison is going to be a really good pro. There’s not much more to say about it. I’m not sure if he’s a starter (on a developing team, like Westbrook), or a backup (like Farmar, on an elite team), but he’ll be able to do the job.

With big guys, you have the successful Kevin Love one-and-done experiment. And it’s worth noting that Kevin Love got a lot better during his year at UCLA, and he was already extremely highly skilled.

But the interesting guy is LR Mbah-Moute, who is a solid utility wing, and has his spot because he can play defense number one, and do everything else at a fairly efficient level. He’s a good player, but a whole lot of that is Howland and the mindset he establishes.

I say it’s interesting, not because we care so much about LRMM, but because of Alfred Aboya. Aboya obviously plays defense and rebounds. He has a great NBA PF body, size and strength, and it will be interesting to see how he fares in the combine—I wonder if he’s showing up on Draft Express and what they think. And now, as a senior, he can shoot and hit the perimeter jump shot. So, to my surprise, I’m wondering if he’s a Millsap (2nd round pick) or somebody comparable. If he does end up as a 2nd round pick, he might well have the same kind of success as LRMM, if he finds himself on the right team. He’s a great kid it seems, but a lot of that is Howland and his program.

The question mark is Jrue Holiday. He’s got all of the NBA tools and skills, and he’s projected as a top 5 pick in the same mode as OJ Mayo or Eric Gordon, but he’s just not making a huge impact out on the court. It’s an odd situation. He might step up in the tournament, but it could be argued that other Bruin freshmen, like Drew Gordon and Jerime Anderson, have shown much more improvement during the season, although they’re not big impact or spotlight players like Holiday. Very curious to see how this plays out, and what the next installment of the UCLA NBA pipeline yields.