New Orleans Wins Draft Lottery, Wizards Third

The most anxiety inducing ten minutes of the NBA season is now over, the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets have won the top choice in the draft and will be selecting Kentucky’s Anthony Davis in June. Color me shocked, conspiracies abound. Anyway, here is Chad Ford’s new updated Mock Draft. The Wizards had the second best odds in the draft but fell to the third spot. Honestly, this is almost insignificant and might end up being a good thing for the team. Allow me to venture through tonight’s implications:

Wizards Draft Prospects 2.0

The NBA draft is only about a month away now and the draft lottery less than 2 weeks so I thought it was time to give my big board for the Wizards possible selections with whichever pick they end up receiving. I also had a dream last night that they Wizards were awarded the #3 pick at the draft lottery so it made me think of this again. We know now that their selection will range somewhere between 1 and 5 so there are only so many players that I think the Wizards should consider. Remember when I give these rankings they are my rankings in order of who I think the Wizards should draft because they have specific needs and fits. I might think that one player is slightly better or has a higher ceiling than another player but I still might have that other player ranked higher because I feel that they fit with the Wizards better or are a position of need for us. My rankings have changed some since my original Wizards draft rankings on 3/27 (http://www.beltwaysportsblog.com/2012/03/27/early-wizards-draft-prospects/), but I will still be using the same descriptions of the players for this post along with my most recent updates.

Wizards Lottery Update: Wiz Clinch #2 Spot

Even though the Wizards have won their last 5 games, they played so poorly throughout the rest of the season that they were able to clinch the 2nd overall spot in the lottery due to the Hornets beating Golden State 93-91 on Tuesday night. This really ended up being the best of both worlds as the Wizards are playing very well to finish the season and it didn’t cost them any draft spots (or in this case a worse percentage at a draft spot), very strange to have beltway teams get lucky like that. Either way though this is big for a couple of reasons. First off we now have the 2nd best odds for the best player in the draft Anthony Davis. I think the Bobcats will get the 1st pick because they have the best odds and if it is rigged then they should def get it because they are beyond horrible. Even with Davis next year they will still be bad but without him they will be just as bad as this year. The other good part about this is now we can’t drop any lower than 5th. The only way this happens is if 3 teams behind us win the lottery balls and earn the top 3 spots but the chances of that happening are very slim. This is also actually more important than it seems on the surface because behind Davis my top 2 guys are Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Brad Beal and while MKG will probably go top 3, Beal might hang around to the 5th spot so every pick really counts if we want our guy. Here are all the percentages of the different teams and the different picks they could have:

Fear the Phin!

Even though record wise the Wizards season has been a complete disaster, there actually have been some positives to the season and the progression and development of Kevin Seraphin has definitely been one of them.  Last year Seraphin as a rookie was really no more than a big guy that the Wiz brought in for a few minutes off of the bench each game to provide toughness and a big body for a team that sorely needed it. This year however, his game has progressed to a point where he is the go to scorer in the post (at least with Nene out) and really looks like he could be a part of our future.

National Championship Preview and Prediction

First off I just want to congratulate our local bracket guru Chris O’Malley on winning this year’s BSB March Madness staff pool as he had both Kansas and Kentucky in the final and will win the pool no matter who wins tonight even though he has Kentucky winning it all. For the neighborhood pool Chris could win 500 bucks tonight if Kentucky wins because that would mean he wins the pool. Unfortunately because of a slight copying error by me when he sent his bracket to turn in (I thought he picked Long Beach St in the 2nd round but it said Louisville apparently, common mistake. Cost him 2 points) he will be tied with another guy for the win and the tie-breaker is total points in the game. Chris picked 130 and the other guy picked 139 so if its 134 and lower and a Kentucky win Chris wins $517 and if its 135 or higher and Kentucky wins than Chris only wins $147. Sorry for the error buddy!

Final Four Predictions

For all of those who don’t know the final four games are tonight at 6 and 8:30 and they feature 2 pretty good matchups. The 6 oclock game features the #1 seeded Kentucky Wildcats against their instate rival in the #4 seeded Louisville Cardinals. For the later game the #2 seeded Ohio State Buckeyes are going to face the #2 seeded Kansas Jayhawks in what should be a matchup of pretty evenily ranked teams. Here are our staff’s predictions for tonights games: (Note to bettors:I would advise betting against whatever the majority of the BSB staff picks)

Eddie