NBA Draft Lottery 2017: Winners and losers

Loser: New York Knicks

Granted, the New York Knicks only dropped one spot from where the odds had them entering the Lottery. They had the seventh-best odds and ended up at the No. 8 pick. But if there’s a more Knicks-y thing on the planet than having something like that happen, I’d hate to see what it is (it’s probably Carmelo-Phil, but still).

This is an organization that, under James Dolan, has essentially made one bad decision after another. And even when they make a good decision, such as the Kristaps Porzingis selection in 2015, it was almost made by default and not of their own devices. What’s more, they’ve simply supplemented that one good decision with more bad moves. Bringing in Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose certainly fit the bill in that regard. Put simply, the Knicks are the NBA front office equivalent of a blooper reel.

In a vacuum, is there really a huge difference between the No. 7 and 8 picks in the 2017 NBA Draft class? Probably not. This is a stacked class where Day-1 contributors should be found even past the lottery with relative ease. Given that the Knicks fell one spot thanks to the ping pong balls, though, it would be just their luck for the next superstar to go off the board with the seventh pick while they get either a bust or a mediocre contributor. The dumpster fire burns brighter.