End This Lottery Business

The Nets hyped up 2010 as everything anew. On their website, they talked about new ownership, a new arena, top draft picks, and cap room to sign free agents.

New Jersey hoped they would get the top pick. It's hard to blame them—they were horrible this year.

What's worse, the Nets did not even tank. They played hard and still faltered to a 12-70 season. The truth is they simply were not fundamentally sound when it was time to execute.

In addition, with the team heading to New York, the thought was the league would rig the pick in giving the Nets a top slot. 

Bad enough the Nets didn't win the lottery—they didn't even get the second pick. The league awarded them the third pick.

After Mikhail Prokhorov experienced his first disappointment as a Nets owner, he found out what's it like to be a Net. Every owner, general manager, coach and player witness disappointments when they associate themselves with the Nets.

Odds are they will draft DeMarcus Cousins with that pick. The Sixers could draft Cousins at second, and that's the only saving grace for the Nets to draft Evan Turner.

The Sixers already have a point guard in Andre Iguodala, but Turner has the potential to outperform him. Besides Iguodala has been an enigma. He has games where he shoots well, and then there are times when he doesn't show up at all.

If the news of the Nets getting the third pick wasn't depressing enough for New Jersey fans, the people in Minnesota are still reeling. The Timberwolves stunk all season, but even that wasn't good enough to get the first pick, or even the second for that matter.

How is drafting fourth going to help the Timberwolves get back to relevancy? At this point, they should trade that pick for a veteran.

After seeing what happened to the Nets and the Timberwolves, it's time to change the lottery system. Give the top pick to the team that has the most losses.

If teams tank, so be it. The league should do whatever it takes to get bad teams out of losing territory.

It's hard to say the lottery is rigged. If that's true, the Nets would have won last night. That's just not the case.

David Stern likes to talk about his league providing hope for the awful teams. Is he kidding?

If that's the case, why then have the Clippers, Warriors, Timberwolves, Grizzlies, and the Pacers done bad in the last few years on a consistent basis?

It will be hard for any of these teams to do well unless they get a franchise player in the draft that can offer hope for future improvement.

In the NBA, franchise players win championships. More often than not, great players come from the first round and, especially, the first pick.

If Stern is serious about wanting to see mid and small-market teams do well, he needs to end this lottery method altogether.

If not, maybe it's time to contract teams. The league stinks with too many bad teams.

For teams like the Timberwolves, there's no hope for next season. Getting Wesley Johnson does not encourage fans to attend games.

The Wolves will have high hopes for the lottery around this time next year, and we'll see the same old story.

The same can be said for other losing teams.

It begs this question to be asked. Why should fans of losing teams be excited about their team's chances of winning the lottery when it never happens?

There's no point airing the lottery either. For what? To see fans react by being disappointed?

It's hard for fans to like the league when their teams are not getting better with this system.

There are already low ratings and small crowds in most of the cities that have not had a taste of winning. It's hard to sell the product when that team don't win the lottery.

This should give Stern an incentive to change the system once in for all.