NBA DRAFT : Crucial Selection Has Them Puzzled

A waitress brings more iced tea, and Bill Fitch reaches for nine packs of sugar. But the Clipper coach does not dump them in his drink. Instead, he arranges them in an inverted pyramid, four sugars across the top, three in the middle and two at the bottom, folds his hands and says, “OK, let’s see how smart you are.”

“Uh oh,” Elgin Baylor says. “There he goes.”

It is just a little test. A brain-tickler, some call it. Fitch, who is 61 and has coached more games than any man in NBA history, has pulled this parlor trick on dozens of the gifted schoolboys his teams have thought about drafting over the years. He popped similar quizzes on Joe Smith, Jerry Stackhouse and others who might become a Clipper this very day.

You remove as many sugar packs as you like, but only from one row. Then it’s the other guy’s turn. Back and forth you go, until the last man to pick a pack is the loser.

“What does this tell you?” Fitch is asked.

“It tells me a lot,” he says. “For one thing, it teaches me how much somebody hates to lose.”

“How?”

“By how badly he wants to play me again.”

Baylor, the general manager, and Fitch have more meaningful ways of evaluating Clipper prospects. They ask questions. They examine medical reports. They bring in players to be interviewed, occasionally two at a time, the way Stackhouse and his North Carolina teammate Rasheed Wallace agreed to do. It’s the cram before the exam.

Those funny concentration puzzles, they don’t mean a thing, although Baylor and Fitch did make a mental note when one recent interviewee gazed off into space, not paying rapt attention. Might this be the kind of focus they could expect on a basketball court, or during a timeout? You never know. All you can do is look for clues.

What to do, what to do.

Take today, with the Clippers making the second choice in the NBA draft. Golden State goes first . . . or will it? What if the Warriors don’t keep this pick? Word had leaked out of Oakland that the first prize would surely be Smith, the strapping power forward-center from Maryland. That presumably would leave Stackhouse, the slick Carolina swingman, for the Clippers to claim.

Ah, but will the Warriors do what they say?

“They’re lying,” Fitch says, with a laugh. “Same as us.”

Suppose that the Clippers could get two players today, instead of one. Let’s say they could land a starter (Clarence Weatherspoon? Sharone Wright?) from Philadelphia, which is hot for Stackhouse, as well as the 76ers’ top pick, third overall, which could then be used on, say, Antonio McDyess of Alabama, some prime beef.

Two new Clipper heads could be better than one.

They cannot, however, trade down too far, because this draft pool is unusually shallow, no more than eight deep: Smith, Stackhouse, McDyess, Wallace, Big Country Reeves, Ed O’Bannon, Corliss Williamson and the high school jewel, Kevin Garnett. Only the first two--maybe three--make sense if the Clippers keep their current pick.

You don’t want Wallace or Reeves unless they come with company. You do like O’Bannon because he likes you, because his head is on straight and because he’s a senior who can’t use his NCAA escape clause, but oh, the howls if his knee blows. You liked Williamson a whole lot better a year ago than after UCLA turned him into Scoreless Corliss.

Garnett is not an option.

Everyone loves him, but no way the Clippers can chance it. Unlike college undergraduates, Garnett is not even permitted to interview with NBA teams. Whoever takes him is flying blind. He could go back to school 30 days from now, a public-relations mess the Clippers can’t risk. And, he is too innocent to expose to Clipper ridicule in L.A., which more mature athletes can handle.

“He’s the real deal, though,” Baylor says.

“Sure would have been nice to have at least talked to the kid,” Fitch adds.

How to improve the Clippers is a brain-tickler as tough as any. The draft is such a crapshoot. Look at the Dallas Mavericks, who loaded up with Jim Jackson and Jamal Mashburn and Jason Kidd and still can’t make the playoffs. Would Stackhouse or Smith fit snugly into your team or could he dominate it, be a Grant Hill, a Big Dog Robinson? This is the puzzle.

What to do, what to do.

Fitch picks up a napkin. Scribbles a bunch of black ink spots all over it. Then he writes the letter I. Then another letter I.

“What’s this?” the old riddler asks.

You give up.

“Spots before your I’s.”

It’s the last test. School is out, and today the Clippers will tell us who passed.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The First Round

THE LOTTERY

1. Golden State Warriors

2. Clippers

3. Philadelphia 76ers

4. Washington Bullets

5. Minnesota Timberwolves

6. Vancouver Grizzlies

7. Toronto Raptors

8. Portland Trail Blazers*

9. New Jersey Nets

10. Miami Heat

11. Milwaukee Bucks

12. Dallas Mavericks

13. Sacramento Kings

THE OTHERS

14. Boston

15. Denver

16. Atlanta

17. Cleveland

18. Detroit**

19. Detroit***

20. Chicago

21. Phoenix****

22. Charlotte

23. Indiana

24. Dallas*****

25. Orlando

26. Seattle

27. Phoenix

28. Utah

29. San Antonio

* From Detroit; ** From Portland; *** From Portland via Houston; **** From Lakers; ***** From New York