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Some fans look at the NBA draft as if it's a game. If the home team drafts the famous guy, especially the local famous guy, or the exotic guy or the formerly obscure guy who is moving up all the draft boards, they're thrilled.
Fans weren't happy last season when the Charlotte Bobcats invested the 10th pick overall on Texas point guard D.J. Augustin. But people who realize the draft is part of a process and not a one-night stand were thrilled.
Talented point guards and centers are much rarer than talented shooting guards and forwards. To pick up a guard with superior vision and a nice shot capable of running a team for a decade is golden. It was the first pick of the Larry Brown era.
The Bobcats also had a good draft in '07, when Michael Jordan traded the first pick, No. 13 overall, to Golden State for Jason Richardson. Richardson never became the star Jordan hoped. But he did become the principal in the brilliant trade to Phoenix last season that brought Boris Diaw and Raja Bell to Charlotte.
Fans didn't get worked up then, either. But they were thrilled in '06 when the Bobcats used the third pick in the draft to take Gonzaga's Adam Morrison. I remember calling an old friend who helped run a team in the West and he said he loved Morrison – but that Morrison would never start because he couldn't play defense.
Brandon Roy was out there (the guy I wrote the Bobcats should take, having watched him in the NCAA basketball tournament) and so was Rudy Gay. But Michael Jordan selected Morrison.
Neither Roy nor Gay was going to make Charlotte jump and shout, but Morrison did. He flew to Charlotte the day after the draft, and instead being his customary reserved and retiring self, he was outgoing the whole day.
Suddenly everybody wanted to be like Adam and look like Adam and sport long hair and a 1983 moustache like Adam. Even the Tryon Street guys who wear a suit at work and khakis at home and name their sons III toyed with the idea of a moustache. Adam signed autographs at the Wachovia Atrium, and the line was so long and the reviews so positive he could have been the Panthers' Steve Smith.
Then the season began. Morrison has not been heard from since.
The publicity a draft generates means nothing if a guy can't play and a team can't win. In the '05 draft, the Bobcats used their first-round selections on Raymond Felton (who finally arrived last season) and Sean May, both members of the national championship-winning Tar Heels.
I asked a team employee about the significance of the draft.
“Before, we went to fans,” the man said. “Now fans will come to us.”
Operators are standing by.
The Bobcats will draft 12th tonight. I called the Augustin pick last season. He was obvious. The pick tonight is, too, if he's available – Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair.
