milkyway21
05-21-2007, 09:16 PM
is it true they really tanked some games just to get Duncan?
(I'm sorry if article posted already..)
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Celtics hope to avoid bad lottery luck this time
Sean Deveney
Posted: May 21, 2007
Ten years later, Dee Brown can laugh about it.
Now, he's an analyst for ESPN and has started a handful of businesses, including EDGE training, a state-of-the-art basketball facility in Orlando. But not long ago, Brown was the captain of a wayward Celtics team that, coming off the worst performance (15-67) in franchise history, looked to be on the verge of finding its rudder. By virtue of a trade with Dallas, the Celtics had two picks in the 1997 NBA lottery and a 36.3 percent shot at the No. 1 pick. With Wake Forest's Tim Duncan having just wrapped up his senior year, the future looked bright -- so bright that Rick Pitino was lured away from the University of Kentucky with a 10-year contract to coach the team and direct its personnel.
Then lottery day came. Brown, watching the draft order revealed, frowned as the Celtics first landed the No. 6 pick. Then came the stunner: The other pick was No. 3. There would be no Duncan in Boston. San Antonio had won the lottery, and Spurs owner Peter Holt gushed, "I mean, the world is our oyster." Brown shook his head. And Pitino? "He almost had a coronary," Brown says.
Brown can't resist the what if game. He was a killer 3-point shooter late in his career, an ideal Duncan complement. But instead of winning titles with Duncan, Brown's Celtics simply went on losing games after drafting Ron Mercer and Chauncey Billups. Pitino traded Brown and Billups to Toronto halfway through the following season, and Brown's career ended four years later. He lasted longer than Pitino, who resigned after 3 1/2 years with a .411 winning percentage and zero playoff appearances.
"If we had gotten Tim Duncan," Brown says, "no one would be talking about San Antonio right now. They'd be talking about the Celtics."
In the goofy world of the NBA lottery, the bounce of the pingpong balls can make the world your oyster or leave you jobless.
Fates of young players, old players, coaches, general managers, franchises and even entire cities are determined (witness Cleveland in the 2003 lottery, which led to the LeBron James draft). Next Tuesday, the attention of the league will turn to the lotto zone at the NBA offices in Secaucus, N.J. Of extreme interest will be teams 1 and 2 on the list because the upcoming draft features two surefire NBA stars -- Ohio State center Greg Oden and Texas forward Kevin Durant, the college player of the year. That puts a heavy onus on the league's worst teams to come up with a blessing from the pingpong ball gods. Woe be the team that winds up third. "Whoever gets the No. 3 pick, they need to keep him under security watch," one Eastern Conference general manager says. "The guy might throw himself off the George Washington Bridge."
The Celtics of the Pitino vintage are a good example of why a 200-foot plunge into the Hudson River might be preferable to life with a near-miss pick. When his Magic won the 1992 lottery, which yielded LSU center Shaquille O'Neal, two things stuck out for Orlando executive Pat Williams. One was the forlorn faces of other teams' execs. The other was "the sound of rustling paper bags." Paper bags? "Everyone was sitting on the stage with a Shaq jersey in a paper bag on their laps," Williams says. "When it was over, all I could hear was the sound of these paper bags being shoved back under the table. Somewhere out there, there's a 1992 Dallas Mavericks Shaq jersey that never saw the light of day."
And, perhaps, there will be Oden and Durant jerseys that go forever unworn. At the least, there will be forlorn faces for those who miss out on the top two. But, boy, oh, boy, a well-placed lottery win could set up a franchise for years. Consider the Spurs, who won the lottery in 1987 -- the David Robinson draft -- and again in the Duncan draft. Those two picks have given San Antonio almost two decades of elite seasons. The Spurs have missed the playoffs only once in the past 18 years and have won 60 percent of their games in all but two of those seasons.
It's easy to imagine a power shift based on upcoming lottery luck. The two teams coming off the league's worst seasons (the Grizzlies and, again, the Celtics) would immediately become contenders-in-waiting with the No. 1 pick. Most presume that will be Oden. Durant is a heck of a consolation prize, though -- he's a 6-10 wing who runs the floor like a guard and has 3-point range.
Adding either figures to brighten a team's future immediately -- in fact, turnaround coaching specialist Larry Brown is rumored to be waiting for the lottery to determine whether he'll fill Memphis' coaching vacancy, perhaps having learned from Pitino's mistake.
"Oden is a franchise-changer, like Duncan was," Dee Brown says. "I like Durant, but if the Celtics get the No. 1 pick, they put Oden with the young guys they have, that changes the division. It changes the whole Eastern Conference."
But not everyone feels so strongly about the necessity to win in this lottery -- it's a deep draft beyond Oden and Durant. Marty Blake, who runs the league's scouting service, would hardly throw himself off a bridge with a run-of-the-mill lottery pick. Big men, usually rare at draft time, are plentiful. The top candidates to be the No. 3 pick are all pure power forwards, 6-9 and taller: North Carolina's Brandan Wright, Florida's Al Horford and China's Yi Jianlian. "You'd love to have one of the first two guys," Blake says. "But if you're picking 10, 12, 14, wherever, you have a chance to get a very good player."
True, but the Celtics thought they were getting a couple of very good players in '97. And, in the NBA, the difference between drafting a very good player and a great one is the difference between multiple championships (Duncan and the Spurs) and a few years of failure before a resignation (Pitino and the Celtics). "It's amazing, isn't it, how fragile this business can be?" Williams says.
"You are relying on the magic of pingpong balls. Just regular pingpong balls, like any other at the pingpong ball factory. And they're deciding everything. What a way to make a living."
Comments
The Celts
Posted by GiantSHOCKEY on Mon May 21, 2007 11:47 am
What the author of this article fails to mention is the fact the Celtics blatantly tanked games in the 1996-1997 season to increase their odds of landing Duncan. I think karma got the best of the Celts 10 years ago ...
Living in Boston, I've witnessed yet another season of purposely tanking games by the Celtics to land the 1st or 2nd pick of the draft. Granted injuries didn't help the Celts, but they didn't exactly try very hard to win, either. I guess that can be said about a couple of other teams this year, too.
Granted the NBA lottery system is flawed, but it could certainly be worse. I just wish there was a way to ensure that each team is putting their best roster out there night in and night out so the fans aren't cheated. Nothing is worse than having paid for a ticket to see a team that is actively trying NOT to win.
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Don't Take Oden
Posted by Homestead Grays on Mon May 21, 2007 12:34 pm
Did anyone notice that Ohio State played better in the NCAA tourney when Oden was out of the game? He simply slowed that team down. He is very good defensively but offensively he is better than only a few current NBA centers, and I don't see him developing into anything more than a 7 ppg scorer. I'm not an Oden hater or fan, I just don't see greatness for him in the NBA.
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The 1997 Draft Lottery
Posted by rickumali on Mon May 21, 2007 12:48 pm
Peter May of the Boston Globe wrote today of how M.L. Carr was "overseeing a rather transparent attempt to land Duncan" that previous season. I'm in Boston too, and I'm hopeful that things go the Green's way in tomorrow's draft. Sean Deveney's article points out how much of an impact a top draft pick can make.
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darko
Posted by black_flag on Mon May 21, 2007 04:06 pm
The only smudge on Dumars career has to be having the #2 pick fall in the lap of an already great team and passing on Wade and Anthony to take Darko. The only reason it doesn't get brought up more is because they keep winning. If it had been Boston that would rank up there with teams passing on Jordan.
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Oden is the best pick for the Celtics!
Posted by kcland on Mon May 21, 2007 04:07 pm
Greg Oden at 7'0, would be Boston's best choice and really would be for any team trying to quickly rebuild to prominence! Boston needs a good pick. By picking Oden, I don't think they would have the same earlier mishap! Being a Knicks fan I wish the Knicks could somehow get Oden but that's probably just wishful thinking! As for Dee Brown, I thought his career would last longer, but I didn't see it lasting any longer had the Celtics got hold of Duncan! And, theres no way of telling if at the time Mercer and Billups would not have been better than they were.
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Posted by alaskanassassian on Mon May 21, 2007 05:42 pm
As a long time Celtics fan Id rather see them pick Durant then Oden. Ive heard Durant being compared to KG which means he is a bigger offensive threat then Oden would be. adding Durant with Paul Pierce and Al Jefferson I see the Celts winning 20 more games next season, but this is all a moot point until the ping pong balls drop
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Posted by aznsackingsfan on Mon May 21, 2007 09:42 pm
they were tanking
they dont deserve to win
---------------------------------------------------
:oops
(I'm sorry if article posted already..)
http://i.tsn.com/i/n/magazine/magazine_main.jpg
Celtics hope to avoid bad lottery luck this time
Sean Deveney
Posted: May 21, 2007
Ten years later, Dee Brown can laugh about it.
Now, he's an analyst for ESPN and has started a handful of businesses, including EDGE training, a state-of-the-art basketball facility in Orlando. But not long ago, Brown was the captain of a wayward Celtics team that, coming off the worst performance (15-67) in franchise history, looked to be on the verge of finding its rudder. By virtue of a trade with Dallas, the Celtics had two picks in the 1997 NBA lottery and a 36.3 percent shot at the No. 1 pick. With Wake Forest's Tim Duncan having just wrapped up his senior year, the future looked bright -- so bright that Rick Pitino was lured away from the University of Kentucky with a 10-year contract to coach the team and direct its personnel.
Then lottery day came. Brown, watching the draft order revealed, frowned as the Celtics first landed the No. 6 pick. Then came the stunner: The other pick was No. 3. There would be no Duncan in Boston. San Antonio had won the lottery, and Spurs owner Peter Holt gushed, "I mean, the world is our oyster." Brown shook his head. And Pitino? "He almost had a coronary," Brown says.
Brown can't resist the what if game. He was a killer 3-point shooter late in his career, an ideal Duncan complement. But instead of winning titles with Duncan, Brown's Celtics simply went on losing games after drafting Ron Mercer and Chauncey Billups. Pitino traded Brown and Billups to Toronto halfway through the following season, and Brown's career ended four years later. He lasted longer than Pitino, who resigned after 3 1/2 years with a .411 winning percentage and zero playoff appearances.
"If we had gotten Tim Duncan," Brown says, "no one would be talking about San Antonio right now. They'd be talking about the Celtics."
In the goofy world of the NBA lottery, the bounce of the pingpong balls can make the world your oyster or leave you jobless.
Fates of young players, old players, coaches, general managers, franchises and even entire cities are determined (witness Cleveland in the 2003 lottery, which led to the LeBron James draft). Next Tuesday, the attention of the league will turn to the lotto zone at the NBA offices in Secaucus, N.J. Of extreme interest will be teams 1 and 2 on the list because the upcoming draft features two surefire NBA stars -- Ohio State center Greg Oden and Texas forward Kevin Durant, the college player of the year. That puts a heavy onus on the league's worst teams to come up with a blessing from the pingpong ball gods. Woe be the team that winds up third. "Whoever gets the No. 3 pick, they need to keep him under security watch," one Eastern Conference general manager says. "The guy might throw himself off the George Washington Bridge."
The Celtics of the Pitino vintage are a good example of why a 200-foot plunge into the Hudson River might be preferable to life with a near-miss pick. When his Magic won the 1992 lottery, which yielded LSU center Shaquille O'Neal, two things stuck out for Orlando executive Pat Williams. One was the forlorn faces of other teams' execs. The other was "the sound of rustling paper bags." Paper bags? "Everyone was sitting on the stage with a Shaq jersey in a paper bag on their laps," Williams says. "When it was over, all I could hear was the sound of these paper bags being shoved back under the table. Somewhere out there, there's a 1992 Dallas Mavericks Shaq jersey that never saw the light of day."
And, perhaps, there will be Oden and Durant jerseys that go forever unworn. At the least, there will be forlorn faces for those who miss out on the top two. But, boy, oh, boy, a well-placed lottery win could set up a franchise for years. Consider the Spurs, who won the lottery in 1987 -- the David Robinson draft -- and again in the Duncan draft. Those two picks have given San Antonio almost two decades of elite seasons. The Spurs have missed the playoffs only once in the past 18 years and have won 60 percent of their games in all but two of those seasons.
It's easy to imagine a power shift based on upcoming lottery luck. The two teams coming off the league's worst seasons (the Grizzlies and, again, the Celtics) would immediately become contenders-in-waiting with the No. 1 pick. Most presume that will be Oden. Durant is a heck of a consolation prize, though -- he's a 6-10 wing who runs the floor like a guard and has 3-point range.
Adding either figures to brighten a team's future immediately -- in fact, turnaround coaching specialist Larry Brown is rumored to be waiting for the lottery to determine whether he'll fill Memphis' coaching vacancy, perhaps having learned from Pitino's mistake.
"Oden is a franchise-changer, like Duncan was," Dee Brown says. "I like Durant, but if the Celtics get the No. 1 pick, they put Oden with the young guys they have, that changes the division. It changes the whole Eastern Conference."
But not everyone feels so strongly about the necessity to win in this lottery -- it's a deep draft beyond Oden and Durant. Marty Blake, who runs the league's scouting service, would hardly throw himself off a bridge with a run-of-the-mill lottery pick. Big men, usually rare at draft time, are plentiful. The top candidates to be the No. 3 pick are all pure power forwards, 6-9 and taller: North Carolina's Brandan Wright, Florida's Al Horford and China's Yi Jianlian. "You'd love to have one of the first two guys," Blake says. "But if you're picking 10, 12, 14, wherever, you have a chance to get a very good player."
True, but the Celtics thought they were getting a couple of very good players in '97. And, in the NBA, the difference between drafting a very good player and a great one is the difference between multiple championships (Duncan and the Spurs) and a few years of failure before a resignation (Pitino and the Celtics). "It's amazing, isn't it, how fragile this business can be?" Williams says.
"You are relying on the magic of pingpong balls. Just regular pingpong balls, like any other at the pingpong ball factory. And they're deciding everything. What a way to make a living."
Comments
The Celts
Posted by GiantSHOCKEY on Mon May 21, 2007 11:47 am
What the author of this article fails to mention is the fact the Celtics blatantly tanked games in the 1996-1997 season to increase their odds of landing Duncan. I think karma got the best of the Celts 10 years ago ...
Living in Boston, I've witnessed yet another season of purposely tanking games by the Celtics to land the 1st or 2nd pick of the draft. Granted injuries didn't help the Celts, but they didn't exactly try very hard to win, either. I guess that can be said about a couple of other teams this year, too.
Granted the NBA lottery system is flawed, but it could certainly be worse. I just wish there was a way to ensure that each team is putting their best roster out there night in and night out so the fans aren't cheated. Nothing is worse than having paid for a ticket to see a team that is actively trying NOT to win.
Approval Rating: 88% (out of 8 reviews).
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Don't Take Oden
Posted by Homestead Grays on Mon May 21, 2007 12:34 pm
Did anyone notice that Ohio State played better in the NCAA tourney when Oden was out of the game? He simply slowed that team down. He is very good defensively but offensively he is better than only a few current NBA centers, and I don't see him developing into anything more than a 7 ppg scorer. I'm not an Oden hater or fan, I just don't see greatness for him in the NBA.
Approval Rating: 67% (out of 3 reviews).
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The 1997 Draft Lottery
Posted by rickumali on Mon May 21, 2007 12:48 pm
Peter May of the Boston Globe wrote today of how M.L. Carr was "overseeing a rather transparent attempt to land Duncan" that previous season. I'm in Boston too, and I'm hopeful that things go the Green's way in tomorrow's draft. Sean Deveney's article points out how much of an impact a top draft pick can make.
Approval Rating: 100% (out of 3 reviews).
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darko
Posted by black_flag on Mon May 21, 2007 04:06 pm
The only smudge on Dumars career has to be having the #2 pick fall in the lap of an already great team and passing on Wade and Anthony to take Darko. The only reason it doesn't get brought up more is because they keep winning. If it had been Boston that would rank up there with teams passing on Jordan.
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Oden is the best pick for the Celtics!
Posted by kcland on Mon May 21, 2007 04:07 pm
Greg Oden at 7'0, would be Boston's best choice and really would be for any team trying to quickly rebuild to prominence! Boston needs a good pick. By picking Oden, I don't think they would have the same earlier mishap! Being a Knicks fan I wish the Knicks could somehow get Oden but that's probably just wishful thinking! As for Dee Brown, I thought his career would last longer, but I didn't see it lasting any longer had the Celtics got hold of Duncan! And, theres no way of telling if at the time Mercer and Billups would not have been better than they were.
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Posted by alaskanassassian on Mon May 21, 2007 05:42 pm
As a long time Celtics fan Id rather see them pick Durant then Oden. Ive heard Durant being compared to KG which means he is a bigger offensive threat then Oden would be. adding Durant with Paul Pierce and Al Jefferson I see the Celts winning 20 more games next season, but this is all a moot point until the ping pong balls drop
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Posted by aznsackingsfan on Mon May 21, 2007 09:42 pm
they were tanking
they dont deserve to win
---------------------------------------------------
:oops