OT(?): Pelicans win NBA Draft Lottery
Shockingly, Cleveland did not win.
So the only possible reason that would make JB's decision to jump ship to Dan fucking Gilbert outside of "wanting the challenge" is now gone.
There's a good chance that nice guys will (literally) finish last next year in the NBA standings.
Cleveland is taking Jordan Poole 5th
And Iggy 26th
JB made his decision. He's going to be stuck in a moribund franchise for his remaining coaching days and have a bunch of athletes that don't give a damn who the coach is.
I guess I am in the minority that just does not get the warm and fuzzies from JB anymore. He had a chance to be an iconic legend among ALL Michigan coaches, not just basketball.
I don't feel bad at all for him. This is the draft lottery. I'm thinking about the future, and JB is not a part of it anymore. Thanks for the memories, good luck getting pissed off daily in the league trying to control egos.
I also agree with this.
I really appreciated everything he did for this program. But there was ALWAYS a small part of me that knew this could happen.
Whenever I look back at his tenure, it will always irk me that he bolted for the dumpster fire in Cleveland. Great man, great leader, but it will bug me forever.
when i look back at his tenure, it will always amaze me how he led his team off of a crashed jet plane and into the B10 championship. love that guy, even if he is going to ohio. God bless him.
Good to see someone in northern mich has some sense.
exhibit 'A' for having some sense: living up north. you people down south are the crazy ones.
I get this sentiment. I'm over him, and frankly have always been one of his naysayers in the past (there were many things about his teams' style that rubbed me the wrong way). He's made me look like an ass a few times because of it. But he cleaned up our culture, put us back on the map. Hell, he put us in a position now where we can potentially go out and get a big name coach who has the potential to do bigger and better things here than even Beilein could ever imagine.
More than banners, more than our now squeaky clean reputation, Beilein's greatest contribution to Michigan basketball could ultimately end up being leaving it at the right time and in a state where it was almost as an attractive of a coaching job as a blue blood school.
I'm thankful for everything Beilein did for Michigan but I still feel betrayed. I can't honestly say I'll be rooting for him in Cleveland. On to the next chapter, I suppose.
The salt is super sad. Beilein was over the shady crap in the NCAA and took a shot at a dream. Why are people so hung up on where he went? He took a job where he could build a team. He got a pay bump and will retire with no regrets when his career is finished. It isn't always about you the fan who plays zero minutes of a game and coaches zero minutes.
I guarantee he will regret going to work for Dan Gilbert and taking over one of the NBA's worst rosters as opposed to being a legend at Michigan when Gilbert fires him in a few years.
Absolutely.
So, what are the odds that Zion puts out a list of teams that he refuses to play for and the #1 pick gets traded?
He probably already called Eli Manning for advice.
How did the Lakers get up to #4? There’s your shenanigan for the day . . . Oh well, Cleveland will be in the lottery again next year. And the next . . .
Fuck Cleveland. Fuck Columbus. Fuck Ohio.
Iggy To cleveland
So tanking didn’t lead to getting the #1 pick? You don’t say. That’s why you attempt to WIN!
Please leave with this lame take. If a team has no chance at all of a title, tanking is the way to go. UNLESS you value things besides championships in the NBA, I don't.
What teams has it actually worked for though? Cleveland? The ultimate tankers, Philly, can't get past the second round and might lose 2 starters from that team. The suns still can't even sniff the playoffs.
Yep. Worked out for the timberwolves, the piston, the Knicks (for the 20 years before last), and the nets (4 years of horror).
Hard to believe, but the Nets actually haven't been tanking. They were just left in such a bad place by the previous GM that it looked like it.
Cavs will be loaded next year. JB is going to turn Stauskas into Klay Thompson. They will sign Trey Burke to back up Sexton and he will turn into Lillard. Kevin Love will stay healthy and play like he did in Minnesota. Larry Nance Jr will drop the Jr.
Ok buts let’s do the full Scenario: JB forms his super team of former players and leads “pro-Michigan” to an NBA title, now that would be some serious coaching glory. You’d have to one hell of a coach
I am having a great deal of difficulty locating any fucks to distribute.
Knicks tanked and still lost out on Zion. That almost assuredly also means they lose out on any chances of getting Kyrie and/or KD. They are truly the NBA’s version of the factory of sadness.
As for the Pelicans, you have to wonder if this is enough to keep AD around. If it is and Zion lives up to the hype, they’ve got an immediate title contender right this second. If AD leaves, you may still have a contender if Zion lives up to the hype, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he goes the AD route in 4-5 years and leaves New Orleans to go win a title somewhere else. Awfully hard to win a championship when you have no real supporting pieces around you.
With the amount of hype they've been giving Zion, I don't think he could possibly live up to it- or he would end up winning the NBA title by himself.
Awfully hard to win a championship when 90% of the top players want to be in NY or LA or Miami or SF or maybe Chicago, and unless you get lucky and end up with Tim Duncan who is happy in San Antonio you won’t attract free agents if you are not in a glamour market. It isn’t that you can’t win, but it is a hell of a lot harder in basketball than football or even baseball.
They can sign both KD and Kyrie I believe so the lack of Zion probably wont matter much.
Does this mean the Knicks won’t be trading their draft pick to the Pelicans in a deal for AD? And Durant and Kyrie won’t be joining him in NYC? So sad . . .
It still seems pretty likely Durant will be a knick. Time will tell. Will be a fun summer for NBA.
Good.
Id love it if Zion said no thanks, and went back to duke.
To me these posts are a lot like skewering a kid because he isn't going to be a superstar in the NBA. If you're an architect are you an idiot if you're not building skyscrapers? A certain lack of discernment here; John wants to be a coach in the NBA.
This is going to sound bad, but I'm glad they didn't win. I celebrated a bit last night when I saw that.
I probably missed a previous thread, but that lottery broadcast was the cringiest thing I've ever seen. Short of giving the kid a hand job, the broadcasters were otherwise all over Zion. I felt dirty afterward.
Also, sportscasters can't do comedy.
Who names a team The Pelicans? What a dumb name
My favorite anecdote about the lottery from Zach Lowe:
• Gentry wore a black tie with silver-gray striping. It was his good-luck charm. David Griffin, New Orleans' new executive vice president of basketball operations, gave it to Gentry. Griffin was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers' front office during a stretch in which the Cavs won three lotteries in four years, from 2011 to 2014. Each time, a man named Jeff Cohen -- a former vice chair for the Cavs and confidant of owner Dan Gilbert -- represented the team in the drawing room.
I began referring to Cohen as a warlock. Gilbert and Cohen had some sort of falling out, and the Cavs have not had him in the room in either of the past two lotteries. (Cleveland owned Brooklyn's pick a year ago.) I half-jokingly said the Cavs had cursed themselves.
And then Gentry revealed the ultimate plot twist: The tie Gentry wore Tuesday was the same one Cohen wore in each of those three lottery wins. Griffin had phoned Cohen and asked for a good-luck charm in the lead-up to the lottery, he told ESPN.com in the aftermath Tuesday. Cohen scoffed at the idea that any trinket could win the favor of the lottery gods. Griffin asked if he might please send the tie. Cohen did. Griffin passed it on to Gentry.
Put Jeff Cohen and his damned tie in the Hall of Fame. Gentry said he is going to frame the tie and the lottery balls, and hang it in the Pelicans' practice facility.
• Upstairs in the ballroom, Griffin saw Celtics assistant GM Mike Zarren, embraced him and screamed, "What did I tell you?" In the leaguewide general managers meeting earlier that day, Griffin apparently told everyone New Orleans would win the lottery. "I've already seen it," Griffin recalled announcing to the room. "We're winning this thing."
This is exactly the sort of borderline spiritual language Griffin used when his Cavaliers trailed the Warriors 3-1 in the 2016 NBA Finals. He insisted that the Cavaliers were going to rally and win. If you looked at him funny, Griffin just stared back at you, dead serious.
Between Griffin, Cohen and Cohen's tie, I'm starting to believe in some real mystical stuff. I'm a little scared. I also worry that in excising all three, the Cavaliers will suffer years of self-inflicted bad luck.
Good luck Coach Beilein, but between Dan Gilbert being one of the worst owners in the NBA and being one of the losers in the NBA Draft Lottery, the last thing he needs is for the Cavaliers to be cursed for the future.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26743404/what-happened-wildest-nba-lottery-ever-seen