Ping Pong balls Should be Saved for Throwing in Cups of Beer and Sports Television Programming Should Feature ACTUAL SPORTS!

I've never been too much a fan of "sports" on television, that is to say, what the likes of ESPN or, for lack of, well, any other sports outlet, says is sports (watching two idiots with dumb nicknames play MADDEN in Times Square is cool, but it is hardly an activity, forget if it is a sport or not). Which is why I'm not all too excited about tonight's NBA draft lottery.

I'm not a fan of the NBA and I much prefer the college game and the madness in the year's third month to a playoff system that knocks out the two best teams in the league before the finals begin and somehow still has Carlos Boozer playing this late into May. But the more important playoff system, I'd argue, is the game that the bottom 4 teams in the league play over the last 20 games of the season. I know that flopping has become the recent trend in basketball, and I'm okay with a few players falling on their faces from time to time, if only for entertainment purposes. But when entire teams do it for the chance at selecting first, then that is problem number one for the NBA. Don't tell me the Memphis Grizzlies or the Boston Celtics weren't good enough to win at a better clip down the stretch. It was a pathetic limping-in session done by the bottom rung of teams, and that always cracks me up, as well, because you can suck to high heaven for the last two months of the season and only have a shot at getting the number 1 overall pick.

Pardon the tangent there. I guess I do enjoy the irony of losing by losing, but I hate that the NBA draft lottery, the NBA draft and, for that matter, the NFL draft (at a whopping 6+ hours for the FIRST ROUND) are made into appointment television by the networks. And the World Wide Leader is most responsible. I know they just showed a BoSox/Yankees game but would it hurt to throw another on? Are there other teams playing tonight? Why not show some sports on the premier sports network and dump the draft LOTTERY (not even the draft, this is the draft to find out which teams draft which players in which order) to the deuce or to News. a modest proposal.

Anyway, as I have opinions about everything, I may as well throw up a prediction for how this thing's going to go down. Let's face it - this thing is rigged to high heaven and, just like when Ewing came out in 1985, a major Eastern city has the chance to grab the premier center of the last 20 years. That said...

Boston will "win" (if you want to even call it that) the draft lottery, virtually locking up former Ohio State man child, father of 2 and 33 year old Greg Oden (whom, I assume, in the picture, is hitting that or did very shortly after) as their new franchise player. I shudder to think what will happen if the TWolves* get the second pick and use it on a player like Kevin Durrant, who may be the excuse to dump the other Kevin** to a place where he can finally win a ring. You heard it here first.