You'll read a lot more about draftees Jordan Hill and Toney Douglas in the coming days, weeks and months (presuming both stick around and don't depart in a Ricky Rubio trade).
But because of space limitations in the print edition (can't get enough about the 2,346th Mets-Yankees series), here are some interesting tidbits from their introductory meeting with New York's and New Jersey's nattering nabobs of negativism Friday, less than 24 hours after the Knicks drafted them:
- Douglas has been assigned No. 23, his number at Florida State. Although he didn't say so, presumably he'll surrender it willingly if a certain Cleveland superstar decides to set up shop in New York in 2010.
- Hill subscribes to Mike D'Antoni's "He can be like Amar'e Stoudemire" premise, saying he's worked with the Suns' (for now, pending a rumored trade to Golden State) big man during camps at Arizona and picked up a few things.
:"Amar’e’s definitely a scorer, athletic," he said. "He’s a monster. When I see what D’Antoni did to him, I thought he could do the same for me.”
- Hill is also the son of a father who was a cross-country trucker until his wife died of breast cancer when Hill was just 3. His father quit his job to help raise his son, who remembers little about his mother except a recollection he recalled Friday.
"I have flashbacks thinking about things I remember doing with her, but I don’t know," he said. "There’s one thing I remember, I was in an ambulance one time. I don’t know why.”
- Oh, and he's confident, saying of Donnie's Walsh's insistence that he may have been the best big man in the draft (including Blake Griffin),, "Blake Griffin is definitely a good player, but in my opinion, I've got a lot more skills than him."
- Douglas, meanwhile, says he's conversed with another Florida State product, former Knicks' point guard Charlie Ward and picked up a few things.
"He played defense. He hit open shots. He had toughness," said Douglass, the latter something he thinks he can bring to the table in the NBA.
Plenty more to come from both down the road.
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