Summer of Scheyer

For the Knicks, Heat, Nets, Cavs and Bulls, this is the "Summer of LeBron." For the Jazz, Pacers and Timberwolves, I'm calling it "The Summer of Scheyer."

The Duke two-guard went undrafted last night and I'm calling the Jazz and the Pacers as the favorites to land him. Both franchises have shown a consistent need to have white players on the team. The Jazz are the last team to make the NBA Finals with three white starters (Stockton, Hornacek and Ostertag in '98) and the Pacers seem to always have an abundance of white players on the roster (Mike Dunleavy, Troy Murphy, Josh McRoberts, Jeff Foster and Tyler Hansbrough on last season's team).

In past seasons, the Celtics would also be in the running. After all, this is a franchise who once posted a 65-win season with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge starting while Bill Walton, Jerry Sichting and Scott Wedman played key roles off the bench. But it seems to me that Boston embraced the end of the white star era when they went all out in 2008. Now their only white player is Brian Scalabrine, who only infrequently even dresses for the game.

I think the wild card in the hunt is the Timberwolves. Any franchise that has used top-six draft picks on Christian Laettner, Wally Szczerbiak and Kevin Love, and also signed both Mark Madsen and Fred Hoiberg in the same offseason, has to be a contender in the Scheyer sweepstakes.