May 22nd is when the NBA draft lottery occurs. That's the next day I'm worried about, as a Celtic fan.
For those of you who je ne sais this stuff, I'll try to explain. Every year, teams get a crack at the top talent leaving college (or high school, before they changed the rules). In theory, the worst team got to pick first, then the second worst picks next... all through to the best team, which gets to pick last.
Sounds fair, right?
Welllllllllllll... the problem was that, once a team figured out that they suck, it only made sense for them to lose as many games as possible, so as to get the top draft pick. They call this Tanking, and it's not at all unlike how professional wrestling jobbers work. Special Delivery Jones rarely won a fight, but he sold a good enough ass-whippin' that fans came out to see him perform.
Of course, wrestling is staged (far too much pain is inflicted for me to ever call wrestling "fake."), so it's ok if S.D. Jones gets stomped every week...it's a part of a greater Whole that all makes sense if you watch enough. They also have an audience that is trained from birth to know that sometimes the Hand is quicker than the Eye in the WWE.
The NBA is run differently, and- even though losing favors the Celtics right now- it doesn't look good to say "Come out tonight and watch the Celtics job ("job" = "lose on purpose") to Milwaukee!" You can fake effort and lose by playing rookies or getting the ball to a guy who can't shoot, but people see through it.
So.. the NBA came out with the Draft Lottery. To ensure that, back in 1985, no one lost on purpose to get Georgetown's Patrick Ewing (or "to ensure that New York got a superstar"), the NBA instituted a closed-room draft lottery. Every team that doesn't make the playoffs gets a few ping pong balls in a big tumbler, and theydraft in the order of which they are drawn.
Unfortunately... running an NBA team involves a great amount of risk assessment... and the best chance a bad team has to get better is to get the best college players. General Managers usually have short contracts, and are under pressure to produce quickly. It ends up that teams now tank to get more ping-pong balls, as opposed to flat-out tanking to get a particular pick.
Which adds risk... you can lose every game, and still not get the top pick... but a 38% chance of getting the next Abdul-Jabbar is better than a 15% chance, especially when your ass is on the hot seat and the fans already know that team you assembled blows like the North Wind. Those silly little ping-pong balls become the hope that your career hangs on.
So... 20 years after the fact... the NBA Draft lottery has actually increased tanking. A team that was looking at the 13th overall pick in 1984... perhaps a great team that had their best player injured the year before... now has the chance to bring home the next Larry Legend with just one funny bounce of a ping-pong ball. That team- which may have played for the sake of pride before, or for the benefit of the fans who supported them all year- now goes out and clowns through a game.
Granted, a higher draft pick doesn't guarantee success. The team that drafted Shaq never won ditka with him...or the team who drafted Kobe, Dr. J, Moses Malone, or Charles Barkley, for that matter. Also, draft picks can be botched. At least one man thought that drafting Sam Bowie over Air Jordan was a good idea. Millions thought Bush would be a good President. Mistakes happen.
How does this get to me? I have this sore spot on my hand, which will never go away. I got this sore spot by slamming my fist into the table when San Antonio beat us out in the draft lottery for the right to draft Tim Duncan, who went on to win 3 titles and maybe more. We finished the next season with Ron Mercer to show for our draft. Ron's out of the NBA, currently.
Whenever I see Tim Duncan, the pain in my hand returns. I've grown to love the pain, because the pain came through the acquisition of Wisdom. Wisdom is that little voice in your head that overrides your urge to act on impulse... sort of how Freud viewed the interaction of the Id and Superego, and why you don't tell the cop to suck an organ or why you don't bang your wife's friends.
Wisdom is setting off all kinds of alarms in my head right now. Some have been quited. It looks like we'll hold off Milwaukee for the greater amount of Ping. One of the two better college players- scoring machine Kevin Durant- is coming out. Either Durant or Greg Oden would be a nice fit alongside current Celtic keepers Paul Pierce and Albert Jefferson. These facts comfort me.
Oden is the one I worry about. He's a 7 foot monster, he's about 19 years old, he moves in the post like a young Hakeem and instinctively goes after every shot taken within 15 feet of him. There aren't 5 men on the planet who combine his size and skill set. You can't teach that, and getting this kid makes you a contender almost immediately. Given Jefferson/Pierce and the fact that the Celts play in an almost comically pooor division, Oden could carry us right into the Finals.
Unless, of course he A) stays in college or B) gets drafted by someone else... which is what torments me right now. I'm betting that he'll drop out of college- he'd be a fool not to. What scares me is where we started off here... the draft lottery.
Once those ping-pong balls start tumbling, anything can happen. Those of you who think the lottery is rigged occassionally might expect Oden to end up in Seattle (which is struggling to stay afloat as a franchise) or a big-market team like Chicago or Los Angeles (New York won the Ewing lottery). Or a team right behind us- say, Atlanta or Charlotte- leapfrogs us and takes our big monster. Either one of these scenarios screws up my 2007-2015 NBA seasons, and might just drive me to kill.
As of now- April 14th- I'm just a soccer mom who knows things like what a Tommy Point is, and how to execute a box-and-one zone defense. By May 22nd, I might be Ma Barker. I'm small and pretty, too... you'll never see it coming. Few of us do.
