Or if you don’t believe in a God, send out some good feelings in whatever manner you deem fitting, because tomorrow is the NBA Draft Lottery and we will know the Houston Rockets’ fate literally within 3 minutes of commencement.
The Rockets can only pick 14 or 1-3, with the odds of landing any of the latter three slots at slightly less than 2%. The team will be sending point guard Aaron Brooks as its representative – the last time they sent their point guard, Steve Francis brought home the pick that was used to select center Yao Ming.
For those of who you have been living under a rock up to this point, the way it works is that they announce the slotting from 14 upwards leading towards the top pick. They’ll most probably start off with some footage of the top prospects supplemented with some analysis. Then they’ll move on to introducing the representative personalities from the teams – in most cases this will be slightly awkward with anecdotal references to various good luck charms. Then they’ll get underway.
If a team other than the Houston Rockets is announced at 14, then that means we moved into the top 3 and Aaron Brooks will have to wait until after the commercial break to find out if he’s being traded next year.
(sidenote: The best part of the draft lottery each year is the priceless look upon each rep’s face upon learning that they haven’t moved up; a sort of “I knew I should have just phoned in via Skype”..)
In hopes of manifesting reality, I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that we will land the #1 pick tomorrow, much to the chagrin of Mr. Brooks. This will be followed by a month of debate and speculation about whether the pick should be traded, whether Brooks should be traded, or whether it should be used to select someone other than John Wall outright. Mixed in with a firestorm of Chris Bosh rumors, it will be a glorious summer of 2010. Kyle Lowry will learn to shoot, Von Wafer will return as assistant coach, and there will be a promotional montage with that scene from Forrest Gump where he starts running and the leg braces break off, except with Yao Ming in place of the kid…
By the way, if we actually do land the top pick, you take Wall and figure out the rest later. You can trade Brooks now or later in the season, but you take Wall and you still re-sign Kyle Lowry. You go for the best talent available – the rest can be sorted out later.
So unless it really happens, we have just a little over a day remaining to live out this fantasy. I’ve been imagining it myself for the past week and it’s painful when reality sets back in. But we can dream for now.
Join me in the live-blog tomorrow to cover the lottery.
