The wait is over
Long overdue NBA Draft finally happening Wednesday night
There was no dancing on the court after a March Madness victory. No bounding onto the stage in a spiffy suit to meet the commissioner in June.
The coronavirus pandemic wiped out the traditional end of a college career and the usual start of a pro one. Players such as Anthony Edwards, LaMelo Ball and James Wiseman should be about a month into their rookie seasons by now, but their plans were put on hold.
After multiple delays, the NBA draft finally arrives Wednesday. Like everyone else in 2020, this year’s class of players has tried to make the best of their difficult circumstances.
“I feel like it was better for me,” Edwards said. “I haven’t complained, I haven’t tripped about it at all. I just felt like it was better for me because more time for me to get better and get ready for the NBA.”
The freshman guard from Georgia is one of the leading candidates to be picked first by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Ball, a guard who skipped college to play professionally overseas, and 7-foot-1 Memphis freshman
center Wiseman are the other headliners in the class.
The draft is usually held in June in New York, where Adam Silver announces the first-round picks. The top players sit at tables in the front of the arena and when their names are called, put
on a hat with the logo of the team that picked them and walk onto the stage for a handshake and a photo with the commissioner.
This time, Silver will be announcing the picks from the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut. Players have
been shipped boxes of hats for wherever they will be watching to choose the one they need when their name is called.
It’s not the draft night they wanted, but the excitement of becoming a pro player won’t diminish. Not
when they’ve been waiting since March, when sports stopped just days before the selection of the NCAA Tournament field, to start playing ball again.
“I mean, playing in games, I missed it a lot. But
an organization that expects to win, not an organization that is surprised to win,” Ricketts added.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked financial havoc on baseball, Ricketts said money “had nothing to do” with Epstein’s decision. Epstein, who won’t be paid for 2021 by the Cubs, said Ricketts did not bring up his salary when they discussed his future. He also said he was not asked to resign.
The 46-year-old Epstein, who grew up near Boston and helped the Red Sox break an 86-year drought with World Series championships in 2004 and 2007, is one of five executives to win titles with multiple organizations. He, Pat Gillick, John Schuerholz and Dave Dombrowski are the only ones to do so with teams in each league.
Epstein hopes to stay involved with baseball while he plots his next move. He plans to run a team again, though probably not next season. He would like to be part of an ownership group at some point.
“Baseball team owners can be transformed into forces for civic good and help a lot of people and be involved in a lot of the important conversations in the city and be a solution for a lot of issues in cities,” Epstein said. “So that does appeal to me. A lot of things would have to go right for that to happen. Usually, for that type of thing to happen you need access to a lot of capital. ... Who knows? Maybe I have plans for some of those things down the line, but a lot would have to go right for that to happen.”
For now, Epstein will remain in Chicago with his wife and two sons. He said he would likely become a season-ticket holder, maybe even a bleacher bum. And he vowed to buy beers for any Cubs fan he sees in a bar following the coronavirus pandemic, until the team wins a World Series under Hoyer.
Epstein oversaw a massive rebuild when he came to Chicago following the 2011 season. He overhauled the farm system as well as the scouting and analytics operations, helping to produce one of the most successful stretches in the franchise’s history with a big assist from Hoyer.
With homegrown stars Kris Bryant and Javier Báez, shrewd trades for players such as Anthony Rizzo and Jake Arrieta, the signing of Jon Lester and the hiring of former manager Joe Maddon, the Cubs transformed into perennial contenders. They reached the NL championship series three times in Epstein’s nine seasons.
In 2016, they won 103 games to run away with the NL Central and took out the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS for their first pennant since 1945. The Cubs fell behind 3-1 to the Indians in the World Series before beating them in seven games, ending a title drought dating to 1908.