Zion makes NBA lottery must-see TV
Not to fuel the fever dreams of conspiracyminded basketball fans, but there’s already a winner in the NBA draft lottery. It’s ESPN.
(What? You thought the answer was going to be the Knicks? Lakers? Bulls?)
What is certain is that Rachel Nichols, host of ESPN’s Emmy-nominated “The Jump,” gets to preside over a lottery-reveal program from Chicago at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday that almost certainly will be more interesting than last year’s slog.
For one thing, the prize for the winning team is Duke’s Zion Williamson, seen as that rare college superstar actually capable of making a hapless franchise relevant on arrival.
For another, this year’s show is only a half-hour, as opposed to the one-hour mug of NyQuil on ice that ESPN treated viewers to a year ago. This time around, the lottery will be preceded by a special edition of “The Jump” at 8p.m. and followed at 9p.m. by Game 1 of the Western Conference finals between the Warriors and Trail Blazers.
For a third, did we mention the winner gets Zion Williamson?
Yeah? Well, Williamson definitely makes it a lot more interesting than the Suns getting the rights to Deandre Ayton last year or the 76ers scoring a shot at Markelle Fultz in 2017.
“Who gets this guy is going to start shifting the tectonic plates of the NBA,” said Nichols, a Northwestern alumna who first made her reputation at the Washington Post.
“So it’s a huge night and a huge event to be there for. I don’t know if it’s the bounce of pingpong balls exactly or envelopes or however we’re phrasing it this year, but to me the stakes are so crazy high, it’s this
going to be a really fun night to be on live television.”
Here are three takeaways from a conversation with Nichols.
1. To say Nichols is amped up for this draft lottery is an understatement.
“To me, the draft lottery this year is a big, explosive thing because it’s the first thing in what’s going to be an earthquake around the NBA,” she said. “Who gets Zion is going to change a franchise, and what happens there will then impact which free agents go lottery show.
where.”
Even if the team that gets the rights to Williamson isn’t sure it wants him, Nichols said, it then would have “the most powerful trade chip that the NBA has seen in a decade.”
2. Nichols sees the Bulls as emblematic of a team that could be seen in a new light with the No. 1 pick but be affected little, if at all, should they drop down.
“Everything will change if that pick comes up with a Chicago Bulls logo on it,” Nichols said. “You have a young team with some real talent, and if the ingredient of Zion Williamson is added in there, all of a sudden you will have one of the NBA’s major markets become this young, developing force.
“If the pingpong ball goes drastically the other way, and Chicago falls down farther … things could go entirely in a different direction and then you have a team that’s still in the developing category.”
3. This is a pivotal moment at an especially pivotal time for the NBA.
“For a long time, what was certain … death, taxes and LeBron James?” Nichols said. “That’s what was certain in the NBA, and certainly on the Eastern Conference side of the docket eight years in a row.
“So now you have a lot of uncertainty and change in the East and, while the Warriors are in the middle of this historic run … they are dealing with an injury to their best player and the possibility that the team will break up in free agency this summer. So regardless of whether they win the title this year or not, it won’t be more of the same by definition.”