It’s become a tradition for my childhood friends and I to be in attendance for the annual NBA Draft. Growing up in northern New Jersey, the location each June has been fairly convenient. The Theater at Madison Square Garden held
It’s become a tradition for my childhood friends and I to be in attendance for the annual NBA Draft. Growing up in northern New Jersey, the location each June has been fairly convenient. The Theater at Madison Square Garden held the draft from 2001 through 2010. It moved to the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey for two years and has been at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn the past two years.
For most of those occasions, I’ve gone with some of my former teammates. We might have played rec league, on a traveling team or in high school together, but now we go watch the superstars of tomorrow realize a dream we all longingly clung to many years ago.
This year’s draft class is the best since 2003, when LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh headlined a stellar group of prospects. Bad teams have been waiting for the 2014 draft as this distant beacon to provide an immediate mayday rescue. Whether or not it can be that won’t be determined for some time, but the potential is definitely there.
I couldn’t go to last year’s draft, but I’m currently on the east coast for a few weeks to visit friends and family, so this one wasn’t to be missed. Having the first overall pick for the third time in four years, the Cleveland Cavaliers selected the player most associated with this draft since he was playing high school ball in Canada. Andrew Wiggins was their choice, followed by Duke scoring star Jabari Parker (Milwaukee Bucks) and Kansas big man Joel Embiid (Philadelphia 76ers), the latter having lost his chance to go number one after a foot fracture.
This was the first draft as commissioner for Adam Silver, who took over the top position for David Stern in February and has already been placed in one of the league’s most controversial and tumultuous situations after the Donald Sterling remarks. Silver has always been the hero to Stern’s villain at the draft. Stern announced the first-round selections and would be loudly booed each time he appeared on stage – a dynamic he wore as a badge of honor, oftentimes welcoming and encouraging the hostile response. Silver would then announce each pick in the second round and be received with a loud ovation, if only to further rub the vitriol in Stern’s face.
I was fully expecting the crowd to flip the script this time around. I figured Silver would hear the boos to officially step into the commissioner role, but apparently he has banked so much goodwill since ridding the league of the Sterling serpent that nobody felt like jeering him at all. Either that or everyone is just so used to cheering him, they forgot that he’s the new Stern and muscle memory took over.
But in reality, Silver has been deserving of nothing but cheers since taking charge. He earned the respect and the confidence of the players with the Sterling decision, then orchestrated the best moment of Thursday night’s draft. Baylor center Isaiah Austin had been projected as a late-first, early second-round pick after the 7-foot 1-inch center put up 13 points and 8.3 rebounds as a freshman before dipping to 11.2 points and 5.5 boards in his sophomore season. However, a pre-draft physical revealed that Austin has Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that leaves him unable to continue playing competitive basketball. Austin had already revealed just this winter that he is blind in one eye, which would have made him the first blind player in the NBA.
Though the recent diagnosis came early enough to prevent Austin from engaging in potentially deadly behavior, it also took away the chance for him to realize his dream of hearing his name called and getting to walk on stage to shake the commissioner’s hand. Or so he thought.
Between the 15th and 16th picks of the draft, Silver paused to recognize Austin and to welcome him into the NBA family.
“Like the other young men here tonight, Isaiah committed himself through endless hard work and dedication to a potential career as a professional basketball player,” Silver announced from the podium. “And we wanted to make sure he fulfilled at least this part of his dream. So it gives me great pleasure to say that with the next pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, the NBA selects Isaiah Austin from Baylor University.”
An undoubtedly great moment in a potentially great draft. More so than most years, I’m glad I was there.
