The best seat in the house is the view from the couch

This is why they keep building casinos in the desert

Because it's a gamble. Life's a gamble. No sure things in life - not even when you are guaranteed a 25% chance at a Top-2 draft pick in an absolutely loaded draft.


I'll give you all a second to recover from the fact that I'm leading my first new sports post in almost a month by talking about the NBA.


Here's the thing - I'm not the biggest NBA basketball fan in the world. I support the C's only because they're from Boston, and I think Paul Pierce is a hell of a good player going to waste. I also think that the NBA Draft Lottery this past Tuesday night was one of the biggest clusterfucks I've ever seen.


I've never seen a draft in which the teams with the three best chances to land the top pick got bumped to 4th, 5th and 6th. Worse yet, I can't even fall back to the old ideas of the NBA Lottery being rigged - I cannot imagine any scenario under which the league would have wanted two of the biggest stars in the last 20 years to end up in Portland and Seattle. Of course, the same could be said about Cleveland and Denver back in '03; although the league tried to hand Detroit a marquee player in Carmelo Anthony - the Pistons just flat out blew that one.


Back to this lottery. It's a gamble - the Grizzlies, Celtics, Bucks and Hawks all gambled last season that if they completely rolled over on their fans and raised the white flag back in January, they'd have a marquee player - a franchise savior, if you will - to run out on the hardwood for 82 games next season.


They all gambled - they all lost.


Nights like Tuesday (and mornings like Wednesday, when I finally got the news) are the reason that sometimes it's a good thing that I no longer have cable TV. There's a pretty good chance I would have broken something (or someone) if I'd been watching the Lottery live, and I don't even care about the NBA that much.


I can't imagine what it's like back home in Boston right now. I've read the colums, I've finally turned on the WEEI webstream, and it's unbelievably depressing. It's a damned good thing the Sox are in first place (and by such a wide margin) - otherwise, this story could end up being all consuming.


There are two (and so far, only two) optomistic ways to spin this for the C's. First - they were not as bad as their record would show this year. Injuries and inexperience contributed to their abyssmal win/loss numbers more than anything else. They only finished with 24 wins, but with a healthy Pierce and Jefferson for all 82 they probably should have won 32-36. Not exactly world beaters, but the #8 seed in the Eastern playoffs this year (Orlando) only had 40 wins. So maybe the 5th pick is much, much higher than they should be picking. Philadelphia had 35 wins and got the 12th pick.


And, second... another year like this one and they'll be right back in the Lottery hunt in '08 - with a Top-5 pick this season to build on. That might not bea silver lining, but at least it's something.


Lata.

Labels: Celtics, Gambling, Lottery, NBA

posted by Big D @ 4:55 PM