NBA Draft is tonight!

Which means 2 things:

1. I can dream about the Nets winning the top pick with a 0.9% chance of success (according to one blogger, the same odds of having Devin Harris have a 40-point, 10-assist game) and seeing a lineup next year of Harris, Carter, Ryan Anderson, Blake Griffin, and Brookie dominating the East.

Totally irrelevant but awesome opportunity to pimp Harris again:



2. We can talk about all the conspiracy theories in the world if OKC wins the number 1 pick and the right to draft hometown hero Blake Griffin. But this one is particularly egregious and probably why we're not allowed to see the actual lottery anymore:

For the uninitiated, the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery (the first ever lottery):



1. At around the 4:48 mark of the video, you see the guy "gingerly" placing all of the envelopes into the drum, except for the infamous "envelope #4" which is inexplicably SLAMMED into the side of the drum, causing a crease on the corner.

2. At the 5:31 mark, David Stern fumbles with a bunch of envelopes inside the drum, coming up with one that has a very noticeable crease on the envelope corner - this one would be placed at the #1 slot, for the team that would then have the presumptive opportunity to draft Patrick Ewing, considered the consensus top pick of a fairly strong draft.

3. At the 8:25 mark, David Stern lets loose with the giant payoff: The Pacers take the #2 slot, which means that the New York Knicks, with a crappy team playing in the NBA's biggest TV market, just nailed the 1/7 chance of winning the Patrick Ewing sweepstakes, ensuring that the New York fan base would continue contributing to the NBA for the next decade and a half.

Conspiracy? Or not? Whatever the motivation, in hindsight, the Ewing pick turned out to be a doozy, as out of the rest of the highly-touted lottery class of that year, only Ewing became a franchise cornerstone, with two others (McDaniel and Mullin) becoming All-Stars, one becoming a jazz musician after a serviceable career (Tisdale, RIP), and three becoming synonymous with the term "lottery bust" (Benjamin, Koncak, and Kleine). The value of that draft turned out to come later in the round, as several excellent players, among them some Hall of Famers, were drafted outside of the lottery (Schrempf (8), Oakley (9), Malone (13), Dumars (18), Green (23), and Porter (24))

At any rate, sit back, and enjoy!