NBA Lottery 2012: Why the Lottery Can Alter the Course of NBA History

This lottery can alter the course of NBA history in two ways. The first is a little more immediately obvious than the second.

The first way is that whoever gets Anthony Davis will get a franchise-defining player.

Second, because of that, the fix could be in on who gets him, and that will result in a change of how the lottery is conducted.

About every five or six years, there is a player that is so obviously a franchise-changing player that we know before he ever steps his foot on the court that he will make a team an instant contender.

Shaquille O’Neal was such a player. When he was drafted in 1992, it wasn’t a question of whether he would win a championship, but of how many championships he would win. He went on to win four, but none with the team that drafted him. Make no mistake about it, though. He launched the Magic into relevance.

Five years later, the lottery was the Tim Duncan Sweeps, and it was clear that the winner of that would be the winner of championships. He has four rings and is presently working on his fifth.

All of them have been with the San Antonio Spurs, the team which drafted him. Duncan has never missed the playoffs and never been on a team that won less than 60 percent of their games.

Yao Ming was such a player, but Ming never won a championship. However, he did make Houston a constant contender and his career was cut short by injuries. His impact on the worldwide state of the NBA simply cannot be understated, though.

The next year, LeBron James was drafted, and James was such a player as well. Perhaps no one since O’Neal with the possible exception of Duncan had greater expectations on his shoulders. Certainly no player who had never played in college was expected to do more coming out of high school.

James turned around the franchise, and even the city of Cleveland. He won two MVPs with the Cavaliers and made them relevant, even giving them real hope of a championship. Whatever else you want to say about him, he certainly proved himself worthy of the top pick.

Since James, there really hasn’t been a player that has been touted like Davis is this year, not even Derrick Rose. Davis has every chance to be a franchise defining player, so whoever wins the lottery this year really wins. This year is a greater difference than the difference between the first and second pick.

It’s the difference between having a franchise player and not having a franchise player.

Therefore, the winner of the lottery this year will be a historical one, in much the same way as the 1997 lottery changed the fortunes of the Spurs forever.

The other reason this could make history, though, is precisely because of that. Do you really believe that David Stern, he of the “bent envelope,” is going to leave who wins this lottery up to mere chance?

The New Jersey Nets are set to move to Brooklyn.

Should they win the pick, the chances of Deron Williams staying with the Nets go through the roof. Whether they trade that pick to Orlando for Dwight Howard or chose to keep it is a bit up in the air. The key is that either way, they become a team that is marketable.

With David Stern, that’s the magic word; no pun intended.

The NBA needs the Nets to succeed in Brooklyn. Because of that, Brooklyn will succeed in winning the lottery. This, of course, isn’t going to sit well with all those other teams that are getting slighted.

The draft is conducted in secrecy with allegedly neutral observers there ensuring the integrity of it. Of course, one can’t help but wonder why the secrecy and privacy are needed if the fix isn’t in.

In the past, this has been raised as an issue. When the Chicago Bulls won the pick in 2008 when Derrick Rose, Chicago’s native son, was the presumed first pick, it raised more than a few eyebrows, but not enough to change the way it’s done.

This year, when the Nets win, it will raise a storm of criticism and force the NBA to conduct the lottery in the manner in which it should have always been done: publicly.