Why did many teams play a bad role for Duncan in 2007, but there was no such grand occasion in 2003? These 5 points are the key

In the 1996-1997 season, many NBA teams were all about playing badly. Therefore, nine teams in the regular season league won less than 30 wins, and five teams even had less than 25 wins. The Celtics and Grizzlies, who ranked at the bottom of the east and west, had only 15 wins and 14 wins. That year, the league's competitiveness declined to the naked eye. The reason for this was that everyone knew in advance that Tim Duncan, the strongest college player at that time, would participate in the 1997 NBA draft, so so many teams were not bad for the 1997 No. 1 pick.

After the end of the 1997 season, the Celtics, who ranked last in the East, failed to draw the No. 1 pick, but they did not directly give up their plan to get Duncan. So the team's "cardinal" Auerbach proposed to use Antoine Walker, the Tanhua lottery and the first round No. 6 draw to trade with the Spurs, which won the No. 1 pick, but obviously they are also very optimistic about Duncan's Spurs. They have no reason to agree to the deal. After being rejected, Auerbach directly announced his retirement, saying that he had lost the motivation to continue working.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that this is one of the craziest seasons in NBA history. You should know that the platinum generation, as strong as the 2003 Platinum generation, have failed to set off such a frenzy. Even the 2003 class has a super-historical level like James, but the number of teams that have played badly in the regular season in the 2002-2003 season is still not as high as the 1996-1997 season. The following 5 points can be said to be very critical to this phenomenon!

1.97 was the young year of the draft, and 2003 was the big year of the draft, from that time, there were not many core options available for reconstruction teams in the 1997 draft. Apart from Duncan, the only one with a higher upper limit was Van Horn. He was hailed as the "Bird successor" at that time. Therefore, when the overall quality of the draft was not high, the best result for each team to get the No. 1 pick to choose Duncan. Therefore, under the pressure of playing badly, they could only lose "without the lower limit".

Later facts also proved that except for Duncan, most of the other players in this draft were embarrassed and reused. Van Horn became a squad, but Billups was not so optimistic about it and made some achievements in the league. After leading the "civilian team" Pistons to win the championship in 2004, he was also successfully elected as the FMVP, but considering his personal strength, it was not a good choice to build a team directly around him.

In contrast, in the 2003 draft, their situation was completely different from that in the 1997. In addition to James, a phenomenon-level rookie, Anthony is also known as one of the strongest freshmen in NCAA history. He successfully led the team to win the March Crazy Championship after only one season in college. There are also Wade, Bosh and others, who were also very optimistic at that time. In this case, the league teams had more choices. They did not need to draw the No. 1 pick to end the reconstruction, so many teams naturally had less firm attitude towards the bad attitude.

2. Duncan is the inside line, James is the outside line, In the NBA that era, inside players are generally more popular. Most of the players who were able to become the No. 1 pick in those years were also inside. From 1997 to 2007, during this period, only James, who was not the No. 1 pick in the inside line. Moreover, in the 2003 class, in addition to James, players like Anthony and Wade are also optimistic, both of them play on the outside or on the front line, so the lack of super inside line has led to many teams reducing their interest in playing badly.

3. Duncan graduated from college, James graduated from high school, Duncan originally promised that his mother would wait until he graduated from college before participating in the NBA draft, so this gave him plenty of opportunities to hone his skills. Considering that Duncan was late to basketball, such a choice was also a good thing for him. Duncan, in college, became the best player in the league step by step through continuous training, and by his senior year, he had already had the ability to compete in the NBA. At that time, his head coach Odom also said that he had nothing to teach Duncan, all he needed was a higher level stage, and I didn't think he would encounter anything like rookie walls.

But James is obviously different. Because he participated in the McDonald's All-American Star Games in high school, he automatically lost the qualification to enter the NCAA, and eventually he decided to participate in the draft directly. Although James had had cases of high school students participating in the draft before, this was still too rare after all. In addition, James' shortcomings were still obvious at that time, such as unstable shooting, defensive preference for gambling steals, etc., so there are still certain risks if you choose him.

4.01 No. 1 Kwame Brown's poor performance

In fact, James is not the first high school player in NBA history to become the No. 1 pick. In 2001, the Wizards selected Kwame Brown, who participated in the draft after graduating from high school. In high school, he averaged 20.1 points, 13.3 rebounds and 5.8 blocks per game. Therefore, many media rated him as the No. 1 high school student in the United States, and later even Jordan expressed his optimism about him. As a result, after Brown entered the league, he still became a parallel player. In his rookie season, he averaged only 4.5 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, and his shooting percentage was only 38.7%.

Since Kwame Brown left a deep impression on everyone, other NBA teams naturally worried that James would also be obviously uncomfortable if he entered the NBA directly. Given this, his attractiveness still declined to a certain extent..

5. James did not announce his participation in the draft until February

. Finally, James did not announce his decision to participate in the draft until February 2003. At that time, the regular season of the 2002-2003 season was coming to an end. At this time, many teams could not catch up with those teams that had been losing since the beginning after hearing this news. If James, like Duncan, announced his year of drafting early, there would definitely be more teams in the regular season of 2002-2003. For example, the Bulls and Warriors, who were both in the top and bottom at the time, were not up and down. If they were told that they had the opportunity to choose James, they would definitely have the idea of ​​simply playing for another season.