the nba draft sucks

the draft lottery. why? no other sport has a lottery. why does the nba? basketball needs to follow every other sport and let the worst team pick first. they are the worst, it only makes sense that they have the first choice of players entering the draft. while you may argue that you cant build a dynasty by not allowing high school players in the draft anymore, its certain that ass teams will continue to be ass teams if they never get a chance at the tim duncans, yao mings or lebrons of the world. 4 times in the last 20 some years the worst team actually got to pick first. 4 times! that shows that something is wrong with the system. i bet there have been more occasions where david stern has rigged the lottery for a team to win than those 4 times where the worst team "won". and if the nba wants to keep the lottery, change it from picking the top 3 to just picking who gets the #1 pick. that way when youre memphis and you suck balls, you at least get #2, because lets face it, teams screw up all the time, so at least at #2 you still have a shot at a really great player. but this year the team picking #5 is worse than the team picking #1. what the hell is that? and the argument that the lottery keeps teams from tanking isnt really valid. nobody tanks in the nfl to get the #1 pick. and the guy going #1 in the nfl draft has the best shot at REALLY helping his new team. not the same in basketball or baseball.

second, nobody is ready for the nba any more. you look back at some of the great players in history, david robinson averaged 24pts and 12rebs/game as a rookie. shaq 23 and 14, jordan 28 pts, magic 18pts 7 assists 7 rebs. what do you get today? andrew bogut and his 9 and 7, bargnani and his 11 and 3, dwight howard only got 12 and 10, and he's pretty good, but thats still a far cry from shaqs numbers. thats why teams cant build dynasties in the draft anymore. somewhere along the line teams stopped picking players that could make an impact (like in football) and started drafting almost purely on potential (like in baseball), which is really hit or miss. but can you imagine how bad rookies would be if they were thrown straight into the majors out of college or high school? at least baseball has the minors, where players can stay for a few years. basketball has shit. whats the d-league? the d-league is absurd. ced bozeman averaged 15pts 10assists in the d-league. he couldnt do that at ucla. so what is the d-league actually developing if its a step down from high major college basketball? so if that potential doesnt pan out, then youve wasted a pick. (kwame brown) not only do i think the 1 year college rule is good for basketball, i think they should go with baseball and football and create a 3 year after high school rule. but they really really need to develop the d-league so that players can become ready for the nba before actually putting on the jersey. right now, instead of having the 450 best basketball players in the world playing in the nba (30 teams, 15 man rosters) you have about 300 of the best and a bunch of robert swifts taking up space.

next month, some crap team is going to pick mike conley in the lottery this season, and instead of getting what you would hope for in a lottery point guard, they are going to get a guy who is still 2 years away from making a real impact, and then when he finally is he is going to leave the team that picked him and go play with greg oden. its like that team picking #8 is the rest of conley's college career and the team he signs with as a free agent is really the team getting a good young nba guard. and some team might even pick daequan cook in the first round. daequan cook. who could even get off the bench on ohio states run to the final four. in the first round! how does that accomplish anything? they can throw him in the d-league for the season, but how does that make him a worthy first round pick. what the hell do draft "war rooms" do?

also, check out this nba mock lottery. look at #11. they say the hawks should pick acie law. and the first line is he isnt going to be a star in the nba. then why the hell are you picking him #11? just outside the top 10 should equal a star in any sports draft. are there really only about 5 people a year that can become legitimate stars in the nba? is the nba really that elite? obviously not. mehmet okur made the all star team.

and one non draft note, everyone complains about how baseball takes so long, but why does the nba insist on having like a week off in between each playoff game? 1 day off in between games is acceptable, not great, but we can deal with that. but there is absolutely no reason to have game 1 of the finals on thursday and game 2 on sunday. honestly, you only really need a day off if youre traveling. otherwise, play the next day. you know who has this right? baseball.