NBA Draft Lottery Must Be Legit!!

Wow, what a night last night for the Memphis Grizzlies. They were not treated or bad mouthed like the red headed step child that they are usually treated like. When looking at the results of the draft lottery, it proves that it must be done legitimately. Just look at the draft order.

1. Los Angeles Clippers
2. Memphis Grizzlies
3. Oklahoma City Thunder
4. Sacramento Kings
5. Washington Wizards
6. Minnesota Timberwolves

If the Draft Lottery was rigged as it has appeared to have been several times in the past, then Oklahoma City should have won this draft and gotten their hometown player. Such was the case for the Chicago Bulls with Derrick Rose and the Cleveland Cavaliers with LeBron James.

If the Draft Lottery was rigged to get a certain team back in the spotlight I don't think the team that they would fix the lottery for would be the Los Angeles Clippers. I would think that the fix would have been in for the New York Knicks, or possibly the New Jersey Nets or Washington Wizards or the Phoenix Suns.

Also giving the Memphis Grizzlies the 2'nd pick isn't what you would expect from a "fixed" lottery. I would have expected the Grizzlies to come out with the 8'th or 9'th draft pick. I am very happy and excited to see the Grizzlies picking 2'nd.

My hopes for the 2'nd pick are mixed. I would love to see them make a deal and send Darko Millicic and the 2'nd pick to the Clippers in return for the 1'st pick. We really need Blake Griffin. I would prefer to send Darko with his expiring contract instead of Hakim Warrick but would be willing to send either player.

If we keep the 2'nd pick, then I would prefer that the Grizzlies draft Ricky Rubio instead of Hasheem Thabeet. We already have three 7 foot centers on the team. Hamed Haddadi is a project that showed a little promise at the end of last season. I believe he could be developed into a good backup center to Marc Gasol. The problem on this team isn't at the center position, but at the power forward. This is why I still go back to my first hope for this draft and that is to trade up 1 spot and draft Blake Griffin.

All the excitement of drafting number 2 and the possibilities that come with it makes us sometimes forget that we have 2 other draft picks in the top 36 picks. We need to make sure we use all our picks wisely. That could mean trading multiple picks to move up as well.

Chris Wallace, good luck as you have this opportunity to improve our team.