In the Lottery, NBA Is the Big Loser

SAN ANTONIO

On its own, Portland and Seattle finishing 1-2 in the NBA lottery shouldn't amount to disaster. The Trail Blazers weren't hard to find or appreciate when Bill Walton was leading them to a championship and the franchise was a beloved model of playoff consistency. The SuperSonics made their way to the NBA Finals three times in 20 years and even casual basketball fans had no problem identifying Dennis Johnson, Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton.

But what good is having rookie phenoms Greg Oden and Kevin Durant join the league, even if they're good quickly, if nobody sees them?

Almost all their home games would begin after 10 o'clock in the East and 9 in the Midwest, which is pretty much the reason few people east of the Rockies knew a thing about the Golden State Warriors until their playoff series with the Mavericks.

If the NBA and its television partners (ABC/ESPN and Turner) fail to get Oden and Durant on frequently in prime time and on weekend afternoons against marquee teams such as the Suns and Lakers, it actually might be disastrous for the league. That should be fairly easy to fix, though, by creatively manipulating the schedule -- something the NFL would wisely and happily do in a heartbeat.

In the context of issues the NBA is already battling, however, the expected arrival of Oden and Durant in the Pacific Northwest might be reason for the NBA to fret.

The draft, by design, is supposed to provide immediate help to the worst teams, yet the teams with the three worst records in the 2007 season -- Memphis, Boston and Milwaukee -- all dropped out of the top three in Tuesday's draft lottery. And at a time when the league is struggling to keep television viewers, even for its postseason, the big market cities whose teams also need help desperately -- Philadelphia and Boston -- won't get a quick bump from drafting a franchise player.

The teams along the stretch of I-95 from Boston to Washington, an area I refer to as the cradle of basketball, have been out of the big action for so long the league risks seeing the fans of those cities gradually tune out.

Among the Celtics, Knicks, Nets, 76ers and Wizards, the Nets and 76ers have been to the NBA Finals in this decade. But the 76ers haven't gotten out of the first round since 2003, and the Nets appear on the verge of starting over. Those teams along the I-95 corridor play to only, oh, 40 million people or so potentially.

Plus, the existing imbalance between the conferences figures to be even more exaggerated. Remember, all five members of the league's all-NBA first-team (Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, Amare Stoudemire, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant) are from the Western Conference. Portland, presuming the Trail Blazers draft Oden, will have a great nucleus of young players that includes the 2007 rookie of the year Brandon Roy, 7-foot forward LeMarcus Aldridge and point guard Jarrett Jack.

The Sonics, whether they play in Seattle, Oklahoma City or Las Vegas, would have the possibility of Durant joining veteran all-star Ray Allen.

What to do about the Knicks, Celtics and 76ers is much more difficult, especially since the Knicks were mismanaged after their 1999 trip to the Finals and since the 76ers of Allen Iverson, who we thought would be a force of basketball and entertainment until the end of the decade, turned out to be a one-hit wonder.

The Celtics are the team of that group that deserves to feel sorry for itself, having come up empty twice in the lottery. If the Celtics had finished, as the percentages suggested, with the No. 1 and No. 3 picks in 1997 and drafted Tim Duncan, this talk of Western Conference superiority and conference imbalance wouldn't exist. After winning 13 of the NBA's first 30 championships and being thought of not only as the best but also the luckiest team in American sports, the Celtics have had little more than tragedy and misfortune since the death of Len Bias in 1986.

Regardless of why, the NBA simply can't afford a great loss of interest in basketball in the East, where the game was invented and popularized.

Durant's own words during an interview with ESPN's Dan Patrick moments before the lottery might serve as a cautionary note. Asked if he had a favorite team growing up, Durant, from Suitland, said, essentially, "No, I didn't. I grew up in Washington, D.C. so I caught some Wizards games here and there. But no, I don't have a favorite team." Ouch.

Probably, the I-95 teams need to stop whining and learn from small-market western teams such as Sacramento and Utah how to go about putting together a contending team instead of just waiting on the big lottery strike. Even the 2004 Detroit Pistons, without a No. 1 pick of their own, managed to scout, trade, draft and sign their way to an NBA championship.

Even so, it's really amazing the impact the draft lottery might have on the immediate and long-term futures of the league, its balance and its popularity. The NBA always prospered from having high-profile stars on big-market teams. Undeniably, the buzz from Oden landing in Chicago or Philly or Boston would have been loud. The Bulls, given that they're already a second-round playoff team, might have embarked upon another dynastic run with Oden. But no such luck. The Phoenix Suns, ever so close to being a team worthy of the NBA Finals, could have drafted No. 4 with the Hawks pick protected from Nos. 1-3. Instead, Atlanta moved up from fourth to third on lottery night, where probably another good player will go to play in total obscurity rather than teaming up with Nash.

Every possibility that might have broken in favor of the league didn't on lottery night, at least if you're simply gauging visibility, popularity, or the notion of having a fairly glamorous team or teams that might appeal to the casual NBA fan.

The grumbling has been intense since, with even owners questioning whether the lottery should be tweaked. They seem to have forgotten that this lottery, weighted so heavily in favor of the teams with the worst records, was adopted to keep better teams from tanking in order to have an equal shot at the great players. If anything, the results of Tuesday's lottery ought to convince people that losing very likely will not be rewarded.

The folks who live just up or down the road from basketball's birthplace, Springfield, Mass., aren't accustomed to looking jealously to the northwest quadrant of the country, wondering what people in those NBA outposts such as Portland and Seattle did to get so lucky.