Why the Second Round of the NBA Draft is a Good Time for All

The Knicks selected Andy Rautins (l.) of Syracuse and Landry Fields of Stanford early in the second round, which LatinoSports.com's Oren Vourman belives is one of the best part's of the NBA Draft experience. PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

NEW YORK – For the casual fan, the NBA Draft is a place to mock and mingle, to wear their team’s jersey in public without fearing public condemnation (I call it Clippers Appreciation Day), spend money on draft day caps they won’t wear the following season and to sit as still as they can while weary-eyed GMs submit the names of will-be saviors in five minute intervals.

In other words: the NBA Draft is a five hour preview, and sitting through it takes concentration skills that mere mortals simply do not possess.

This is not to say that beyond the pageantry, mindless speculation and endless Kwame Brown jokes that the NBA Draft isn’t fun.

It really is, but you have to attend it like a pro, which means staying around for the second round and rocking out your Baltimore Bullets John Wall tee-shirts (thank you for staying classy Section 204).

Let’s be honest, if we all knew that John Wall was going first overall and Evan Turner second, then it was as exciting as watching a movie based off a book.

While you still wanted to know how it would translate on the big screen, you already knew how it was going to go down. After Turner was selected, all I could do to renew my anticipatory glands secretion of excitement was to wait for Adam Silver, the Deputy Commissioner of the NBA to replace David Stern at the podium.

With chants of “Sexy Silver!” emanating from the bowels at the Madison Square Garden Theater, I knew that the second round had arrived and would produce the yearly rite of hard to pronounce names, disappointed Knicks fans and the generic team that has stockpiled way too many useless picks in bad trades for my NBA consuming delight (thank you, Miami).

While Stern takes his time getting to the podium, turning every selection into a Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Silver, his No.2, gets there as fast as any rookie that ESPN’s Jay Bilas comments as having “great speed and surprising agility.” Silver simply gets the job done in round two, where the waiting time between each pick is two minutes, and bathroom breaks are rationed.

It is the players that captivate us though, such as the Wizards 35th overall pick of 6-foot-10 Serbian forward Nemanja Bjelica, who had two highlights of his skills shown on the jumbotron, neither of which showed him scoring a basket…Which is why the Wizards chose Wall at No.1 and not Bjelica.

The Lakers went with Devin Ebanks, a 6-foot-9 forward from West Virgnia known for his hounding defense with their 43rd selection. If basketball fails, I think he could play for the Tonight Show band.

The best name competition was actually a three-way tie between the Bucks pick of Tiny Gallon at 47, Solomon Alabi at 50 for Dallas and Magnum Rolle at 51 for Oklahoma City. Honorable mention goes to the Kings’ Hassan Whiteside, and all four of them should be casted for the next A-Team movie.

The NBA Draft always comes down to the New York Knicks though, and not just because the event is held at MSG, or because their fans make up about 40-percent of the crowd. It’s mostly because they always seem to detest anyone that the Knicks brass chooses, allowing them to perfect their boos for another season of where “seven-seconds or less” is how long it takes the Knicks to blow a lead.

With back-to-back picks at 38 and 39 the Knicks chose Andy Rautins of Syracuse and Landry Fields of Stanford. The Orange and Blue in the stands gave a polite cheer for Rautins having at least played his college ball in the state of New York, and were unimpressed with Fields having been the Pac-10 player of the year, because let’s all be honest, there is definitely a West Coast bias when it comes to college basketball, and virtually none of us watch it with the exception of March Madness.

That being said, the Knicks also passed up on Brooklyn’s Lance Stephenson (who played his high school ball at Lincoln and starred for the University of Cincinnati), Da’Sean Butler and Luke Harangody, and yes they all played in the Big East.

As Dwayne Collins was announced as the 60th pick of the 2010 NBA Draft by the Phoenix Suns, and the creepy cutouts of those four toys dancing in that weird Kia commercial were being stashed somewhere for posterity (or Ebay) another successful second round was completed.

A draft considered “thin” going down as one of the all-times funniest in recent memory.

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