King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NBA draft lottery: Blazers get Oden. Grizzlies, Celtics and Bucks get lucky. They won't get to fail with a top-three pick.

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May 23, 2007 | The Portland Trail Blazers won the NBA draft lottery Tuesday night, and here's my advice to them:

Take Greg Oden take Greg Oden take Greg Oden take Greg Oden take Greg Oden take take take take Greg Oden Oden Oden Oden. Take Greg Oden.

I know. They're probably going to. The supposed debate about whether the top pick should be Oden or Kevin Durant is a little like the debate about whether it's better to be a billionaire or a millionaire. Either'd be just dandy, but it's not hard to choose.

Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, who represented the team in glamorous Secaucus, N.J., Tuesday, talked to ESPN as though the Ohio State center were already a Blazer, which he should be and probably is. But we've got more than a month until the draft, and that's plenty of time for NBA executives to talk themselves into some pretty crazy ideas.

The whole league convinced itself that Andrew Bogut was going to be a dominant NBA big man two years ago. I tried to warn 'em, tried to tell 'em that Bogut was going to be a good but not great NBA player, and you don't spend the top pick on a good but not great player, even if he bumps his head on 7-foot doorways.

I know I said I'd take Marvin Williams with the pick. Why do you want to bring that up? I was going to talk about 2003 No. 2 pick Darko Milicic finally turning himself into roughly a league-average player, but listen, if you want to be that way, forget it. Take Rodney Stuckey, for all I care, Portland.

The Blazers don't need to be reminded of all this, of course. You can't spell, "Holy smoke, the Blazers did what?!" without s, a, m, b, o, w, i and e.

Durant, a Texas Longhorn, is a terrific player, and the Seattle SuperSonics should be thrilled to get him with the second pick.

Who's not thrilled: the Memphis Grizzlies, Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks, the bottom three teams in the league, who were bounced out of the top three by the ping-pong ball machine o' pain. The Atlanta Hawks got the third pick.

Great. We tanked a bunch of games for nothing!

Next page: Don't worry, Memphis, Boston and Milwaukee: You'd have just screwed up the top pick anyway