04-04-2008, 04:05 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Moderator
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 5,458
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JSOnline: Bucks not about to play lotto ball
Quote:
Milwaukee Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak has been talking quite a bit about the National Basketball's Association college draft lottery these days.
But not by choice.
"I sure hoped that we wouldn't have to talk about pingpong balls again this year," he said.
But as the season has wound down, the losses mounted and any hopes of making the playoffs vanished long ago, there has been some clamoring about the lottery as some fans and reporters have wondered why the Bucks haven't started "tanking" some games to improve their position in the draft.
Krystkowiak points out a couple of reasons why the Bucks have chosen not to do that.
The first, he says, is that it is not wise to mess with fate. And one has to turn back the clock only to last year for examples of why he feels that way.
Coming down the stretch of the regular season a year ago, the Bucks starting playing "lottery ball" a bit and shut down a number of players with injuries. Some injuries, shall we say, were a bit less serious than others.
And what happened? The Bucks went into the lottery holding the No. 3 position and were hoping to luck out and move up a position or two in order to draft Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Instead, the Bucks tumbled three positions - the worst scenario possible - and ended up in the sixth spot.
Portland, meanwhile jumped from sixth to first and drafted Oden.
"People thought they had no chance of getting it," said Krystkowiak, whose team has won its last two games. "It was ridiculous that they got that (No. 1) pick. Like I said last year, we kind of messed with the basketball gods. We tried to affect fate. We lost games, guys got hurt and what happened? Portland kept trying to win games and they finished the season off well, and they got the first pick and we got the sixth pick."
Another reason that the Bucks haven't been tanking is that they simply wouldn't stand to benefit much by doing so. The Bucks own the seventh-worst record in the league with the Los Angeles Clippers sixth. But there is a big enough gap between the two that it would be unlikely that the two would change positions.
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http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=735421
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JSOnline: Bucks not about to play lotto ball
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