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I am trying to keep this group up to date on this lottery type thing.
- Subject: I am trying to keep this group up to date on this lottery type thing.
- From: bocelts@scsn.net (R. Bentz Kirby)
- Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 13:18:11 -0400
http://www.boston.com:80/globe/spt/cgi-bin/retrieve.cgi?%2Fglobe%2Fbgc%2F138%2Fspt%2F010
Luck of the draw: Worst-case
scenarios can play out - just ask
Dallas
By Michael Holley, Globe Staff, 05/18/97
If this were a tale of fairness, the Celtics would pick
first
in next month's college draft. It would be the fitting
punctuation for their skittish season. We saw them
traipse across North America's mountains and plains, 12
tourists who almost always browsed a defeat before
inevitably putting it in their pockets.
That happened 67 times last season. It was sad.
Realizing this, a fair basketball judge would simply
examine the evidence and cancel this afternoon's lottery
selection show in Secaucus, N.J. Someone would phone
Tim Duncan and the 6-foot-11-inch center would soon
be doing his low-post dance with green-and-white wares
on his back and parquet beneath his feet.
See how smoothly things work in a fair world? Problem
is, the Celtics are not part of one. Maybe they do
deserve the top pick. But they will send M.L. Carr to
New Jersey this afternoon, knowing there is only a 36
percent chance that their former coach and director of
basketball operations will bring home No. 1. Of course,
those odds are better than anyone else's. But they are
still
less than a coin flip.
Carr said he will not take anything to Jersey to help
increase his team's chances. He will not bring any red
clay from his native state, North Carolina. No rabbits'
feet. No cowrie shells, lucky stones, or necklaces.
``Can you bring a Bible?'' he said.
Sure. No rule against it. Nor the Torah. Nor Koran.
``Really, I'm just going to go down there and see what
happens,'' said Carr. ``I didn't take anything last year
and
things worked out, didn't they? It's not like I can put
my
hand in the hopper and pull out our ball.''
No, that job belongs to Ernst &Youngaccounting
executives. The team representatives only watch.
If this were a tale of fairness...
``It's crazy,'' Pat Williams said. ``Your whole future
depends on a bunch of balls rattling around in a machine.
Isn't that crazy?''
Williams is an expert on this subject. He is senior
executive vice president of the Orlando Magic. He has
been a part of three lotteries - 1986 (with the 76ers),
1992, and 1993. He has walked away with three No.
1s. Only once did his team need the top pick.
In '86, Williams and Red Auerbach sat together, waiting
to see which Eastern Conference power would have the
top card. Where was fairness? The Celtics had won the
NBA title and the Sixers had 54 wins.
``Red was blowing smoke in my face and I was about
ready to surrender then,'' Williams said. ``He was
playing
mind games with me all day. The air was so polluted with
cigar smoke that I tried to take a deep breath and
chipped my tooth. I was going to tell him he could have
the top pick if it meant he would stop blowing smoke in
my face.''
Williams' Sixers won the lottery. They eventually traded
the pick to Cleveland, which drafted Brad Daugherty.
The Celtics, at No. 2, selected Len Bias. Williams still
calls his team's deal ``infamous'' and says the overall
'86
draft was ``haunted.''
Six years later, Williams had moved south and was
representing the three-year-old Magic. They had won 21
games and were the second-worst team in the league.
``Our players did their jobs,'' Williams recalled. ``They
played bad.''
On Lottery Day, Williams was the only representative
who didn't have a Shaquille O'Neal jersey stuffed inside
a bag. He believed he would be lucky if he arrived with
nothing. He was.
The Magic's ball and the Mavericks' ball seemed to
come out of the bin simultaneously. But the Magic's freed
itself from the jam and slipped ahead of the Mavericks'.
Dallas's ball was thrown back into the bin. Orlando won
the lottery; the Mavericks were fourth.
``You should have seen how happy David Stern was for
me when we won in '92,'' Williams said. ``He embraced
me. He said, `Pat, I'm so happy for your franchise.
You're an expansion team on the way up.' It seems like I
flew home without a plane that day.''
Dallas in blunder land
Do not be fooled by the glimmers in Williams's story.
Need we remind you of the Lottery Theme?
Certainly, it was fair that O'Neal went to Orlando and
made basketball in central Florida fun to watch. The
21-win team became a 41-win team. O'Neal was
Rookie of the Year. Orlando went from the lottery to the
doorstep of the playoffs, losing on tie-breakers to the
Pacers.
Things didn't go so well in Texas. The Mavericks began
the season 2-27 and fired their coach, Richie Adubato.
When the story of his imminent firing broke, the
Mavericks were on their way to Detroit from Dallas. A
reporter told Adubato that he was certain the coach
would soon be jobless.
``No. They wouldn't let me go to Detroit if they were
going to fire me, would they?'' the coach said.
``You wouldn't think so,'' the reporter replied.
Adubato and the team went off to wintry Detroit. The
coach lounged in his hotel before getting on the team bus
to the Palace at Auburn Hills. It was 4:45 p.m., a couple
of hours before game time. The phone rang. Yep. He
had been fired. He went to the game anyway and sat in
the stands and watched as interim coach Gar Heard and
the Mavs lost to the Pistons.
That team still didn't have its lottery pick, Jim
Jackson.
``We were just trying to get Jim a fair deal,'' said Mark
Termini, Jackson's agent.
What Termini would not say is that the Mavericks
historically set the market for their draft picks. They
didn't like paying big money. They wanted to give
Jackson a short deal with relatively short money. Jackson
wanted six years and $19 million. Despite a record that
had grown to 4-47, the Mavericks didn't budge.
Finally, in March, they gave Jackson what he had asked
for during the summer. The Mavericks finished 11-71,
30 games behind the Magic. Those who were reporting
the Mavericks' facts constantly asked themselves if they
were involuntarily penning fiction.
``They were the worst team I've ever seen,'' said David
Moore of the Dallas Morning News. ``The '96-97
Celtics would have destroyed them.''
``If I ever write a book about them, people will think I
made the stuff up,'' said Roger B. Brown of the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram. ``Eighty games into the season,
they had only nine wins.''
The Magic and Mavericks qualified for the '93 lottery. If
this were a tale of fairness the Mavericks would have the
No. 1 pick. O'Neal had a supporting cast of Nick
Anderson and Dennis Scott. Jackson had Walter Bond
and Doug Smith.
``Before the lottery, we had been bringing in the Bobby
Hurleys of the world for workouts,'' Williams said.
The Magic were thinking of picking 10th or 11th. The
Mavericks were thinking Nos. 1 and 2. That would
either be Chris Webber or Anfernee Hardaway, they
thought. No problem.
``You should have heard the room when the card for the
No. 11 pick was lifted up,'' Williams said. ``When
people saw that the card did not say `Orlando Magic,'
there was stone silence. People knew a miracle was in
the works.
``It came down to 10. Then 9. Then 8 ... Still no Orlando
Magic. Finally it got to No. 1 and, honestly, for five
seconds I had no idea what was happening. I don't
remember what I was thinking. I went to the podium and
the commissioner did not embrace me. I tried to hug
David and it was like I had touched a mannequin. I could
see the Orlando Rule churning in his head at that
moment.''
The Orlando Rule was an attempt to bring fairness into
an imperfect world. Instead of a random lottery, a
weighted system was put in place. Teams at the back
end of the lottery, the 38- to 42-win types, have less
than
a 1 percent chance of winning.
Maybe that will help the Celtics today. It did not help
the
Mavericks in '93. They took Jamal Mashburn with their
second consecutive No. 4 pick. Hardaway went to the
Magic. Later in the season, Hardaway would throw
beautiful no-look passes to O'Neal while Mashburn
threw verbal Molotov cocktails at new coach Quinn
Buckner.
Fairness was not in the house. If it had been, there
could
have been a Hardaway-Jackson backcourt rather than
what would soon become The 3-J Problem of Jackson,
Mashburn, and Jason Kidd on the same team.
Today, the Celtics will try a tag-team attack on the
lottery system. They have their own pick and Dallas's.
There have been 12 lotteries. Only three times has the
worst team won it.
The Celtics understand that life is not always fair.
They're
not asking for that. They are only asking life to be fair
for
a few minutes this afternoon in a New Jersey studio.
This story ran on page d1 of the Boston Globe on
05/18/97.
© Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.