Draft Is More Pomp Than Circumstance

What if they held a draft and no one understood it?

The NBA does now, every spring. Everyone knows it has changed--it’s all kids, international players and now, international kids--but people are having a problem dealing with the implications.

I’m not talking about sportswriters and TV talking heads. I’m talking about owners and general managers.

The reality is that while there are many talented players available, you’ll have to wait years for them to emerge ... but it’s still the way to go.

There’s little immediate help and none after the top picks. After the top four in this draft, the next six were 19-year-olds. The teens had breathtaking potential, not that all the GMs were interested.

The Knicks, for example, say straight out, this is New York, we can’t rebuild. This is a problem when they find themselves with no team, no young players and no cap room.

Then there are teams like the Chicago Bulls. Last spring, they went all-out for potential, trading Elton Brand so they could get not one, but two high school centers.

That was fine, except by midseason, people around the team were moaning how slowly it was going, voicing fears that if the Bulls weren’t back soon, the NBA would die in Chicago.

Swell. One day you’re running off your old dynasty, which is on a three-title winning streak. Three years later, you don’t like the pace of rebuilding from scratch.

Maybe you should have thought this through a little earlier?

Check out the current Lakers. The NBA is, was and always will be about great players. The new reality is, to get them, you have to gamble on them when they’re babies, like the 17-year-old Kobe Bryant.

The winners aren’t the teams that gain a slight advantage in the draft but the ones that date their turnaround to it when they look back in three or four years.

With that in mind ...

THE WINNERS

* Houston. These days you’re hyped one day and derided the next when they learn you’re not really the next Shaquille O’Neal (who was also built up and torn down in his early years in the league).

People now think of Yao Ming as the next Shawn Bradley or, at best, Rik Smits, but he’s 50 pounds heavier than Bradley and much more athletic than Smits.

Says Clipper draftee Melvin Ely, who worked out against Yao: “He’s not a stiff. He can move and that surprised me.”

Smits had to catch up to the speed of the game, but he became a force. Yao has to catch up too, but he should be a bigger force, at least.

* Chicago. Luckily for the game in the Windy City, the Bulls got Jay Williams, the one bona fide, instant-impact guy.

He got the build-up/tear-down ride too. Enthusiasm really ebbed when he missed a key free throw in Duke’s NCAA tournament exit and measured only 6 feet 1/4 in the pre-draft camp. In real life, he’s a little tank, a crack shot and should be a star from Day One. If Tyson Chandler keeps coming, they’ll be back in the playoffs soon enough.

* Denver. People said nice guy GM Kiki Vandeweghe was overmatched, but he moved Antonio McDyess, who would have walked next summer, and wound up with two of the draft’s most intriguing prospects, Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Nene Hilario.

Said Tskitishvili’s Italian League coach, Mike D’Antoni: “When you see him work out, your jaw kind of drops.”

After working out against the 6-9, 250-pound Hilario, Curtis Borchardt called him “awesome.” Jamal Sampson called him “a beast.”

Both will take a while, but the Nuggets have nothing better to do than wait.

In the meantime, they’ll have an entry in the LeBron James Derby.

* Phoenix. Amare Stoudemire, the prep the Suns grabbed at No. 9, could miss, but he also could be the tiger they have always needed and never had.

* Portland. Trader Bob Whitsitt, the NBA’s Go-For-It champion, jumped on Qyntel Woods, who went from the next Tracy McGrady to pariah when people decided he was a problem child. On the other hand, how many shots at greatness do you get at No. 21?

* Lakers. Nice sleight of hand by Mitch Kupchak, dumping Lindsey Hunter’s contract and getting Kareem Rush. There are questions about Rush--motivation?--but he’s some prospect to get when you’re starting at No. 27.

* Clippers. Despite Donald T. Sterling’s high jinks, there was no way they wouldn’t help themselves with two lottery picks, even if they only took players to deal them.

The Clippers are past the potential-accumulating stage and into the making-it-work era, which requires an actual grown-up point guard. The Hornets, who have to impress their new fans in New Orleans, may take Baron Davis off the market, but the Clippers can still have Andre Miller--if Sterling will take him.

Sterling pronounced Darius Miles an untouchable, but let’s see what he says next spring when he’s up for an extension ... with Quentin Richardson ... and Lamar Odom and Corey Maggette are restricted free agents. If Miles, Richardson, Maggette and/or Odom conclude the money won’t be there for them, there goes their nice chemistry.

Sterling has never understood that everything he does, or more commonly, shrinks from doing, sends signals, which can be constructive (in theory) or destructive (see: Clipper history).

Unfortunately for all concerned, he has never learned anything about the NBA, except that this is his team and he can do what he wants with it.

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* New York. The Knicks are consistent, if delusional. They don’t rebuild, not even when fortune dumps Hilario in their lap, they patch on the fly.

They’re now congratulating themselves on getting McDyess, but they gave up Marcus Camby as well as Hilario--in other words, two big players for one--and are still, as Coach Don Chaney noted, “very small, especially at center.”

When the dancing stops, they may notice even a goal as modest as making the playoff is problematic. They have to get over the eight teams that got in this season plus Milwaukee, Washington and Miami, who finished Nos. 9, 10 and 11.

The New York tabloids, of course, live in The Now and worry about The Later later.

Wrote the New York Daily News’ Mike Lupica: “This is the best night the Knicks have had in a while, a great night if Antonio McDyess stands up in New York.”

Not that it’s popular, but there’s a longer view. Wrote the News’ Mitch Lawrence: “As much as the Knicks need to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, it’s never going to happen as long as [Madison Square Garden president] James Dolan is in charge.... Selling tickets and maintaining the Garden’s phony sellout streak is always placed above what really matters. Winning.”

* Golden State. In need of a turnaround after years of hopelessness, the Warriors made the safe pick, Mike Dunleavy, a nice player but, perhaps, a complementary one.

* Cleveland. Nice backcourt, Miller and DaJuan Wagner. The Cavaliers had better hope Sterling will take Miller. Otherwise, Andre will have to go somewhere else, for a lot less.

Faces and Figures

I hate when that happens: I waited three years until Michael Olowokandi was starting to happen, to remind our J.A. Adande and Steve Springer they wrote the Clippers should draft Mike Bibby, instead. Then, to my horror as well as the Lakers’, Bibby turned into a monster. If Olowokandi keeps coming, it may still be arguable but there’s no doubt Bibby is big-time. OK, you guys aren’t really bozos.... Toronto’s 6-11 Keon Clark, a restricted free agent, is set to take bids. The Raptors, $1 million under the projected tax threshold, would have to go $3.5 million above it to keep him, and there are reports Clark and Vince Carter don’t get along. The Knicks want him, but Clark’s agent told the New York Post Keon’s looking at warm weather and no state tax. In other words, Florida or Texas.... And a big welcome for y’all: Noted NFL Saints’ owner Tom Benson of the Hornets’ prospects: “In good times, we have a hard time selling 40,000 [season] tickets, where most clubs in larger communities sell out every game before the season starts.” ... Badeeya, badeeya, badeeya, that’s all folks.