Why is ESPN Airing the NBA Draft Lottery?

Last month I wrote an article wondering why anybody in his or her right mind would actually watch the NFL Draft from beginning to end. Who actually thinks the NFL Draft is entertaining? What is so great about five or six guys saying the same thing about the same player 49 times over the weekend and an old guy going up to the podium and reading off a card? I still never want to watch a NFL Draft but even the NFL Draft made tonight's ESPN event look exciting.

Tonight ESPN decided to air the NBA Lottery Draft. Let me explain what the lottery draft is. Instead of giving the first pick in the draft to the worst team like the NFL, the NBA has a lottery draft. Basically all the teams that didn't go to the playoffs have their name put in a hat and names are drawn out to see what order they draft in. Your record does have something to do with the order though because the worse record you have the more times your name will be in the hat. For example the Memphis Grizzlies had the worst record in the NBA this past season so their name was in the hat enough times that they had a 25% chance of having their name chosen for the first pick.

It's important to point out that the NBA Lottery Draft that ESPN decided to air was not the player actually being drafted. No players were drafted to the NBA tonight. The Portland Blazers were not announced as the team that got the number one pick and then picked Greg Oden. The NBA Lottery Draft was simply announcing what order the teams will draft in June. That's it. Tell me again why we need this televised?

This is basically what happens on the NBA Lottery Draft show. There is one representative from each of the teams in the lottery draft. They are usually either the President of Basketball Operations or the General Manager, or in other words they are people that the fans don't really know or care about. Each representative has his or her own little podium to sit at. They are all lined up in a row like a game show as the host introduces each one of them. Afterwards we get to the announcement of the draft order. Some executive from the NBA then gets up in front of them, opens an envelope with the teams' names, and announces the order.

If ESPN really feels like they have to air this then that's fine. The actual opening of the envelopes and reading of the team names takes about thirty seconds total. They didn't make this show thirty seconds though. This took a one-hour show! Are you kidding me? You're going to spend a hour show on a thirty second announcement and leading up that we get to see crusty old men nobody cares around sit around. Exciting television guys. ESPN has no time to air any baseball games other than the Yankees, no time for tennis other than the Majors, no time for the college softball playoffs and no time for ice hockey but they have time for spending a hour program on an NBA executive opening envelopes and reading the names in the envelope. Wow, thanks ESPN, you have once again shown you really are the "Worldwide Leader in Sports". Nothing gets my heart pumping like a good old envelope opening.