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DWYR20.htm
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sports
Friday, June 20, 1997
NBA lottery prizes carry no guarantees
[INLINE]
The NBA Lottery is a misnomer. What they really ought to call this
thing is the NBA Lotto. A lottery is a drawing in which actual prizes
are awarded.
A lotto is a game of chance. Often, no one wins.
And, as everyone who follows the NBA draft knows, there are as many
busts as prizes. Particularly now that more and more basketball
wizards proclaim themselves ready for the NBA the morning after their
high school senior prom.
Things are so upside down that if a player makes it through four
semesters of college, he will be asked whether he waited too long to
come out for the draft.
This is the NBA's crazy season. Young men 20 or 21 with a year or two
of college under their money belts are making their rounds. One day
it's the Sixers, the next the Nets, the next the Celtics or Toronto or
Vancouver.
They put on their Italian suits -- picked out by their people -- and
breeze into town for a short workout and an interview, then owners
such as Pat Croce must decide whether to invest tens of millions of
dollars in them.
``It's crazy,'' Croce said yesterday. ``You have to depend on a rising
Ping-Pong ball, first of all, and then you're picking from these
people, and they are so young, and this is how you build up your
business.''
Yesterday, the Sixers trotted in two more earnest young players. Ron
Mercer, who was schooled at the sartorially splendorous knee of Rick
Pitino, paid a visit, as did Chauncey Billups, who declined to work
out for new coach Larry Brown but con sented to be interviewed.
First of all, let's say this about the 76ers: No matter what they do
with the second pick in the draft, no matter how they solve the
problem of the human carbuncle known as Derrick Coleman, this is
already a better team than last season's.
Because of Larry Brown.
I preferred Rick Pitino, but when it became apparent that Pitino
wanted to become the next Red Auerbach, Croce did a good thing in
lassoing Brown.
The four biggest problems facing the Sixers this off-season were:
getting a coach and front office in shape, Coleman, Jerry Stackhouse
and leadership.
Brown obviously solves the coaching and front-office problems --
``There is great communication between the coaching and scouting
staffs now,'' Croce said -- and he also will fill a big void in the
on-the-floor leadership department. That is needed because, last
season, players simply quit playing defense, and nothing was done
about it.
Mercer was asked yesterday how he felt about playing defense,
something the Sixers ceased doing just after New Year's when they
decided they no longer wished to play for Johnny Davis.
``I learned my freshman year [ at Kentucky ] ,'' Mercer answered,
``that if you didn't play defense, you didn't play.''
And he wanted minutes.
Brown will take the Pitino approach. No player will not show up for
practice or just quit or drop f-bombs on Larry Brown and still play.
``We're going to be conditioned. We're going to play with intensity
and discipline,'' Croce promised yesterday.
What a nice change that would be after last season.
Still, even with Brown, the Sixers will need leadership among the
players. Allen Iverson did not show any leadership skills last season.
Stackhouse has not stepped up, either, and that is a concern since
these two guys are your franchise players.
Coleman, the guy whom Croce attempted to empower and cajole into a
leadership role, has enough leadership skills to fit into one pinkie
and, unfortunately, he lost that part of his game when said finger was
jammed on the rim. He was useless after that.
The best way to solve the Coleman dilemma is to trade him. Coleman is
collecting a $6.7 million annual salary until July 1, then it jumps to
$8.1 million. That makes him hard to move, but the Sixers are trying.
``Without a doubt,'' Croce said of whether he would want to move
Coleman, ``but I don't want other teams to interpret willingness to
trade him with weakness. I said trade him, not give him away. And
we're not going to give him away for trash. We're not going to have
poison in our locker room.''
Croce talked with Coleman often last summer, but Croce said Coleman
has not returned his phone calls this year. Croce is upset that
Coleman said he didn't want to play with the Sixers because the Sixers
couldn't win.
``When he says something like that, when he talks like that,'' Croce
said, ``then he's talking like a punk.''
It is unlikely that the Sixers will be able to move Coleman, and Croce
will stick to his vow that if the former No. 1 lottery pick reports to
camp out of shape, he will sit, not play. Stackhouse's future with the
team is also uncertain. Croce said he considers him a Sixer. But the
guard has a year left on his contract and has been another NBA Lotto
disappointment.
Stackhouse has told Croce that he is working hard this off-season, and
some members of the Sixers' coaching staff will travel to North
Carolina soon to watch his workouts and look for improvements.
These days, in this crazy season of the NBA, the phones in the Sixers'
front office are ringing constantly. Everyone is interested in the No.
2 pick. And given the uncertainty of this year's recruiting class, it
is far from a sure thing that the Sixers will keep their pick --
especially if they can end up with two first-round picks instead of
one.
Then they will have two chances to win at NBA bingo. And two chances
to lose, too.
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Friday, June 20, 1997