WHETHER it’s the culmination of its 2014-15 season or the start of the league’s 70th campaign, the National Basketball Association rookie draft will be held June 26 (Manila time) at the Barclays Center, home of the team with the league’s highest player payroll, the Brooklyn Nets.
By virtue of their victory in the draft lottery for 16 non-playoff teams (or to whom their first-round picks were traded to), the Minnesota Timberwolves will have the first selection in the entire pro grab-bag.
The Wolves, who finished last during the regular wars this past season with a 16-66 record, reportedly have informed the University of Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns that they will select him with the No. 1 pick.
A versatile biggie with size and athleticism, the 7-foot Towns will join a youthful team that includes underperforming and injury-plagued forward Anthony Bennett and 2015 NBA Rookie of the Year awardee Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 overall draftees in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and Spanish playmaker Ricky Rubio. Bennett reportedly is a trade bait in advance of the draft.
With the No. 2 overall selection, the Los Angeles Lakers are likely to corral 6-foot-11 Jahlil Okafor of reigning NCAA champion Duke University although there’s a recent report that the Lakers might be willing to trade the second pick and prized young frontliner Julius Randle (who sat out all but one game as a rookie last season after suffering a broken right tibia in his pro debut against the Houston Rockets in late October) to acquire Sacramento’s temperamental but talented All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins in a trade – that is if Serbian Vlade Divac, a former Lakers center whom the Kings hired as their vice president of basketball and franchise operations last March, puts Cousins on the trading block.
(Trivia: Divac, who elevated flopping into an art form during his NBA-playing days, was traded by the Lakers in July 1996 to the Charlotte Hornets for the draft rights to a high school phenom by the name of Kobe Bryant.)
Coincidentally, the Lakers could not legally trade the No. 2 pick until they have made the selection and introduced that player as a Laker since teams are not allowed to trade first-round choices in consecutive drafts and the Lakers’ 2016 first-rounder is already owed to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The 76ers own the third overall selection and may go for promising 7-foot Latvian Kristaps Porzingis, a Spanish league veteran who reportedly has a sweet outside shooting stroke and the ability to finish with authority in the paint, after Ohio State’s 6-foot-5 combo guard D’Angelo Russell indicated he did not want to play for the tanking-happy Quaker City squad.
Russell said he would be better off with the equally moribund New York Knicks, who have the No. 4 overall pick, and is certain that he can thrive in the triangle offense being espoused by Knicks president Phil Jackson and his disciple, incoming second-year head coach Derek Fisher, in Gotham City.
Barring any trades between now and Draft Day, the remaining order of selection in the first round of this year’s NBA draft is as follows: 5-Orlando, 6-Sacramento, 7-Denver, 8-Detroit, 9-Charlotte, 10-Miami, 11-Indiana, 12-Utah, 13-Phoenix, 14-Oklahoma City, 15-Atlanta (via Brooklyn), 16-Boston, 17-Milwaukee, 18-Houston (via New Orleans), 19-Washington, 20-Toronto, 21-Dallas, 22-Chicago, 23-Portland, 24-Cleveland, 25-Memphis, 26-San Antonio, 27-LA Lakers (via Houston), 28-Boston (via LA Clippers), 29-Brooklyn (via Atlanta) and 30-Golden State.