36% odds
..Or why I never trust the process. Danny Ainge- please give me superstars tomorrow.

The Celtics this week made a blockbuster trade. A lot of fans are upset that one of our prized Brooklyn picks is now gone. At the least, Kyrie is an upgrade to Thomas, the rest will have to be determined. For those too young to remember, or too old to care about the Celtics in the 1990s, let me remind you of the 1996–97 team and what happens when we rely on the lottery to rebuild our storied franchise.
I turned thirteen in the winter of 1997. I was born during a championship season, turned two during another, and was old enough to remember parts of the 1992 season during Bird’s final year. Unfortunately, the 90s, when the memory muscle of my brain started to develop, had not been kind to Celtics fans. Bird retired, and then Mchale followed suit, and Parrish just left (only to be found on a Bulls championship team a few years later). Our new superstar — Reggie Lewis collapsed during Game 1 of the opening round playoffs, and then died that summer while practicing at Brandeis. Dee Brown, the first Celtic to win a dunk contest never really panned out, and by the start of 1996, the Celtics had not won a playoff series in five years.
So the tanking began. We were told by the Celtics brass to trust our GM and Coach, and Celtics chief towel waver ML Carr. Trust the process!
The 1996–97 Celtics were perfectly positioned team to lose a lot of games. Our star, Antoine Walker, was a chubby twenty-one year old from Chicago whose high school teammate became a famous quarterback- Donovan McNabb. Later, he would blow through $100M in cash, by investing in shady real estate deals, and trying to keep up with Jordan’s gambling habit.
Walker was a fine selection in the ’96 draft, which was one of the most loaded drafts ever. Kobe went 13th! He had just won a national championship, and was big and versatile. He could get down on the block with his back against the hoop, and make a quick twist, and spin, that made Tommy Heinsohn swoon. He loved to shoot the three, and then wiggle or shimmy defiantly on his way back to half play defense, while making sure to conserve enough energy for more dribble dribble dribble shoot (rarely pass) offensive moves. It was not necessarily his fault, there were not many other offensive options and I’m sure he was given the green light constantly. “Just pass the ball if like three guys are on you,” I could imagine Carr yelling during a second quarter timeout when the team was already down sixteen.
Dana Barros had three point range, and was a local kid from Boston. David Wesley surprisingly was our second leading scorer. There was no team in the NBA where Wesley should have been the 2nd leading scorer, except for a team that won fifteen games. Dino Radja’s prime was in the ’88 Olympics for the Yogoslovia power house team with Kukoc, Petrovic and Divac. He had some elbow jumpers that Tommy loved, but Tommy also thought Greg Minor showed traces of a young Reggie Lewis.
Rick Fox averaged 15 points a game, but was meant to be a solid 7 pts, 6 rebounds guy as an 8th man on a championship team. Pervis Ellison was one of the biggest #1 pick busts of all time, maybe second to Michael Olowokandi, also a former Celtic.
Even Brett Szabo was on our team. Here’s a photo of him. He was not a very good NBA player. But it was all part of the process.

M.L Carr drew up some plays, tried to get Antoine not to shoot threes every possession, but it was all fun in the name of tanking. The prize was Tim Duncan.
I knew from my Sports Illustrated for Kids that he was from the Bahamas and played for the Demon Deacons. They were called that to commemorate their “devilish play and fighting spirit.”
He was going to be a franchise changing player. The combination of Walker and Duncan in the Celtics front court was almost too much for a thirteen year old to dream about.
The Celtics could actually be good? When you are 13, five years is about half your life (if math isn’t your specialty). As Pitino would say the next year, “Larry and Kevin aren’t walking through that door,”…. but Duncan was. It was just simple math.
If you had the worst record, you got more ping pong balls, and the most balls got the number 1 pick. I think that is how my friend Rob explained it to me. He was the math wiz.
So on lottery day, I was waiting to see percentages and ping pong balls turn into the player that would make the Celtics relevant again. Since we had the worst record, we had a 36% chance to get the number 1 pick. The spurs, who were always consistent, but had lost Sean Elliot and David Robinson to season-ending injuries, finished with the third worst record. That meant less ping pong balls for them.
Yet, by the luck of the Alamo, they came away with the #1 pick, and we were not even handed silver, just bronze. The pick eventually became Chauncey Billups, who Pitino traded away after fifty-one games for Kenny Anderson (who had probably lit up a Kentucky team 8 years earlier), Popeye Jones, and Zan Tabak. So basically instead of getting Duncan, we got Zan. What about those 36% odds Rob??
The rest is history. It took another eleven years after the ’97 draft for the Celtics to make a finals, and that was due to the acquisitions of superstars. It is a super team league, and I hope Danny is not done (there’s a big guy from New Orleans who needs to be released from another 33 win season). But ultimate I’ll never trust the process, I want superstars tomorrow.
