This year's draft had it all: trades, humor and the FBI

	The wait for Marcus Williams may have been excruciating, but the payoff -- a role as Jason Kidd's understudy -- appears to be worth it. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Twenty thousand people flocked to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night ... to see the sold-out Madonna: Confessions tour. The other couple of thousand were there for the first-ever NBA Role Player Draft -- or the 2006 NBA Draft, whichever you prefer to call it. Stars (and divas) it lacked, but it was ripe with drama in the form of 15 trades, hell-raising Knicks fans and secret agents. After a night behind the scenes, I bring you 10 choice happenings, conversations and observations.

1. The slide of Marcus Williams

Early-week rumors had the draft's biggest slider being Duke's J.J. Redick, he of the ailing back and recent DUI arrest. The day before the draft, it was Bradley's Patrick O'Bryant, due to speculation that his motivation didn't match his height. When the time finally came on draft night it was UConn's Marcus Williams who was the last man sitting in the greenroom. Redick went at No. 11. O'Bryant was gone at No. 9. With every other table reduced to Sprite bottles, Spalding basketballs and relatives in new hats, Williams skidded to New Jersey at No. 22.

How did the kid who was unquestionably the college game's best point guard -- and the nation's No. 1 assist man for the past two seasons -- take a free fall all the way to the Meadowlands? In the end, it wasn't about the stolen laptops that forced him to miss the first half of 2005-06. It was about his weight. It was about his speed. And it was about draft-day circumstances. I called one NBA war room that picked elsewhere during Williams' plunge and was given this explanation: "He was the best college point guard. But we didn't think his game translated as well to the pros; it's a half-court style and the league is moving toward full-court play. Plus, he showed up in Orlando with weight and fitness issues, and I think that turned some people off. We saw this drop coming." At the pre-draft camp, Williams was 215 pounds with 12.4 percent body fat and made a few teams uncomfortable. The lone point guard who was fatter, percentage-wise, was Syracuse's Gerry McNamara, at 12.8 -- and he went undrafted.

The circumstances unfolded like this, as teams with point-guard needs made other moves: Toronto held on to No. 1, rather than trading down, and took Andrea Bargnani. Atlanta fell in love with a power forward, Shelden Williams, and stayed loyal to him at No. 5. The Celtics traded for Portland point Sebastian Telfair (but could deal him for Allen Iverson). Philly, perhaps waiting for Telfair, went with a small forward, Rodney Carney. Indiana grabbed a dude named Williams -- Memphis' Shawne, who wasn't in New York. Washington went foreign (and big) with Ukrainian Oleksiy Pecherov. Phoenix drafted the speedier point Rajon Rondo, then shipped him to Boston. And there was Marcus Williams, at 22, trying to act like he wasn't upset ... and there were the Nets, salivating, because they didn't think they'd get that kind of backup for Jason Kidd.

Sorry, Houston, but Rudy Gay won't be suiting up for the Rockets this fall. Shane Battier and Stromile Swift will, though. AP

"Everything happens for a reason," Williams said. Who knows? Perhaps the NBA fattened up his Orlando numbers, and hurt his stock, to ensure that Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson would continue to receive quality alley-oops after Kidd retires. At the mention of the high-flying duo, Williams really smiled for the first time since getting picked, and said, "That's kind of like throwing to two Rudys." As in ex-teammate Rudy Gay. Maybe Williams' few hours of greenroom agony were worth it, to land in a playoff situation with a superstar for a mentor.

Williams' old coach, Jim Calhoun, said in a press release on Wednesday that Williams was "the steal of the draft." An inadvertent punch line, no doubt, but with the analysis, I have to agree. Speed and weight be damned, the kid can run a team.

2. Instead of a draft, a trade show broke out

Fifteen draft-night trades turned the draft board into a mess. The players were not spared from the insanity.

• Tyrus Thomas and LaMarcus Aldridge basically sat in a room together for an hour and a half, cut off from their entourages and the press between the time they were picked and the time the trade between the Bulls and the Blazers was made official. "It was an agonizing wait," Thomas said. Not until 9:17 p.m. did David Stern announce the deal from the podium. I was sitting in the stands with Brian Elfus, one of Thomas' agents, at that moment; he said that his camp didn't know about the deal until approximately 7:10 p.m., just 20 minutes before the draft began. The news, phoned in from Bulls GM John Paxson, was a relief; Thomas had been speculated to go as high as No. 2 and as low as No. 9 in the lead-up to Wednesday. "We're feeling a lot better now," said Thomas' cousin, Shedrich Franklin, who was sitting alongside Elfus. Down in the greenroom, the rest of Thomas' family was happily donning their second set of draft-night hats.

• Rudy Gay had to spend the whole night in his Rockets dome, doing interviews and the like, despite knowing that he was never going to actually be a Rocket. The deal sending him and Stromile Swift to Memphis for Shane Battier was made public but can't be official until mid-July. The hat thing wasn't Gay's fault; he was just following the league rules. But he'd clearly had a long day after falling to No. 8 (from potentially No. 3) and then getting shipped to Grizz-town. He walked by a TV in the interview room, saw his name flashing across the bottom of the screen on ESPN's ticker, stopped and said to everyone within earshot, "Man, did I get traded again?"