So as the 1984 NBA season was winding down, University of Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon had emerged as the near-certain first overall pick in the upcoming college draft. At that time, the NBA draft worked much as the current NFL and MLB drafts do – the worst team in the league by record would get Hakeem. As Olajuwon was considered – and turned out to be – a franchise-altering talent – a number of teams coveted him, and during those final months of the season, engaged in a race to the bottom of the standings that embarrassed the NBA powers-that-be, most notably probable Evil Overlord David Stern. Accordingly, Stern instituted a lottery for the next season, in which the draft order for the first seven picks was determined at random. In the end, the New York Knicks won the lottery and the rights to the best player in that draft, Georgetown center Patrick Ewing.
OK. A lot of discussion has centered on whether or not Stern fixed the lottery to ensure that Ewing – the biggest star in some time to join the league – would end up in the huge New York market. I’m not interested in this question, really.
What I am interested in is this: what if there had been no lottery? What if Stern and his associates had decided that tanking, while not ideal, was not a sufficient threat to the reputation of the league to justify such a huge change to the draft model? How would the 1985 draft – one of the best drafts in history - have turned out differently, and how would the NBA have changed as a result?
Here’s how the first seven picks turned out in the real 1985:
#1 – Patrick Ewing – New York Knicks
#2 – Wayman Tisdale – Indiana Pacers
#3 – Benoit Benjamin – Los Angeles Clippers
#4 – Xavier McDaniel – Seattle Supersonics
#5 – Jon Koncak – Atlanta Hawks
#6 – Joe Kleine – Sacramento Kings
#7 – Chris Mullin – Golden State Warriors
Other notable picks in the top 15 included Detlef Schrempf (#8 – Dalls), Charles Oakley (#7 – Cleveland), and Karl Malone (#13 – Utah).
So let’s say there were not a lottery. The Pacers and Warriors would have had a coin flip for the first pick. The top seven would have looked like this:
#1 – Pacers / Warriors
#2 – Warriors / Pacers
#3 – Knicks
#4 - Clippers
#5 – Sonics
#6 – Kings
#7 – Hawks
What happens? Presumably whoever gets the first pick takes Ewing. If the Warriors get Ewing, and the Pacers (presumably) take Tisdale, who do the Knicks take at 3? If the Pacers win the first pick, do the Warriors take Mullin with the #2 overall, leaving Tisdale for the Knicks?
And how does this revision to the draft, and the subsequent absence of a lottery for future seasons, affect the course of the NBA for the next decade or so?
Curious what people think.