Love-Mayo trade ruins NBA Draft

During last Thursday’s NBA Draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves selected shooting guard O.J. Mayo of USC with the third pick, and the Memphis Grizzlies took UCLA forward/center Kevin Love with the fifth pick. The teams then swapped the players, with the T-wolves also getting Mike Miller in the deal. Unfortunately, that trade ruined what would have been two perfect synergies of a player’s name and team.

First, let’s talk about Kevin Love. It’s hard to go wrong with “Love” as your franchise player’s name. But as pointed out in Bill Simmons’ mailbag on ESPN.com, what would have made it even better is paring K. Love with the current Memphis star Rudy Gay. The Grizzlies could have held “Gay-Love Night at the FedEx Forum.” That’s a whole demographic the NBA has largely ignored.

But the most overlooked downside of the trade was taking Mayo out of Minnesota. The Timberwolves missed out on what could have been one of the great matches between a player’s name and the city: the Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota! Why has no one mentioned this? The headlines write themselves! “Mayo puts on a Clinic.” Did McHale not consider the possibilities of paring one of the NBA’s hot young stars with one of the world’s premier medical facilities? Can’t you see advertisements for the hospital with O.J. Mayo in a white lab coat and those “I don’t really need them, but I wanted to look smart at the draft” glasses? Free passes to a Timberwolves game with every major in-patient procedure? “Mayo” jerseys for sale at the hospital gift shop? $50 to Clinic Development Fund for every 3-pointer O.J. hits during home games? They missed a real bonanza here.