OPINION

By Sean Deveney

updated 4:46 p.m. ET May 22, 2007

Sean Deveney

Ten years later, Dee Brown can laugh about it.

Now, he's an analyst for ESPN and has started a handful of businesses, including EDGE training, a state-of-the-art basketball facility in Orlando. But not long ago, Brown was the captain of a wayward Celtics team that, coming off the worst performance (15-67) in franchise history, looked to be on the verge of finding its rudder. By virtue of a trade with Dallas, the Celtics had two picks in the 1997 NBA lottery and a 36.3 percent shot at the No. 1 pick. With Wake Forest's Tim Duncan having just wrapped up his senior season, the future looked bright — so bright that Rick Pitino was lured away from the University of Kentucky with a 10-year contract to coach the team and direct its personnel.

Then lottery day came. Brown, watching the draft order revealed, frowned as the Celtics first landed the No. 6 pick. Then came the stunner: The other pick was No. 3. There would be no Duncan in Boston. San Antonio had won the lottery, and Spurs owner Peter Holt gushed, "I mean, the world is our oyster." Brown shook his head. And Pitino? "He almost had a coronary," Brown says.

Brown can't resist the “what if” game. He was a killer 3-point shooter late in his career, an ideal Duncan complement. But instead of winning titles with Duncan, Brown's Celtics went on losing games after drafting Ron Mercer and Chauncey Billups. Pitino traded Brown and Billups to Toronto halfway through the following season, and Brown's career ended four years later. He lasted longer than Pitino, who resigned after 3 1/2 years with a .411 winning percentage and zero playoff appearances.

"If we had gotten Tim Duncan," Brown says, "no one would be talking about San Antonio right now. They'd be talking about the Celtics."

In the goofy world of the NBA lottery, the bounce of the pingpong balls can make the world your oyster or leave you jobless.

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Fates of young players, old players, coaches, general managers, franchises and even entire cities are determined (witness Cleveland in the 2003 lottery, which led to the LeBron James draft). The Portland Trail Blazers won the lottery Tuesday with the No. 1 overall pick, while the Seattle Sonics are a close second after moving up to No. 2. Why? Because the upcoming draft features two surefire NBA stars: Ohio State center Greg Oden and Texas forward Kevin Durant, the college player of the year.

Woe be the Atlanta Hawks, who wound up third. "Whoever gets the No. 3 pick, they need to keep him under security watch," one Eastern Conference general manager said before the lottery. "The guy might throw himself off the George Washington Bridge."

And imagine the Memphis Grizzlies and Boston Celtics, who had the worst two records but will pick fourth and fifth, respectively.

The Celtics of the Pitino vintage are a good example of why life with a near-miss pick is no fun. When his Magic won the 1992 lottery, which yielded LSU center Shaquille O'Neal, two things stuck out for Orlando executive Pat Williams. One was the forlorn faces of other teams' execs. The other was "the sound of rustling paper bags." Paper bags? "Everyone was sitting on the stage with a Shaq jersey in a paper bag on their laps," Williams says. "When it was over, all I could hear was the sound of these paper bags being shoved back under the table. Somewhere out there, there's a 1992 Dallas Mavericks Shaq jersey that never saw the light of day."

And, perhaps, there will be Oden and Durant jerseys that go forever unworn. At the least, there will be forlorn faces for those who miss out on the top two. But, boy, oh, boy, a well-placed lottery win could set up a franchise for years. Consider the Spurs, who won the lottery in 1987 — the David Robinson draft — and again in the Duncan draft. Those two picks have given San Antonio almost two decades of elite seasons. The Spurs have missed the playoffs only once in the past 18 years and have won 60 percent of their games in all but two of those seasons.

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