Austin Carr likely won't burst into tears again if the team wins the lottery. "I don't think it's paramount that we get the No. 1 pick," Carr says.
View full sizeThe Cavaliers could end up with the first and second picks in this summer's NBA draft (if they're extremely lucky when the ping-pong balls start flying) or the fifth and 11th (if they're not) when the lottery order is announced Tuesday night.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of the lasting images from the night the Cavaliers won the draft lottery in 2003 was Austin Carr bursting into tears at the team's lottery party while co-hosting the fan party at Champp's in Valley View.
It typically doesn't take much to get Carr to cry, but that night, when the Cavs earned the chance to draft LeBron James and rescue the franchise from the depths to which it had fallen, his reaction was heartfelt and heartwarming.
"One of my only and biggest regrets about being in New Jersey at the actual lottery last time was seeing a video of the reaction at the lottery party event here with AC leaning over and crying on Mike Snyder's shoulder," said Tad Carper, the Cavs senior vice president of communications who was the vice president of marketing back in 2003. "It almost made me cry myself when I saw it."
But don't expect a similar reaction on Tuesday night, when the 2011 lottery is televised from NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, N.J., starting at 8 p.m., and don't expect Carr to be wearing the same lucky socks or tie.
"I'm not really a superstitious person," he said, laughing. "I don't even remember what I did that day."
What he'll never forget was the feeling after the Cavs won the lottery.
"I knew how important it would be for us to get LeBron, and that place was so full of electricity that night it was just unbelievable," said Carr, who will join Fred McLeod and Campy Russell as hosts of Tuesday's lottery party at Cadillac Ranch in downtown Cleveland. "It was a very emotional night, and it got to me."
While Carr hopes the Cavs win the lottery again, he doesn't think the team is in the desperate straits it was in back in 2003, not with players such as Baron Davis, Anderson Varejao and Antawn Jamison returning.
"It's always nice to get the first pick," he said. "Then you get the pick of the litter. But I don't think it's paramount that we get the No. 1 pick. There's probably players out there, but none that stand out like LeBron. You probably won't get another LeBron for another 15 years.
"When you look how we ended the season, once we got Baron, he seemed to galvanize the team and we started playing more like a team. You put a healthy Anderson in there, and a healthy Jamison, and you're pretty competitive.
"The key is we have to get a point guard who can take over for Baron when he finishes, and I think we need scoring from the two position and the three. We've got to get that. When you look at what's out there, you don't see a lot of that. But if we can get 15 points apiece from the two and the three, now we've really become competitive."
Everybody's watching: Sunday's Game 1 of the Eastern finals between Chicago and Miami on TNT was rated as the most-viewed NBA basketball game in the history of cable television with 11.1 million viewers, breaking the previous record of 10,829,000 viewers for the 2003 NBA All-Star Game, Michael Jordan's last.
According to overnight ratings released by TNT, Cleveland had the fourth-highest local ratings for Game 1, trailing only Chicago, Miami and West Palm Beach. The ratings were 40 percent higher than for TNT's broadcast of Game 1 of the Western finals last season between the Lakers and Phoenix, and 30 percent higher than ABC's ratings for the Eastern finals last season between Boston and Orlando.
Brown update: An NBA source says Mike Brown has been approached by Houston and Golden State about their coaching vacancies, but has not interviewed. According to the source, Brown has not decided if he wants to return to coaching. He has been able to spend a lot of time with his wife, Carolyn, watching their sons, Elijah, who will be a junior on the St. Edward High School basketball team, and Cameron, who will be a freshman football player at the school.
Source: http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2011/05/nbas_draft_lottery_doesnt_carr.html
Censorship BBC2 Milan Baros Financial Services Authority (FSA) Small business Cheryl Cole
No comments:
Post a Comment