In the spring of 2007 I was driving home from work when I remembered, the NBA draft lottery was starting. I tuned my car’s radio to the local sports channel to find the commissioner approaching single-digit territory. Panicking, I pulled my car over into a random parking lot, turned off the engine, and waited.
Number 9, The Chicago Bulls.
I was an ardent fan of the Portland Trailblazers since my youth. The highlight of my childhood is the time my parents managed to score courtside tickets to the home game against the Mavericks from a friend. When I sat down, I wondered why there were empty seats next to me considering how close it was to game time. Several minutes into the first quarter, my childhood idol, Blazers point guard Terry Porter, subbed out of the game and sat down next to me. Too star-struck to say anything, I absorbed as many details as I could, from his height (freakishly tall from my perspective), body odor (sweaty) to his general demeanor (locked in to the game). It was, I can remember vividly, the defining moment in my adolescent sports career. Until that spring day.
Number 8, The Charlotte Bobcats.
A year prior, my Blazers had begun their ascent back to relevance by drafting Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge in the first round of the 2006 NBA draft. Roy made the all-rookie first-team, and Aldridge seemed like a sure-thing power forward. Together, they led the team to a 32-50 record, an 11 game improvement upon the previous year and an occasion of great hope, following years of dread and despondence during the “JailBlazers” era. Ironically, the Blazers had the best statistical chance of landing the top pick in that draft, but had settled for the fourth overall selection. In spite of that, front-office guru Kevin Pritchard traded pick #4 for the second overall pick from the Bulls, drafting Aldridge. He then traded for Boston’s #7, drafted Randy Foye (who?) and traded him to Minnesota for University of Washington senior, Brandon Roy. The franchise had a savior.
Number 7, The Minnesota Timberwolves.
This year, the Blazers had the sixth best statistical chance of winning the top pick, surely not enough for anything but a late top-10 pick. However, my excitement at this point in the draft lottery began to pique. We could do something with a top-6 pick, potentially building upon the solid core we had procured previously.
Number 6, The Milwaukee Bucks.
A top-5 pick!? Alright! It seemed fortune was smiling upon the Blazers. I was fully prepared to drop the maximum 4 spots and end up with the 10th overall pick, so exceeding statistical probability was a newfound experience for me as a fan. Of course, the top prizes of this draft were Kevin Durant, the lanky University of Texas forward who won practically every national award as a true freshman, and Greg Oden, the once-in-a-generation Ohio State University center who had had a highlight-reel high school career and, as a true freshman and with a broken right (dominant hand) wrist almost the entire season, had led the Buckeyes to the national championship game, where they eventually lost to the senior-heavy Florida Gators dynasty.
Number 5, The Boston Celtics.
A top-4 pick!! Of course, I made no qualms of getting a shot at the two titans above, but an Al Horford or Mike Conley or Jeff Green seemed like just what the doctor ordered for my team.
And the number 4 pick in the 2007 NBA draft goes to.. The Memphis Grizzlies.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A top-3 pick! We were guaranteed at least a solidly-good player! I couldn’t believe myself. I was hyperventilating. I’m sure people in the nearby apartments could hear my scream relentlessly at the radio as the commissioner stepped up to the podium to announce the number 3 overall pick. My heart skipped a beat, dropped down into my stomach, then proceeded to lead the entire city of Chicago in a rendition of Twist n’ Shout a la Ferris Bueler. I literally hopped in the back seat, curled my knees up to my chest, and waited with an anticipation I had never experienced in my life. Those few moments seemed.. like an eternity.
And the number 3 pick in the 2007 NBA draft goes to..
…
..
The Atlanta Hawks.
Stunned, I wiped my brow, blinked a few times, and looked outside the car. The world seemed so.. bright. So inviting. I couldn’t even conceptualize the good fortune bestowed upon my favorite team. We had a top-2 pick in a lottery with only 2 sure-fire prospects (according to every analyst ever). Honestly, the next few minutes were a blur of emotions. The then-Seattle Sonics won the number 2 overall pick, guaranteeing my Blazers the #1 overall pick for the first time since we had drafted Mychal Thompson back before I was born.
We did it. We had our choice of the future all-star wing player, or the seemingly once-in-a-generation big man.
I screamed, bounced around in my car (testing the physical limits of my Mazda’s cheap interior) and called every Blazers fan I knew to scream some more.
Our team, being built as a TEAM, as a model of the San Antonio Spurs (Kevin Pritchard often cited them as our rebuilding trajectory) would be able to make a franchise defining choice. Right away, all of the analysts posited that we would select Oden and construct one of the most dominant defensive teams the league had seen that decade. At the time, I couldn’t agree more with them. Durant was impressive, to be sure, but he was so damn skinny, and the prospect of having such a dominant defensive center on my team was tantalizing. I loved defense, and team basketball, and it seemed drafting Durant would take away from Roy’s importance on the perimeter, something I deemed expendable in comparison to the opportunities Oden afforded us as a franchise.
I mean, check out this video from that years NCAA tournament when, in a game against Tennessee, Oden absolutely DENIED Tennessee’s (a good team) potentially game winning shot.
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This is a story about hope, about passion and about the feelings such an artificial construct as the NBA can evoke in a human being. For the next few months, as the Blazers blogosphere (one of the most active in all sports) constantly debated Oden vs. Durant, I was on cloud-9. It didn’t matter who we chose, what mattered is that we got to choose.
Hindsight is 20-20. As a sports fan, nothing is more painful for me than to witness Durant blossoming into one of the premier players of our generation for Oklahoma City while Oden blossomed into one of the most loyal customers of the local arthoscopic knee surgery clinic. Really and truly, the despair I know as a Blazers fan now, with Oden’s Portland career likely over after another season-long setback, and Brandon Roy’s body breaking down faster than an AA member at an open-bar, is greater than anything I’ve ever known before. My friends mock the bad fortune of my team, largely at my own expense. And you know what? That’s ok. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we want. Sometimes your team drafts Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan, then makes the same mistake all over again 2 decades later. Who knew?
But nobody can take that day away from me.
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