NBA: Sefolosha great pickup for OKC

Watching Thabo Sefolosha run all over the court, playing great defense, grab rebounds, take good shots, you realized that at the heart of the NBA is this truth: One’s man junk is another man’s treasure.

Two weeks ago, the Thunder traded the lower of its two first-round draft picks this summer to Chicago for Sefolosha. How could the Bulls, fighting New Jersey and Milwaukee for the Eastern Conference’s eighth and final playoff spot, not want a player like Sebolosha.

Well, sometimes guys just don’t fit. Sometimes a roster is bloated with too many players of similar size and skill. Sometimes there’s a personality conflict. And sometimes an organization just moves on.

Some say the Bulls had too many wing players, but on the same day Chicago trade Sefolosha, the Bulls traded forSacramento’s John Salmons, who is very much like Sefolosha only with more offense and apparently a worse attitude.

I don’t know how to explain a team like Oklahoma City, which won three of its first 32 games, failed to find a way to use Joe Smith, who is not Karl Malone or Elvin Hayes but remains a fine player in his old age. OKC tried to trade Smith to New Orleans in the Tyson Chandler deal, and when that deal fell through, Smith eventually was just waived, as a personal favor to allow Smith to catch on with a contender.