NBA’s New Lottery Draft May Become a Circus, Stern Fears

NBA Commissioner David Stern isn’t quite sure how the league will handle its lottery for the first seven picks in the June college draft.

The league has scrapped its system in which the worst team in each conference flipped a coin to determine which would choose first that year. Instead, the seven non-playoff teams, or the teams who hold their first-round draft rights, will have some kind of drawing to fix the position of the first seven picks.

With Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing the prize for the team winning the first draft pick, Stern feels certain that the drawing will not be held in his office, which was packed during the last two coin flips, when Houston won the rights to pick Ralph Sampson and Akeem Olajuwon No. 1.

With seven teams hoping to get Ewing, Stern is concerned the whole thing might become a circus.