For true believers, the annual NBA Draft Lottery will always be a day of reckoning for the league. Of course, they’re also willing to excoriate the NBA on any other day when the subject of its very first lottery comes up.
In the minds of those cynics, D-Day (as in Dupe) was 35 years ago Tuesday when they say a low-down trick took place high atop New York City’s famed Waldorf Astoria hotel. That’s when the NBA conspired to send Patrick Ewing to the New York Knicks instead of any of the other six deserving teams, most notably the moribund Warriors.