Bulls Get #1 Draft Pick; Fred Hoiberg on Suicide Watch
The year’s most suspenseful couple of minutes took place Tuesday night before Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
No, I’m not talking about Jeff Van Gundy’s annual prostate exam…I’m referring to the unveiling of the NBA draft lottery order.
The NBA Draft is an exciting event in itself…but not half as exciting, in my opinion, as the tension-riddled removing of the awkwardly large cards from the giant envelopes. Fates of franchises rest upon this. Not to mention moods of fanbases.
Things are made all-the-more stressful when everyone knows there are only a couple of really good players in the draft pool. Basically, if you got the first or second pick this year you were happy…anything lower than that and you were ready to choke a kitten to death.
The NBA couldn’t simply do this in some backroom some place and then release the order to the media…they have to make a big todo about it, inviting representatives from each team to stand behind podiums left from the set of a ’50s quiz show that was at some point investigated by Congress.
The reps are just supposed to sit there smiling…and absolutely not look pissed off when they find out their team didn’t get one of the good picks. Some do a good job of it and some don’t. New Knicks coach Mike DAntoni, for instance, did a bad job of it this year (see his reaction at approx 1:36 on the video).
That is not the face of a man gracefully handling defeat. It is the face of a man who’s thinking, “Holy shit. I’m the coach of the Knicks. What the hell was I thinking?”
D’Antoni’s reaction paled in comparison, however, to that of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Fred Hoiberg.
The T-Wolves found themselves in the top 3 along with the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls. The teams had to wait through an excruciating commercial break, and to make matters worse for their representatives, there was no pee break allowed.
Back from commercial, and Fred is standing alongside Dwyane Wade of the Heat and Some White Guy of the Bulls. Fred can be seen clutching a little T-Wolves teddy bear that some cancer victim gave him to hold for good luck.
That’s where the story gets really sad…the thought of the poor cancer boy watching to see his teddy bear, which he has selflessly donated, bring the #1 pick to his beloved team. Imagine his disappointment when the giant card came out of the giant envelope for Minnesota…and it was only the #3 pick!
Perhaps some of the boy’s disappointment traveled through the bear’s body and into Fred Hoiberg (witness the crestfallen Hoiberg at approx 2:48 on the above video - might want to go to full-screen to see it better).
Hoiberg obviously wanted to go cry somewhere and maybe burn the cancer boy’s teddy bear as part of some purging ceremony…but decorum demanded that he stay behind to congratulate the teams ahead of him.
The Heat will pick #2 and the Bulls #1. Everyone thinks the Bulls will take Derrick Rose of Memphis and the Heat will then take Michael Beasley of Kansas State. And the T-Wolves? They’ll probably draft some smelly Serbian who will wind up making Darko Milicic look like Tim Duncan.
That’s why Fred was so sad…he wanted either Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley. He and the rest of the T-Wolves may have felt the league owed them a top 2 pick because they were willing to be fleeced by the Celtics in the Kevin Garnett trade, which revitalized one of the NBA’s most important markets.
Unfortunately, the shady NBA draft-manipulators decided they’d rather help Chicago this year, and also get Dwyane Wade a new teammate in Miami. So the T-Wolves were shit out of luck…cancer boy teddy bear or no.
Tags: Bulls, Celtics, Darko Milicic, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Fred Hoiberg, Heat, Jeff Van Gundy, Kansas State, Kevin Garnett, Kevin Garnett trade, Knicks, Memphis, Michael Beasley, Mike DAntoni, NBA Draft, Tim Duncan, Timberwolves
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May 21st, 2008 at 4:54 pm
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