So Monday night I was flying home from vacation/law school graduation (definitely not my law school graduation; big ups instead to my brother John on that one) with every intention of watching the first game of the Heat-Pistons conference finals and reporting on it right here, since it's the series with actual suspense. Fortunately I was flying Frontier and, as you have probably seen on those commercials with the talking animals, I get DirecTV right at my seat.
Unfortunately I didn't pay close enough attention to the fine print, which is that I was not actually flying on Frontier, but rather something called Frontier Jet Express operated by Horizon Air. I don't even know what that means.
(Oh, wait, yes I do: it means that instead of taxiing right up to the gate like the rest of you losers, I got to exit my plane down a metal stairway right onto the tarmac and enjoy the outdoors for a brief moment before I have to enter the stuffy old airport. I felt like the President or something, except that before takeoff, he's not overpowered by the barbeque sauce stench of the burger-inhaling older gentleman sitting next to him.)
So I ended up with an overly chatty pilot instead of a television, and thus you don't get any insightful analysis on that front.
But, thankfully, this week also contained the potential highlight of every Nuggets season of the last ten years or so, excluding, of course, the last two: the draft lottery. I don't know why I got excited every year; despite always-abysmal records, the Nuggets inevitably ended up missing out on the chance to draft future stars like Paul Pierce, Amare Stoudemire, and Dwyane Wade. Oh, wait, no, we didn't.
One trap I'm glad I never fell into as a fan was the constant whining that the draft lottery is fixed. Unlike many fans, I just don't think that's true. And to prove it, I was going to go through every year to make my point, but I was only a few seasons in before I was boring myself to death.
Yes, the NBA has an obvious interest in keeping its big-market teams competitive. Just like baseball. Football too, I guess, though I think it's popular enough for that not to matter.
Many league observers assume the best way to keep big-market teams in the forefront is to make sure one of them wins the draft lottery. Else why have a draft lottery in the first place? I think it's just a cheesy promotional gimmick, not a sinister game-fixing tool, and hey, it worked on me. (Aside from which, if getting the top pick is really going to make that big of a difference, then pretty soon there wouldn't be any big-market teams eligible for the lottery, right?)
The prime example everyone cites of lottery-fixing is Patrick Ewing going to New York in 1985. Each non-playoff team had an equal chance at the time, so it really wasn't a huge stretch that he got there. (Obviously teams didn't really have an equal chance if the results were really planned in advance, but if anything, it's the early rules of the draft lottery, not its results, that were ridiculous.)
Then a year like this comes along, and Milwaukee, not exactly an American cultural center, wins the lottery. So what's up now?
I can hear it now: wait a second, Mike, who cares what team gets the top selection when the top player might be from Australia? Good point-the draft and, more to the point, future careers are not entirely predictable. Sometimes the guy who ends up being the best player is picked further down, sometimes the top choices aren't that great. So what the NBA must do is just fix it whenever there's an obvious star coming out and go with an actual lottery in other years, right?
Unfortunately for this theory, there's a huge list of obvious future superstars who didn't end up in big markets. For example, Shaquille O'Neal and Alonzo Mourning both came out in 1992, but Orlando and Charlotte ended up holding the top selections.
Orlando won again in 1993 and picked Chris Webber (though the Magic ended up trading him for the equally-soft Penny Hardaway). I don't know what motivation the league would have had to help out a then-recent expansion team so much as to give them the top pick two years in a row. Grant Hill and Jason Kidd were available in 1994 when Milwaukee won the lottery over big teams like the Lakers, Clippers and Celtics. (Though of course the Bucks, in their infinite wisdom (and foreshadowing of things to come, if they really take Marvin Williams this year), went for neither, and instead chose Glenn Robinson.)
Fast-forward to 1997, when Tim Duncan was the most obvious can't-miss player since Ewing (though by now he's clearly surpassed Ewing as a player-in fact, for years I've thought what the Sports Guy of ESPN.com recently said, that Duncan is the best power forward in league history). If ever the NBA had a reason to fix the lottery, this would be the year, and the Celtics, having two picks, had a great shot at Duncan.
That would have been good for the league, but the Celtics were in really terrible shape. Okay, Duncan could have gone to Philadelphia and teamed up with Allen Iverson, coming off a tremendous first season. Or he could have headed to the Nets, who are at least the bastard stepchild in a big market. Instead, he ended up in San Antonio, which was good news for David Robinson, but not particularly exciting for the NBA. (Consider the amount of love Duncan would get if he was in New Jersey or Boston-for starters, people would stop acting like Kevin Garnett is his equal.)
Bonus Nuggets fan trivia: 1997 was the year we chose Tony Battie over Tracy McGrady. Thank you, Allan Bristow!
There weren't any obvious future franchise cornerstones for a few years, but in 2002, we had the Yao Ming and Jay Williams duo. Williams was clearly way overrated, but Yao was at least intriguing, and he ended up in Houston when New York or the Clips could have had him.
And finally, LeBron James in 2003. Lottery entrants that year included the Knicks, Bulls, and the Detroit Pistons, who were not only from a big city but clearly a team with a good chance of success the following season (like an NBA championship). Instead, James ended up in his hometown of Cleveland (well, it's not really his hometown, but close enough), which had the same best chance of winning as our proud, creamy Nougats. Some still argue LeBron was destined for Cleveland; I disagree.
So there you have it, the NBA draft lottery is definitely not loaded in favor of big-market teams. Now, playoff officiating...
Unfortunately I didn't pay close enough attention to the fine print, which is that I was not actually flying on Frontier, but rather something called Frontier Jet Express operated by Horizon Air. I don't even know what that means.
(Oh, wait, yes I do: it means that instead of taxiing right up to the gate like the rest of you losers, I got to exit my plane down a metal stairway right onto the tarmac and enjoy the outdoors for a brief moment before I have to enter the stuffy old airport. I felt like the President or something, except that before takeoff, he's not overpowered by the barbeque sauce stench of the burger-inhaling older gentleman sitting next to him.)
So I ended up with an overly chatty pilot instead of a television, and thus you don't get any insightful analysis on that front.
But, thankfully, this week also contained the potential highlight of every Nuggets season of the last ten years or so, excluding, of course, the last two: the draft lottery. I don't know why I got excited every year; despite always-abysmal records, the Nuggets inevitably ended up missing out on the chance to draft future stars like Paul Pierce, Amare Stoudemire, and Dwyane Wade. Oh, wait, no, we didn't.
One trap I'm glad I never fell into as a fan was the constant whining that the draft lottery is fixed. Unlike many fans, I just don't think that's true. And to prove it, I was going to go through every year to make my point, but I was only a few seasons in before I was boring myself to death.
Yes, the NBA has an obvious interest in keeping its big-market teams competitive. Just like baseball. Football too, I guess, though I think it's popular enough for that not to matter.
Many league observers assume the best way to keep big-market teams in the forefront is to make sure one of them wins the draft lottery. Else why have a draft lottery in the first place? I think it's just a cheesy promotional gimmick, not a sinister game-fixing tool, and hey, it worked on me. (Aside from which, if getting the top pick is really going to make that big of a difference, then pretty soon there wouldn't be any big-market teams eligible for the lottery, right?)
The prime example everyone cites of lottery-fixing is Patrick Ewing going to New York in 1985. Each non-playoff team had an equal chance at the time, so it really wasn't a huge stretch that he got there. (Obviously teams didn't really have an equal chance if the results were really planned in advance, but if anything, it's the early rules of the draft lottery, not its results, that were ridiculous.)
Then a year like this comes along, and Milwaukee, not exactly an American cultural center, wins the lottery. So what's up now?
I can hear it now: wait a second, Mike, who cares what team gets the top selection when the top player might be from Australia? Good point-the draft and, more to the point, future careers are not entirely predictable. Sometimes the guy who ends up being the best player is picked further down, sometimes the top choices aren't that great. So what the NBA must do is just fix it whenever there's an obvious star coming out and go with an actual lottery in other years, right?
Unfortunately for this theory, there's a huge list of obvious future superstars who didn't end up in big markets. For example, Shaquille O'Neal and Alonzo Mourning both came out in 1992, but Orlando and Charlotte ended up holding the top selections.
Orlando won again in 1993 and picked Chris Webber (though the Magic ended up trading him for the equally-soft Penny Hardaway). I don't know what motivation the league would have had to help out a then-recent expansion team so much as to give them the top pick two years in a row. Grant Hill and Jason Kidd were available in 1994 when Milwaukee won the lottery over big teams like the Lakers, Clippers and Celtics. (Though of course the Bucks, in their infinite wisdom (and foreshadowing of things to come, if they really take Marvin Williams this year), went for neither, and instead chose Glenn Robinson.)
Fast-forward to 1997, when Tim Duncan was the most obvious can't-miss player since Ewing (though by now he's clearly surpassed Ewing as a player-in fact, for years I've thought what the Sports Guy of ESPN.com recently said, that Duncan is the best power forward in league history). If ever the NBA had a reason to fix the lottery, this would be the year, and the Celtics, having two picks, had a great shot at Duncan.
That would have been good for the league, but the Celtics were in really terrible shape. Okay, Duncan could have gone to Philadelphia and teamed up with Allen Iverson, coming off a tremendous first season. Or he could have headed to the Nets, who are at least the bastard stepchild in a big market. Instead, he ended up in San Antonio, which was good news for David Robinson, but not particularly exciting for the NBA. (Consider the amount of love Duncan would get if he was in New Jersey or Boston-for starters, people would stop acting like Kevin Garnett is his equal.)
Bonus Nuggets fan trivia: 1997 was the year we chose Tony Battie over Tracy McGrady. Thank you, Allan Bristow!
There weren't any obvious future franchise cornerstones for a few years, but in 2002, we had the Yao Ming and Jay Williams duo. Williams was clearly way overrated, but Yao was at least intriguing, and he ended up in Houston when New York or the Clips could have had him.
And finally, LeBron James in 2003. Lottery entrants that year included the Knicks, Bulls, and the Detroit Pistons, who were not only from a big city but clearly a team with a good chance of success the following season (like an NBA championship). Instead, James ended up in his hometown of Cleveland (well, it's not really his hometown, but close enough), which had the same best chance of winning as our proud, creamy Nougats. Some still argue LeBron was destined for Cleveland; I disagree.
So there you have it, the NBA draft lottery is definitely not loaded in favor of big-market teams. Now, playoff officiating...
Comments
intruiging... not sure i agree with you.
i think they are very equal in terms of potential.
unless you are arguing "easy on the eyes factor" by which wade wins hands down on the "people magazine" scale, and trumps the soft thug melo.
I like Carmelo a ton. I'd rather have Wade right now as he's playing better (esp. in the clutch), but he's also two years older. Two years from now Carmelo will be scoring like Wade, probably rebouding better and passing worse. So I guess I'd take Carmelo long-term, plus he's the guy I wanted when the draft was actually going on (I was horrified Darko would fall and Kiki would continue his frontcourt outsourcing).
I think/hope someday we'll look back on this year as the low point of Carmelo's career, which considering he's a 20-year-old averaging almost 21 points per is pretty good.
The Nuggets in general just don't really have a lot of lookers, do they? I guess I'm OK with that.
could you imagine if we had t-mac, amare, melo, kenyon, camby? What an animal roster that'd be.
I wish we would have taken Amare with the Nene pick, not that I don't like Nene, but then we would have gotten Stoudemire and Camby for the damaged goods of Antonio McDyess. I can't believe the defending champions are relying on him at all-no one melted faster under pressure when he was in Denver.