I Heard it Downtown

Well, now I think we have conclusive proof that the NBA draft is not rigged.

Most experts agree this draft is something of a clunker, with only one or two elite, marketable players, followed by 40 others, ranging from “role player”, to “D League”, to “Lebron James Poster Fodder”, to finally, “Wally Szczerbiak Poster Fodder” (ouch.)  NBA conspiracy theorists flooded the Internet with claims that David “Diabolical” Stern would find a way to get Blake Griffin to New York, or his hometown team of Oklahoma City, a la the 1985 draft.

Instead, Blake Griffin is rewarded with an all expense paid trip to basketball Siberia, the LA Clippers. He did his best to put on a happy face last night “Hey, LA is tight man. They have lots of good players”, but if he’s smart, he’d probably rather be playing in Tehran.

As an Ohio sports fan, I am well aquainted with sports teams sucking for a long time. When I was old enough to understand football (around 1994), I adopted the Cincinnati Bengals. Since then, the team has made the playoffs exactly once, and that trip basically ended after the second play from scrimmage, as their franchise quarterback blew out his knee, never to be the same. They also managed to draft so many criminals that they make Guantanamo Bay look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Indians broke our hearts in 1995 and 1997 (I still can’t hear the words Jose Mesa without throwing a chair through a window), and the Cavs, pre-Lebron were a case study in awful.

And don’t even get me started about Ohio State. Yeah, I’m aware.

But the Clippers…they take sucking to an entirely new level, even past Detroit Lions territory. In twenty five years, the team has made the playoffs less than 5 times, and never advancing past the second round. They have picked in the NBA lottery nearly every year since it started in 1985. They own several of the worst records in NBA history. The Clippers dont just lose, they get crushed.

Part of that can be attributed to the fact that their ownership doesn’t actually care about winning. Ownership was famous in the sporting world for being stingy, refusing to retain talented players or hire new ones, in an attempt to keep payroll down and profits up. They made a serious of very questionable draft moves (Yaroslav Korolev over Danny Granger? Really??)The team has refused to fire Mike Dunleavy, a coach who shouldn’t be trusted to handle a high school JV squad, despite the team’s ineptitude for years, so they wouldn’t have to pay him a buyout. The team finally started to make a splash with their payroll, splurging over the last two years on bringing in several high priced big men, like Marcus Camby, Chris Kamen (aka the most ugly person in the entire freaking world), and Zach Randolph, who had the coolest play in NBA history. Wait, did I say coolest? I meant “play that makes my eyes bleed”.

So even when the hit the draft jackpot with Griffin, they still screw it up. Where is he going to play? Randolph’s contract is more than the GNP of most Balkan countries, so he can’t really be traded. Camby, Kaman etc are also making too much money to be send to the bench, and the team can’t really play 5 big men at once (although given Dunleavy, you never know). Where does he fit in the rotation?

Griffin is right. The Clippers do have some good players. A lineup of Davis, Gordon, Thorton, Griffen/Z-bo/Camby ought to be enough to compete for a playoff spot. But with such an inept history, such a dysfunctional organization, and such bad attitudes (Ricky Davis is to impressionable  rookies as salt is to snails. If Blake hangs out with him too long, he’ll be shooting at the wrong basket and makin’ it rain at strip clubs in 5 months), expecting the team to make any real improvements is basically impossible.

Which is a pity, because Blake Griffin is pretty good, and deserves better. Hopefully he isn’t mentally damanged by his stint in NBA purgatory.

The NBA draft. Where amazing happens!