My Mock-Mock Draft Blog

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, @AndyDisco on Twitter

Last night the NBA held their annual draft lottery. Equally as traditional, and far less fortunate, is the next day when every sports website that blows offers their mock draft. Sports websites, television shows and the like offer up a lot of hot air, but mock drafts may be the hottest.

Maybe Mel Kiper and Jimmy Clausen ring a bell. Or maybe Darko Milicic sounds more familar.

Many of my readers are familiar with the definition of insanity: repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result. Allow me speak from soapbox of sanity: No one will accurately predict the draft lottery. Ever.

Mock draft boards exist because sports media has to talk about something. They need a new headline on their website, they need a teaser on their radio show to get you to tune after these not important messages. The truth remains that 0 readers have benefited from a mock draft. Much like weathermen, but less altruistic, the blowhard "journalists" know that they don't have to be correct in their picks because all they have to say to their criticis is, "Give me a break! Like you could do any better! You cannot reasonably expect me to predict it accurately!"

Therein lies the rub.

Furthermore, the draft "debate" is inane because we will know the answer in a few months. The draft will happen, and every question will be answered. Rational people save heated debate for the theoretical, or things that are not provable: should we have bailed out the banks, was Warhol good or bad for modern art, was Bob Gibson's prime better than Koufax's, could Secretariat beat Gallant Fox, etc.

To revert to my weatherman analogy- no one debates the weather. While meteorologists may vary in their opinion of tomorrow's forecast, they don't pontificate with their selections. They give their rationale, give their informed opinion, they shut the hell up afterward. And those are scientists! At least when horse racing experts give you their predictions, their accuracy can make you money.

Sports "journalists" have the balls to think the following: 1) we should take their guesses as fact, 2) that only their draft board is the correct one, 3) that this sort of thing is able to be predicted with any accuracy, 4) this is an intellectual endeavor worth undertaking.

We WILL know the answer in a few months. Why speculate or get your hopes up/down for your team based on some scrotum's prediction?

Lastly, while presenting this argument to the aforementioned predictors they would most likely respond with, "give me a break. I am in the entertainment business. We have 800 words to write/3 hours of airtime to fill. We gotta talk about something." To which the rational counter is: Then maybe your column/radio show shouldn't be so long.

If you have so much free time that hearing a grown man play Sports Nostradamus entertains you, I invite you to not reproduce, although your velcro shoes are lovely.








That's how I roll.