drafts from the past

The Timberwolves fired coach Dwane Casey today, which is especially funny considering that the turmoil in their locker-room was doubly ignited by the Pistons game last week when Casey benched Ricky Davis, and then Antonio McNICE waved his magic wand and caused their whole team to implode by gently destroying Mark Madsen and then baiting Kevin Garnett into throwing an illegal air-punch. Speaking of McNICE and KG, I was looking at the nba drafts from 1988-2006 (roughly defined as the part of recorded history that i was aware of basketball), and there are some mindblowing ones. There is a really convenient website with all of the drafts - http://www.nbadraft.net/history.asp - and the 1995 draft went: Joe Smith, Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and THEN Kevin Garnett. Wow. I know it's always a gamble to pick guys right out of High School, and that aspect of having to gamble on those guys is a large part of why GMs like the new age minimum, but you see this all the time! For example, the Warriors could have taken Tracy McGrady out of HS instead of...drumroll...Adonal Foyle. Argh. But for all the talk about the 2003 draft, I'd take the 1996 draft as clearly the best of the last 20 years. Iverson, Camby, Starbury and Ray Allen in the top 5 and then, about 10 picks later, Kobe, Peja, Steve Nash and Jermaine O'Neal. Funny how the 2003 draft is basically this year's EAST all-star team (LeBron, Wade, Bosh) and the 1996 draft is basically this year's WEST all-star team (Kobe, Iverson, Nash). Though the 1996-er O'Neal will start for the East and the 2003-er Melo will start for the West. Consider that one a time-travel-assisted trade. I guess that provokes the following question. This year the West is clearly the better conference, but except for Melo, are all of the "future of the nba" guys in the East?? I guess Yao and Nowitzki are not *that* old, but Dwight Howard will be bringing Meals On Wheels to their retirement homes when he's still 28.