Lots of team representatives are converging on the NBA Draft Lottery tonight with whatever lucky things that they can find.

A lot of luck tonight could mean picking up Greg Oden to man the center position. I don’t think any team in the league, except perhaps Houston, wouldn’t trade their center for Oden.

Along with hearing who might pick up whom if they ended up with a high pick, we also get to hear all of the people talking about what could make the draft lottery better. I have already written about this in a previous article, so there is no need rehashing my views. You can go back and read them if you want.

There is a general consensus, echoed most recently by Ed Snyder of the Philadelphia 76ers’ ownership group, that rewarding a team for a bad position is not necessarily a good thing. He states that even if a team is not deliberately losing games, the fans think they are and the players think they are. Losing should never be perceived as a “good” thing.

And perception is what it is really about. I have to agree with him.

If everybody had one ping pong ball, there would be no incentive to lose games, he says.

Except maybe to get out of the playoff hunt. Although, once you’re in the playoffs, anything might happen (as Golden State showed us by beating Dallas), so you might not even get much talk of that.

Yeah, Orlando won it twice in a row, but is that really that bad? Are we really weighting it because of what happened to Orlando? If so, has anyone looked to see how much Orlando is really benefiting from that now?

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