2011 NBA Draft Results -- Loser -- Cleveland Cavaliers

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It’s like the Cavaliers won the lottery and spent all their winnings on more tickets.

You wouldn’t think that after winning the NBA Draft Lottery several weeks ago, subsequently securing the overall No. 1 and No. 4 picks in this year’s NBA Draft, that we’d come away from the Thursday night event with a bad taste in our mouths for the Cavaliers.

Turns out, the lottery that determined the draft order was the only jackpot the rebuilding Cavs won.

The Cavs set out to land a point guard and a power forward with their first two picks. Well, they did that. But they didn’t grab the best combination of two players that they could have.

It’s still too early to argue with their choice of Duke’s Kyrie Irving as the top overall pick. After all, most draft experts and mock boards had the former Blue Devil freshman at the head of the class, going to the Cavs.

But their fourth overall selection of Texas power forward Tristan Thompson was the first, if not the largest, inexplicable reach of this year’s draft.

The fact is that Cleveland had the rare opportunity of getting the best overall power forward—Arizona’s athletic standout Derrick Williams—and one of a pair of point guards nearly as attractive as Irving at that position.

Drafting Williams with the top overall pick does more than just give the Cavs a viable option capable of gradually replacing the athletic excitement void left by the departure of LeBron James.

But they could have used the fourth pick to grab standout, and more experienced (than Irving) point guards Brandon Knight of Kentucky or UConn’s Kemba Walker.

That would have satisfied both positional needs and added a little star power.

The Cavs followed their questionable pick of Thompson with two more head-scratching power forward picks by selecting Richmond’s Justin Harper with the No. 32 pick and Milan Macvan from Serbia with the No. 54 selection.

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