NBA draft lottery
Tonight is the ping pong competition known as the NBA lottery. Two teams will come out of the lottery as clear winners, the rest will have big questions still to be answered. This is because, if you read all that is being reported about the draft, there are only 2 players available, Durant and Oden. It is hard to find information on anybody else this year...
I am rooting for two teams to occupy the two "winning" spots. First is the Celtics (hometown) and second is the Hawks (don't laugh, read on).
First the Celtics -
The Celtics haven't won a championship in 21 years, that to me is amazing. The beginning of the end was in June of 2006, fresh off a title run over Houston, the Celtics pick Len Bias in the draft with the #2 overall pick (behind Brad Daugherty)
At the time, I was a huge Celtic fan and thought that Bias would become a James Worthy type of player but with a power game too. For sure, everybody that followed the Celtics were counting on adding many championships and that Bias would lengthen Bird/McHale's careers by taking some of their minutes as they aged. Tragedy struck as Len Bias died from a cocain overdose less than 48 hours after being picked by the greatest franchise of all time. Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith have both stated that Michael Jordan and Bias were the best players ever to come through the ranks of the ACC. A nice article from the Boston Globe is here http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2003/11/18/what_might_have_been/
Not only did the Celtics not get their next franchise player to follow Bird, they began a downward spiral that continues today. With Bird, McHale, Parrish, DJ, Ainge, Walton all ending their careers the Celtics were moving to a new crop of players, led by Reggie Lewis. Continuing the spiral, Reggie passed away when his heart failed him in a pickup game during the offseason in 1993.
Ten years ago, the Celtics appeared to be poised to vault back into contention with two top picks in a rich draft. The odds were in their favor to land the top pick who became Tim Duncan. Unfortunately for Celtic fans, the ping pong balls didn't cooperate and Duncan went to the Spurs to be teamed with David Robinson and immediately begin a mini dynasty.
For Celtic fans, last week's cover on the sporting news magazine tells it all.
The era of Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce followed and we know how successful that has been. With a good chance to get one of the top two picks this year, the Celtics have the opportunity that comes around every 10 years or so. (1986 - Bias, 1997 - Duncan, 2007 - Oden/Durant)
Espn.com has a mock draft simulator that you can mess around with, in 10 tries the Celtics held one of the top two spots in 8 of the tries for me. I can live with that.
Now the second of the teams I hope to see get one of these two standout college players, the Hawks
The Hawks have a different story to tell. In the 80's the Hawks and the city of Atlanta considered them very close to championship quality. Unfortunately, the truth is with the Celtics, 76ers and Pistons, the Hawks weren't coming out of the east never mind beating the Rockets or Lakers in the 80's. Sometimes a franchise has to build it's memories up to compensate for recent performance, this is clearly the case with the Hawks. The franchise has been at or near the bottom of the league for close to a decade. They haven't made the playoffs since the lockout of 1998-1999. They have averaged 27.25 wins in the 8 years since then. The GM, Billy Knight, has a knack for making bad moves since taking over around 5 years ago. He has consistently picked tweeners, players that are too small to play forward and too big to be traditional guards. He keeps pulling the "best athelete" line and has ammassed a team of similar players. Nice article from last year: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2006/writers/chris_mannix/03/21/hot.seat/t1_knight2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/chris_mannix/03/21/hot.seat/index.html&h=410&w=300&sz=29&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=v9zev1XLKQAeqM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=91&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbilly%2Bknight%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den
The one true All-Star on the team is Joe Johnson.
Johnson was acquired in a trade with Phoenix that leaves the Hawks in a tough spot this draft. Included in the deal was the Hawks first round pick, unless it was in the top 3. If the Hawks end up in 4th or later in the lottery, they won't have a 1st round pick.
In the Espn.com simulator, the Hawks had the top spot once and finished out of the top 3 all 9 other times I ran it.
Lets assume they get the top pick or even the number 2 pick, my bet is Billy Knight doesnt go with either Durant or Oden, call it hunch.
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