Celtics benefitting from 2017 victory with Jayson Tatum

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NBA Draft Lottery: Celtics benefitting greatly from 2017 victory with Tatum originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The 2023 NBA Draft Lottery will take place Tuesday night before the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets play Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.

It’s one of the most anticipated draft lotteries in a long, long time.

The top prospect in the 2023 class is French phenom Victor Wembanyama, who many scouts project to be a generational talent. He’s 7-foot-2 and can shoot, handle the ball and play defense at a high level, among many other abilities. Wembanyama has the ability to significantly alter the course of a franchise for a decade or more.

ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski summed up the Wembanyama hype Tuesday afternoon on “NBA Today”.

The Boston Celtics don’t have a great history in the lottery. They’ve participated in the event 11 times with their own pick, and they’ve never won the No. 1 selection in those instances.

The 1997 lottery was a tough one for Boston. They had the second-best chance to win the top pick, as well as a chance to earn the No. 1 and No. 2 picks. Instead, they ended up with No. 3 and No. 6, thus missing out on a chance to draft Wake Forest star Tim Duncan. Duncan, of course, went on to win five championships with the San Antonio Spurs, who won the 1997 lottery.

 

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The 2007 lottery was painful for the C’s, too. They had the second-best chance to win the No. 1 pick with top prospects Greg Oden and Kevin Durant at stake. The Celtics shockingly dropped to the No. 5 pick. They ended up trading that selection in a package to the Seattle SuperSonics for Ray Allen. The C’s acquired Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves in another trade shortly after the Allen deal, and together with Paul Pierce, Boston’s new “Big Three” won a title in 2007-08. So, in the end, it worked out for the Celtics, but few could have predicted all of that happening on lottery night.

Here’s a recap of the Celtics’ lottery history with their own picks:

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Author : NBC Sports Boston

Publish date : 2023-05-16 20:01:17

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