You kept waiting for the other sneaker to drop.

On a hot-as-a-draft-rumor Thursday in Oakland, you just knew the phone lines were burning between the Warriors' headquarters and Memphis. At No. 11, the Warriors had taken ``Jerry's guy,'' Frenchman Mickael Pietrus. Hints dropped by Grizzlies General Manager Jerry West had convinced just about every mock drafter that West would do whatever it took to land ``the Michael Jordan of Europe.''

If West loves him, went the runaway thinking, he must be something. West is the best, as a talent evaluator and draft manipulator. Surely he had worked some five-way trade involving the Warriors.

You waited . . . and waited . . . until West dropped the other sneaker on the head of Warriors G.M. Garry St. Jean.

Interviewed on ESPN, West acknowledged he had traded the player he picked 13th, Marcus Banks, plus his No. 27 to Boston for the two players the Celtics had taken, Troy Bell and Dahntay Jones. So this was his Plan B because the Warriors had snatched Pietrus two picks ahead of him?

``That's really strange,'' West said with mock surprise. ``I wouldn't have taken him at 13. We think he's a great prospect, and we could have traded up to get him, but there was somebody we liked a little better at 13.''

Somebody who was gone. Somebody the Warriors did not draft. Michael Sweetney, who went No. 9 to the New York Knicks? Jarvis Hayes, who went 10th to Washington? Nick Collison, who went 12th to Seattle?

Uh-oh. Had St. Jean read and believed too many West-manipulated mock drafts? Through the media, had West misled St. Jean into ``stealing'' a player West now says he wouldn't have taken two picks later? Had overhyped mystique created another Warriors draft mistake, considering the player St. Jean passed?