<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">His first instinct was to jump, knock over the table and throw a hissy fit. Instead, Al Attles sat still, using all his restraint to let the moment pass by him. The year was 1985, and the Warriors' then-general manager was attending the inaugural NBA Draft Lottery. He watched as seven envelopes representing the seven non-playoff teams were placed in a drum, spun and retrieved one at a time by Commissioner David Stern. Somehow, Stern pulled Golden State first and New York last. The Knicks won the right to draft center Patrick Ewing, and the Warriors -- who had entered the lottery with the league's worst record -- got the shaft. "I heard that I had a very, very strange look on my face," Attles recalled with a chuckle last week. "It was my first draft lottery and they had us in this room with the television camera on. What was I going to do? "I thought about turning the table over. I thought better of it after awhile." In a matter of minutes, Attles went from feeling good to grisly to numb, an emotional swing that representatives from this year's 14 lottery teams figure to experience Tuesday when the 21st annual lottery is held at the NBA Entertainment Studios in Secaucus, N.J. Baron Davis will be there for the Warriors, and he might want to bring a good-luck charm. </div> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...SPGA2CT5PV1.DTL
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> Memories of the NBA Draft Lottery By Al Attles On Tuesday, May 24, the Warriors will take part in the NBA Draft Lottery. Following is a brief insight from Vice President and Assistant General Manager Alvin Attles, who has made a few trips to past lotteries. I've represented the Warriors at the lottery on three different occasions. I went to New Jersey, where the NBA Draft Lottery is held each year, in the initial year of the lottery in 1985. Prior to that season, what they would do was flip a coin between the team with the poorest record in the Eastern Conference and the team with the poorest record in the Western Conference. In 1984-85, those two teams were the Warriors and Pacers. So we were thinking we had a chance to get Patrick Ewing, who was on every NBA's wishlist coming out of Georgetown in 1985. I remember him being the main guy everyone was hoping to get going into the draft. Going into that draft, I had this premonition that we were going to get the third pick. I didn't bring any good luck charms with me, because I don't really believe that stuff makes a difference, but for some reason I had a premonition. I didn't think we were going to get the number one pick. What I remember most about that lottery, was that it fell on Mother's Day. I had arranged to bring my sisters and my mother with me to New Jersey. Following the lottery, I made reservations to take them to dinner. So the day of the lottery, I'm sitting in my seat with a little table in front of me. As they were preparing to reveal the positions, I remember hoping we would get number one, but thinking we would get the third pick. Then just that quick, the first name out of the box was the Golden State Warriors. Number seven. The worst pick we could have received. At that moment, I thought of a couple of things. Number one was to turn over that table. That was my first thought. Stand up while grabbing beneath that table and flipping it over in a quick burst of rage. But my rational thinking got the best of me, so I didn't do that. That wouldn't have been too classy. There are a number of people who still tell me they remember my face when they called out that seventh pick. Because what happened was, as soon as the pick was displayed as being ours, the camera zeroes in right on my face. People always say I just had this look of disgust on my face, like, "You've got to be kidding me?"</div> http://www.nba.com/warriors/news/lotterystory_alattles.html
