1.    LeBron's Pass:    Perhaps the most overblown story of the first two games of the Pistons-Cavs series was the ending of each game.  To recap, LeBron James passed up a potential game winning shot in Game 1 to pass to Donyell Marshall for a wide open three, which Marshall missed.  In Game 2, LeBron took the ball to the basket and might've been fouled by Rip Hamilton on the drive.  My take on these incidents:

 

-John Hollinger broke down the percentage points of LeBron's Game 1 pass and concluded it was a good play.  I tend to agree but I think the debate really underscores a larger issue, whether a star player choosing to pass in the clutch represents a shirking of his duty to be "the man."  Of course, that notion is ridiculous.  This is the same debate we had when Vince Carter passed up key shots to dish to Bostjan Nachbar the series before.  I frankly see nothing wrong with passing off to an open man.  Some of Michael Jordan's biggest wins came on passes: he kept passing to John Paxon to carve up the Lakers to clinch Game 5 of 1990-91 Finals and he did the same with Steve Kerr in the 1996-97 Finals, not to mention MJ's great pass to Bill Wennington to beat the Knicks in his first comeback game at Madison Square Garden in 1994-95.  So, passing off to open shooter isn't a terrible idea in theory, so long as the guy is open and can reasonably make the shot. 

 

-As for the Game 2 play where Hamilton bumped James pretty good on his final shot, I didn't think that the play merited a foul call.  The entire game was not particularly foul-laden.  The Cavs had 18 fouls to the Pistons 16 and Cleveland shot 15 free throws to the Pistons 19 and both sides were pretty physical.  In this context, the no-call in the final play was fine.  Without passing any judgment on whether the refs should've called a tighter game, I think all you can really ask for is consistency from the refs.

 

-Outside of LeBron's shot issues, the Pistons have a 2-0 lead but have done so by the slimmest of margins.  In theory, the Cavs look as good as they possibly could, without actually winning a game in Detroit.  I expect the slow brutal pace of the first two games to continue.  The Cavs can win but the need to get something from their guards.  Eric Snow can't score at all but Larry Hughes has been brutal as well (6-22 from the field), continuing his play from the Nets series. 

 

-The Pistons have gotten nice work from Jason Maxiell but the real star has been Rasheed Wallace so far.  Others have really struggled, in particular Antonio McDyess, Chris Webber, and Tayshaun Prince.  Prince has done a great job holding James to 14.5 ppg so far but clearly the defense has taken a toll on his scoring (a mind-boggling 1-19 from the field so far). 

 

-It's hard to tell what will happen next in this series.  In the last round, both teams blew some big games at home and responded by clinching series on the road.  While any outcome is possible, my sense is that the Pistons will steal one of the next two games.  The Cavs just aren't going to score enough to win four games this series unless LeBron goes crazy, which will be tough in this type of grinding series.

 

2.    Lottery Winnings/Whinings:     It's hard to be sympathetic to the NBA when it issues some heavy handed decisions but the draft lottery is one place where it has taken an unfair beating.  There really is no winning with the draft lottery.  After all the talk of tanking to get Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, two decent teams who played pretty hard until the end landed the first two picks and the worst two teams found themselves out of the money.  This result was quickly followed by a steady stream of complaints out of Memphis and Boston (shocking!) that the current system is unfair.  Frankly history tells us that the worst team rarely gets the top pick.  Boston may have made a calculated decision to punt the last few months of the season to increase its chances by a few percentage points but the Celts now have to live with the consequences.  Like with M.L. Carr's failed gambit for Tim Duncan in 1997, it will be very hard for Danny Ainge to survive this scorched Earth season unless the team has immediate success next year.

 

As for the draft lottery process, I don't think any changes are needed.  David Stern implied that they would look at changes but I'm not sure what can or needs be done.  Based upon Stern's actions so far (he called in Celtics forward Ryan Gomes for an "interview" after Gomes implied the team wasn't trying late in the season), the changes may not be changes in weighting the value of losses but rather active threats against teams that are in overt tank mode.  In the end, the system works the way it was designed to and any complaints to contrary don't have too much merit.

 

3.    Ranking the Tops:    Of course, getting the top pick isn't usually a guarantee of anything.  For the fun of it, I thought I'd go through and rate each top pick since the first lottery back in 1985 through 2000 (it's a little to pass judgment on any of the more recent top picks):

 

             Busts

16.  Michael Olowokandi

15.  Pervis Ellison

           Decent Regulars

14.  Joe Smith

13.  Kenyon Martin

            Fringe All-Stars

12.  Glenn Robinson

11.  Brad Daugherty

10.  Larry Johnson

9.    Danny Manning

8.    Derrick Coleman

            All-Stars

7.   Elton Brand

         Hall of Famers

6.   Allen Iverson

5.  Chris Webber

4.  Patrick Ewing

3.  David Robinson

2.  Tim Duncan

1.  Shaquille O'Neal