As if I needed anymore evidence that the NBA’s regular season is devoid of virtually any meaning other than to sell tickets before the real games start, the NBA Draft Lottery just renewed the fallacies of the 82 games prior to the playoffs. The teams that were, by far, the worst in the league don’t have the first, second or even third picks in the draft.
But I’m not going to rant this time. Instead, I’ll extend a moment of silence for all of those Memphis and Boston fans whose hearts may have stopped upon seeing their team announced with the 4th and 5th picks…
Now, anybody know when can I start purchasing Blazer tickets? Oh, they’re on sale already? How convenient. Despite what I said about not wanting to watch regular season games, I’ll have to make at least one exception next season.
Tuesday night was the Pacific Northwest’s return to relevance again in the NBA. After receiving the No. 1 and No. 2 picks, the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Sonics will receive the undying attention of every media outlet wanting to keep the nation informed of Greg Oden and Kevin Durant’s every move. Each of the two supposed future Hall-of-Famers will help ascend his team into the upper-tier of NBA teams and make the Northwest the dominant region of professional basketball.
Durant will save basketball in Seattle and Oden will be the most significant piece to a Blazers’ NBA title in the next few years.
At least that’s what the media has everybody believing. Maybe they will be two of the most important draft picks this decade, then again, maybe they won’t. The only thing I know for sure is that any ticket-selling problems either team had the past couple of years was immediately solved Tuesday night.
While Seattle is still having ideas about moving the team and Portland had to practically give away tickets to fill the seats last season, whatever problems each franchise faced in recent years seemingly evaporated. They were replaced with optimism that things will finally change for the better and, of course, that’s how every fan of each team should feel. Both Oden and Durant are the type of players who can completely alter how good a team can be and make people interested in watching the team play again.
Jerseys, bobbleheads, posters, trading cards, television deals, more media exposure and all the other frills will help invigorate two fan bases that were in need of rescuing. As popular and marketable as Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy is, he never received Oden-type attention.
But the fan base won’t only be rescued, it’ll be expanded as well. Anybody who has a passing interest in basketball will want to see one of the teenage basketball messiahs try to translate his collegiate success to the NBA. And there’s little doubt they won’t.
While watching the lottery, I, like every other basketball fan in the nation, was interested in what team was going to receive the first pick. I don’t know if you consider a 5.3 percent chance a miracle, but every Blazers fan seems to think it is. Once Portland was announced, one of my fellow observers was near tears of joy and half a dozen of my friends on Facebook changed their profile pictures to a photo of Oden.
For them, the only thing better than winning a championship is the prospect of winning several within the next decade. The fact that one player can almost guarantee those aspirations is more of a miracle than any lottery percentage.
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