Minutes after Karl-Anthony Towns walked across the stage, down the steps and off toward his new career in Minnesota as the N.B.A. draft’s
No. 1 overall pick Thursday, activity began to buzz in two separate
corners of the designated players’ area, the first rumblings that the
night might veer quickly from expected.
At Jahlil Okafor’s table, confidence remained high.
“I was going to be a top-five pick, no matter what happened,” Okafor, a center from Duke, said later.
But
across the arena, a different table began to jitter. It included a
trim, athletic guard wearing a cardinal red blazer and bow tie. His
name, D’Angelo Russell, wound up being the second one announced by
Commissioner Adam Silver.
The
curveball thrown by the Los Angeles Lakers — spurning Okafor’s size for
Russell’s scoring potential — introduced a few manic moments for the
teams behind them and upended months of speculation in a matter of
minutes.
With
Russell off the board, the Philadelphia 76ers were sent scrambling.
They had taken centers at the top of the draft board in each of the past
two seasons, and both had been derailed by injuries. No matter. The
Sixers snatched up Okafor with the third pick, and an unpredictable
night was off and running.
This
year’s draft was considered to be as loaded as any in recent memory,
with a sundry mix of talent, size, experience, position and background —
from the unsurprisingly heavy concentration of former Kentucky Wildcats
to a handful of international wild cards, and from one-and-done players
to college graduates.
“It’s got the feel of being as talented as I can remember,” the ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said.
The
aura of anticipation for the evening was intensified by rampant trade
speculation in the days, hours and minutes leading up to the draft,
although trades wound up being more of an afterthought.
And
then there was the almost palpable yearning for any word about the No. 4
pick for the Knicks; it was the team’s highest draft position since
1985.
Knicks
fans represented the biggest portion of the audience at Barclays
Center. Silver clearly recognized this, and he appeared to smirk a bit
as he announced the Knicks’ selection. When the name he read aloud was
Kristaps Porzingis — a 7-foot-1 forward from Latvia — the arena erupted.
Not in a good way. The sound was a loud “Ohhh” followed by a cascade of boos.
“I
know the fans will not be happy to see him walk across the stage,” said
ESPN’s international analyst Fran Fraschilla earlier this week. But, he
added: “I don’t know how you could come up with a better gamble than a
guy that’s 7-1, on his way to 7-2, who’s athletic, graceful, shoots the
ball from three, blocks shots and is 19 years old.”
The
Knicks managed to add to their draft haul later in the night, trading
Tim Hardaway Jr. to the Atlanta Hawks for guard Jerian Grant of Notre
Dame, who was selected 19th.
Porzingis
was one of the late risers up mock draft boards in recent weeks. The
other one was Mario Hezonja, a 20-year-old wing player from Croatia, who
was drafted by the Orlando Magic with the fifth pick.
Other
players saw their draft prospects cool in recent days. Emmanuel Mudiay,
a guard who played last season in China after failing to qualify
academically to attend Southern Methodist, was thought initially to be
one of the four best prospects entering the draft. But his year abroad
might ultimately have damaged his stock. Mudiay’s potential remained a
bit murkier than other prospects, and he slipped to No. 7 to the Denver
Nuggets.
Justise
Winslow, a versatile wing player from Duke whose name had leapt into
the top-five discussion, wound up falling to Miami at No. 10. Trey
Lyles, another player the Knicks were said to be interested in at No. 4,
ended up going to the Utah Jazz at No. 12.
The
most agonizing slide was Kevon Looney, a lanky forward from U.C.L.A.
Concerns about his hip scared off suitors and, after the Lakers drafted
Wyoming’s Larry Nance Jr. with the 27th pick, Looney gathered his
belongings with his family and walked backstage to await his draft fate
in privacy (Looney was eventually selected 30th, by the Golden State
Warriors, the last pick in the first round).
And,
of course, there was the surprising slip by the giant-handed Okafor,
who had drawn comparisons to Tim Duncan during Duke’s championship
season.
“As
much as we tried to get an answer from Minnesota, as much as we tried
to get an answer from the Lakers, nobody ever answered,” Okafor said.
“It was hard for me to go to sleep last night.”
The
No. 1 pick, on the other hand, seemed to never be in doubt. Towns, a
19-year-old 7-footer from Piscataway, N.J., worked out for only one
team, Minnesota, throughout his pre-draft process. Though Towns had been
training with Don MacLean in Los Angeles for weeks, he never visited
the Lakers, who held the No. 2 pick.
“I didn’t know that it was going to be a done deal,” Towns said. “They gave me no consensus.”
Towns
is a multitalented big man for the new era of the game — offering rare
size, a 7-foot-4-inch wingspan and the potential to stretch the floor as
a shooter.
“He’s
good at everything,” Bilas said. “There is nothing that we can tick off
as far as attributes that he’s not good at. Nothing.”
With
Towns, Lyles, Willie Cauley-Stein (No. 6) and Devin Booker (No. 13),
Kentucky became the first program to produce four lottery picks since
North Carolina in 2005.
As
Minnesota’s time ticked down, Kentucky Coach John Calipari sat with
Towns’s family at his table, anticipating Towns to be Kentucky’s third
No. 1 overall selection in the past six seasons.
But Calipari was shortly on the move. He soon joined the table of Cauley-Stein, the second Wildcat drafted.
Two others, Lyles and Booker, soon joined him in walking across the stage, although little else unfolded as projected.
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