CELTICS GREEN BLOG by and for boston celtics fans: Fiddlin' and Diddlin' on Lottery Day

Well, after waiting all this time the lottery is only hours away. Thankfully I have been kept busy today because if I was just sitting here watching the seconds tick off on the lottery count down I would be stark raving mad by the time the lottery got here (for the record, I don't have far to go to get there). I have my "Red" Celtics shirt on today as I am hoping for a little help from him come ping pong time. My whole family is wearing Celtic green today including my 7 month old grandson. Gotta send all the positive Celtics karma out I can.

There were a couple of interesting tidbits in today's papers. In the Herald, Jeff Twiss talks about the '97 lottery.

“The real kicker to the whole process - and I remember this very well - was that they had two trial runs before they did the official drawing,” Twiss said. “I guess they just wanted to make sure the ping-pong balls were working right. The thing is, both times they did it, we got the first pick. Once we got one and two, and I think we got one and three the other time. I’m like, hey, this is great. Let’s go.
“Then they did the real drawing.”

I wonder if they do a trial run or two every time. Or, maybe Stern does trial runs until he gets the result he wants.

In the Globe article, David Stern almost says something nice about the Celtics, whether he meant it or not.

NBA commissioner David Stern said recently, "I think it would be nice for the Celtics to improve themselves. I think it would be good for the team, but I can look at 30 teams and wind up saying the same thing. I do know there are players that are going to go at the 10th position this year, I am reliably informed, that are going to be impact players."

And Tommy has a very good comment as well.

Turning serious, the Hall of Famer preferred to focus on what the Celtics have and not what they might miss out on. "If Al Jefferson was coming out today, he'd be the No. 1 pick," said Heinsohn. "So, we got the No. 1 pick a couple years ago with foresight."

I love Tommy's optimism about this team. I don't know if Al would have gone before Oden or Durant though. I do agree with Tommy that no matter what the outcome of the draft, we need to focus on what we have and not sit around whining about what we don't have.

Jeff on Celtics Blog tells us 5 reasons why we need the top pick. Petula and Hankfinkel have a good article that puts our 38.7% chance of winning a top 2 pick in perspective.

5 hours now until the Lottery show. Counting down to the first pick is going to be excruciating and hoping with every announcement that it won't be the Celtics until we get to #1. I plan to be in the CelticsBlog chat as well as the Loy's Place chat if I can manage it. I need all the support I can get. See you all there!!

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