Lottery Has the Power to Set Front Offices Free

You know what’s so amazing about the draft lottery? It takes one of the most geeky, obsessive fields of basketball knowledge -- scouting and personnel decisions -- and brings it to a head in the most crass way possible.
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↵I mean, think about it: Teams struggle to build a roster that works, including assessing talent and sorting out the future studs from the duds. The lottery, though, potentially frees them of all that hard work. Hit the jackpot and, more or less, you’re absolved of your responsibility to be an NBA front office. At least in this important regard. Since remember, a lottery pick is expected to help an ailing team. Other than spontaneous growth, it’s all the help they can count on. No one wants to sign with a sinking ship, right?↵
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↵Good thing that, as with last year, tonight’s winner finds itself in a truly melodramatic bind. Oden/Durant, meet Rose/Beasley. Rock-solid position guy, foundation for a team, versus wildly talented, versatile gamer who could go everywhere or nowhere. Chad Ford runs down which team should (or would) go with which player, but certainly this is a different kind of off-season angst. And at 8PM EST tonight, it’s the kind of problem every team rep assembled is hoping to have.↵
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↵Picking between Rose and Beasley does have its pressures. If one goes bust, or dies, the franchise looks bad for years. But at the same time, at the time it’s totally defensible. It’s when you get past #2 in this year’s talent pool that the hard work begins. Sometimes, there’s not even a clear-cut #1, and then, the lottery’s important, if not a window into another dimension of off-season planning. Still involves a lot of work. This year, #1 has to make the kind of decision most of us would love to be stuck with (“which supermodel do I date”), and #2, they might as well take a week of vacation.↵