Pat Riley Giddy About His Newfound ‘Leverage’

Sorry playoffs, nothing but lottery today. I trust everyone already knows to be excited for Lakers/Spurs.↵
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↵The first truly odd dispatch from the post-lottery haze comes courtesy of, who else, Pat Riley, a man whose mystique is rapidly being chemically transformed into, well, haze. From the ↵Sun-Sentinel:↵↵↵⇥“Unless there’s somebody like LeBron James or a [Kevin] Garnett, somebody you absolutely know is a superstar, then the second-most important thing to have is leverage,” Riley said. “We feel we have a lot of leverage with the pick.”↵⇥
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↵⇥“Take a look at what Boston did last year,” Riley said about the trade of its fifth overall pick for Garnett. “I’m talking hypotheticals. I just want people to know, especially our fans, that we’re going to do our best to select a player or leverage that pick to get the best player for the team.”↵↵To be fair, high picks aren’t exactly sacrosanct every single year. And Boston used that pick to get Ray Allen, not Garnett. But this year, there are two absolute monsters available, possibly franchise forces, who will be playing for cheap. That certainly beats trading one of them for someone just as good, but much more paid. When you can get a superstar, playing for next to nothing—that’s pretty much the best-case scenario in this sport. Unless Riley thinks he can land Kobe or Duncan, I don’t see how there’s anything that could trump going with the way of the draft.↵