CHICAGO — In the lead-up to Sunday’s NBA draft lottery drawing, Austin Ainge set about finding someone to represent the Utah Jazz in the drawing room.
Owner Ryan Smith, CEO Danny Ainge and general manager Justin Zanik had all previously taken on the role of drawing room representative. Meanwhile, Thurl Bailey, Ashley Smith and Collin Sexton had been the on-stage representatives for the Jazz over the last few years.
None of them had ever brought the kind of top-3 luck the Jazz were looking for.
“I said ‘You’re bad luck. You’re all fired. I’ll do it,’” Ainge joked.
On Sunday, he went into the lottery drawing room for the first time in his career. He didn’t take in any good luck charms. No special necklace or bracelet. No memento or vintage jersey. He just went into the room, sat down at his assigned seat in the middle of the front table and nervously tapped his fingers.
The first four numbers drawn made up a combination that belonged to the Washington Wizards, meaning they got the first pick. After the next four-number combination of ping pong balls were drawn from the lottery machine, an NBA official announced that the number belonged to Utah.
Ainge pumped his fist and exclaimed, “Yes!”
For the first time in franchise history, the Jazz had jumped up in the draft with their own pick.
“Relief. Excitement. Really excited,” Ainge told the Deseret News. “Jazz fans deserve this. They’ve waited a long time for something like this.”
The next four-number combination also belonged to Utah, as if the basketball gods wanted to punctuate how much the Jazz, finally, deserved a top pick.
If a lottery team’s number combination is drawn twice, the second drawing is disregarded and another four numbers are picked. But Ainge joked that he’d be happy to take the No. 2 and No. 3 pick.
With the No. 2 pick, the Jazz’s work will be relatively easy.
They’ll have to evaluate all the intel they’ve been collecting on players such as AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer and Caleb Wilson and decide who they will have ranked No. 1 and No. 2 overall.
Then they will wait for the first round of the draft on June 23 to find out who the Wizards are going to take.
There’s not much point in trying to figure out prior to the draft what Washington is going to do.
“We won’t spend a lot of time on that at all,” Ainge said. “We’ve seen all these guys for years and they’re all really good kids and we just need to make the right choice for what’s best for us.”
And what’s best for the Jazz is to take the most talented player, no matter position, after the Wizards make their selection.
“As they say, ‘Need is a bad evaluator,’” Ainge said. “Because everyone is going to react to the NBA in different ways. It’s unpredictable.”
So the Jazz brass will put their collective minds together and take the most talented player available who they believe will give them the best chance at sustainable and longterm success.
Back in the drawing room, after the Jazz’s second number combination was discarded, the Memphis Grizzlies won the No. 3 pick and the Chicago Bulls won the No. 4 pick.
Ainge reached over and gave Zach Kleiman, Grizzlies general manager, a fist bump. Kleiman nodded and congratulated Ainge. In this small action, Ainge had to reach across in front of John Kehriotis, a Sacramento Kings minority owner and the team’s representative for the lottery drawing.
It was the Kings that the Jazz won a tiebreaker with last month that secured them the No. 4 pre-lottery spot, and the winning number combination that was called on Sunday, giving the Jazz the right to make the No. 2 overall selection in the draft.
The Kings ended up with the No. 7 pick.
On the day of the tiebreaker, Ainge said he repeatedly was refreshing his email for hours waiting to hear the news. Now, he looks back and sees all that anxiety as all worth it, and figures that things went so well on Sunday that he might have to represent the Jazz if they end up in the lottery room again.
But he’s hoping that the team the Jazz have assembled plus the addition of a high-level draft pick is going to mean that the lottery is in the rearview mirror.
“This is a good day for the Jazz,” he said. “I hope that we’re not in this room again for a long, long time.”