Draft Not Too Enticing Nba Teams Are Looking To Make Deals That Can Get Them Out Of First Round

This is how bad this year’s NBA draft is - it’s being held at Charlotte, N.C., but the host Hornets don’t have a pick, and are glad about it, the better to save the potential embarrassment of taking a future stiff in front of the home folks.

“To be frank with you, I don’t want a pick,” said Charlotte general manager Bob Bass. “The first 8-10 players are pretty good, but after that, some teams will get stuck with a guy for three years who is not that much of a player.”

Some debate whether the draft, set for today, is even that deep.

Toronto GM Isiah Thomas has the ninth pick, seemingly a valued possession for a team entering its third season. But Thomas is just about begging other teams to take the pick off his hands.

“The way this draft looks, the eighth or ninth pick would be our 11th or 12th man,” Thomas said of his team that won all of 30 games last season. “The draft is that weak.”

Of course, the draft will rapidly improve today when teams actually select players and then have to convince fans that they’ve just done something that should make the populace plop down a few more dollars for tickets next season.

But those in the know figure this is a draft that could rival the 1989 draft - Pervis Ellison and Danny Ferry were the first two picks of that one - for its eventual lack of impact on the NBA.

“The strengths of the draft are the first pick - Tim Duncan,” said Gary Fitzsimmons, player personnel director for the Cleveland Cavaliers. “Then after that is the rest of the draft.”

This draft, of course, might be a lot better if it included Marcus Camby, Ray Allen, Joe Smith, Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, who would all have been seniors this year if they had stayed in school.

But the recent proliferation of players declaring early for the draft - 40 this year as opposed to only 12 in 1993 - makes the draft more of a crapshoot of unproven players each season.

The players in this draft are either seniors who were never good enough to come out early - other than Duncan - or underclassmen who seem to be younger and less proven every year.

“The college system is bankrupt,” said Seattle SuperSonics coach George Karl. “I’ve said that for two years now. There might be 10 guys in this draft who could someday be starters. Most of the guys are bench players or role players, and that’s the way it will be for the next two or three years, or maybe four or five years.

“Younger kids keep coming out and younger kids take time to develop. We laugh now about players being three-team players, which means that maybe by the time he is on his third team he will probably be OK. But he’s going to have to get kicked around by one team, then mature for the second team, and maybe the third team is the team that will get something from him.”

That’s why Karl laughed when asked for his impression of this year’s draft crop and said he hadn’t studied it enough to have an opinion - he probably won’t be the coach who benefits should whoever the Sonics take with the 23rd pick today ever develop.

The big, and possibly only, winner todaywill be San Antonio, which has the first pick and will draft Duncan, pairing him with David Robinson for an inside combo that could mean 60 wins next season.

But then comes Philadelphia with the second pick, evidence that having the first pick last season (Allen Iverson) didn’t do immediate good, followed by Boston, Vancouver, Denver and Boston again.

“If you’re talking about the top six, this is a strong draft,” said Celtics coach Rick Pitino. “But overall, it’s probably the weakest draft in a long, long time. If you go to (the seventh pick), I can’t tell you if that guy is going to play in the NBA or not.”

Even so, Celtics followers consider it a given that Boston will trade one or both of its picks today.

After Duncan, the rest of that vaunted top six strong players is generally considered to include forward Keith Van Horn of Utah, forward Ron Mercer of Kentucky and forward Tim Thomas of Villanova. But getting a consensus after that is hard to do.

Most pencil in high schooler Tracy McGrady, a 6-9 forward, as a possible top-six pick based on his potential. Philadelphia has also worked out centers Adonal Foyle of Colgate, Tony Battie of Texas Tech and Maurice Taylor of Michigan, but are also said to be - like most teams in the draft - hoping to trade down.

Should anyone want a guard real early, the best of the lot appears to be Antonio Daniels of Bowling Green and Chauncey Billups of Colorado, either of whom Boston might take at No. 3 or No. 6 should it keep its picks.

But many teams near the bottom of the first round - Houston, for instance, which has the 24th pick - are hoping to trade clear out of the first round as the Sonics did last year, to avoid paying the guaranteed three-year deal that must be awarded to a first-rounder.

“We can always take Duncan if he slides,” joked Houston coach Rudy Tomjanovich.

That may be about as realistic a way to get help from this draft as anything else.