Penny for Your Backcourt?

Looking for the past three months at the Miami Heat, it’s difficult to tell whether the team took the off-season off or merely had an off off-season. In one of the deepest drafts in memory, the Heat came away with all of Daequan Cook, who played fewer than 20 minutes per game as a freshman at Ohio State last year. The team also added the mummified remains of Penny Hardaway, along with Lakers enigma Smush Parker. It might be too early to tell for sure, but the guess here is that if a team’s answer is “Penny and Smush,” it probably misheard the question.

But the Atlanta Hawks -- now there’s a team that might actually have drafted its way back to ... well, if not respectability, at least a semblance of it. Al Horford (of the Florida Gators’ two title runs) and Acie Law were near the tops of everyone’s draft boards. And it is preseason yet, but the Hawks’ Joe Johnson and Josh Smith might be worth the price of admission on their own. See Penny and Shaq in their first Miami home game together at the American Airlines Arena (601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $10.
Wed., Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m., 2007