May

30

It’s Time For NBA To Give up on Lottery

Posted by Jeff Sack under Main 

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Memphis Grizzlies outgoing president Jerry West is a NBA lifer. Right after graduating from the University of West Virginia, he went to play a Hall of Fame career as a guard for 14 years for the Los Angeles Lakers. He was named the MVP of the 1959 NCAA Championship game, he also won an Olympic gold medal, and in 1997 was named one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. His nickname as a player was Mr. Clutch, which just about tells you all you need to know about the man. After he retired as a player West became the General Manager of the Lakers and was the architect of the Lakers “Showtime Era” the man who put together the team, of Worthy, Kareem, Magic, and Byron Scott. Discovering role players, like Kurt Rambis, and one of the great defensive stoppers of all time in Michael Cooper. If a man ever qualified for a NBA pedigree, it would be Jerry West. He is so identified with the game that he is the model of the shooter on the NBA emblem. That silhouette on the NBA Logo is West during his playing days. So when Jerry West speaks about the state of the game, my ears automatically perk up.

Jerry West has asked the NBA to abolish the draft lottery, and I for one applaud him.The NBA Draft Lottery was a bad concept to begin with and has only gotten progressively worse over time. And this past lottery was a perfect example of why the system has so many flaws.

Up until the mid 1980’s the NBA draft was conducted just like the NFL and MLB put theirs into effect. The team with the most losses gets the first pick in the dispersal draft, and then follows in inverse order until you get to the team with the league’s best record who picks last each round. This was a system that was put into place decades ago to try to even out the playing field, giving the best prospects with teams with the greatest needs. And for close to 40 years that system worked just fine thank you very much, that is until Bill Fitch and the mid 1980’s Houston Rockets changed the parameters.

Houston Rockets coach Bill Fitch is one of the great characters of the NBA. He started his NBA coaching career, with the Cleveland Cavaliers the first coach the franchise which was founded in 1970 ever had. He was a great strategist and had a wicked sense of humor, which served him well during the Cavaliers embryonic stages. After leaving Cleveland, he became Larry Bird’s first NBA coach with the Boston Celtics, and helped them win a championship in the 1980-1981 campaign. But Fitch wore out his welcome in Boston, and resigned as coach after the 1983 season.

Fitch ended up as coach of the Houston Rockets, ironically the team he had beaten with Boston in the 1981 season. But it was not the same team that had made it to the Finals back in 1981. The star of that team was center Moses Malone  had been traded to the Philadelphia 76′ers and won a ring with that team back in 1983. As a result, the team bore very little resemblance to the team he had coached against, it more closely resembled his expansion Cavaliers. The next two years the Rockets played terribly, and as a result ended up with the two number one picks in the next two drafts. Ralph Sampson, the power forward who thought he was a shooting guard was the first pick. The following year, the Rockets acquired Hakeem Olajuwon the center who would eventually lead the Rockets to the promised land a few years later.

As that draft approached, there was a lot of grumbling that the Rockets, under Fitch had tanked games to get Hakeem. We can do all the conjecturing, and debating about it that we want. Bottom line is only Fitch and the Rockets organization know if they did purposely lose or not.

Because of all the controversy that resulted from the conjecture of the team tanking, His Eminence, NBA Commissioner David Stern decreed that starting in 1985 there would be a lottery. Teams would get ping pong balls, the more losses you had the more balls you got in theory giving the team with the worst record the best odds. Unfortunately more controversy arose from the Lottery, the first year’s winner was the New York Knicks. They ended up with Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, but skeptics protested. There were rumors that shady dealings went on to insure that New York got the pick. Things from the envelope having a bent corner, to the Knicks envelope was at a lower temperature than the rest started to pop up. Although the league tweaked the system it has never really worked out as they had originally anticipated.

The three teams with the worst records in the past regular season was Memphis at 22-60, followed by Boston at 24-58, and third worst was the Milwaukee Bucks at 28-54. None of these three teams got the first pick in the lottery, as a matter of fact none ended up in the top three picks! No number three went to Atlanta, who had a record of 30-52, number two was Seattle who had a record of 31-51, and number one was the Portland Trail Blazers who had a record of 32-50.

Now, tell me where is the justice here? I don’t see any all I see is a team that does not deserve it will end up with either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. This to me does not seem fair or just. What Stern and the NBA Brain trust is saying is we can’t trust our coaches and players. What kind of a message is that to be sending out to your fan base, that, your game is so messed up that you have to instill rules to protect the teams from themselves.

I worked NBA locker rooms for 11 years as I covered the Cleveland Cavaliers, and their opponents. In that time I have had one player Darius Miles admit to me that he did not give full out effort each time he stepped on the floor. That statement promptly got Miles sent out of Cleveland. Athletes are competitors, first and foremost, it goes against their inner grain not to go all out. I dare you to go into the San Antonio Spurs locker room and ask Tim Duncan if he has ever thought about tanking a game. I promise I will be right behind you to pick up what ever is left of you after he rips you apart.

By keeping this lottery in effect, Stern is sending the message to his league and his fans that they can not be trusted to do the right thing on their own. dealing with as many NBA players as I have in over a decade, I think Stern is way off base. Get rid of the controversy, get rid of the lottery, and bring equity back to the NBA.

(c) Copyright thesackattack.com 2007



Comments

2 Responses to “It’s Time For NBA To Give up on Lottery”

  1. Nels on May 30th, 2007 1:27 pm

    If teams are already tanking for non-guaranteed picks with the lottery system in place, what’s to keep them from continuing to tank if the lottery is abolished and their pick position is then guaranteed?

    Also, the reason that the draft works well that way for the NFL and MLB is because those prospects have much less of an immediate impact on their teams. There are so many components of a football team, that even if a team tanks to get an early pick, that one pick is not likely to turn them into a contender. However, in the NBA, someone like Greg Oden or Kevin Durant could easily turn their team into a contender. LeBron has essentially done this for Cleveland. The Cavs talent level has - I would argue - gone down since LeBron joined the team, yet he is able to get them into the playoffs, and perhaps even into the Finals.

  2. University Update on May 30th, 2007 2:02 pm

    It’s Time For NBA To Give up on Lottery…

    …

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