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There was no competing with Cleveland’s story at Tuesday’s NBA Draft Lottery.

The Cavaliers, a team spurned by its home-state star and being represented by the owner’s 14-year-old son, Nick, who suffers from neurofibromatosis (and subsequently has been forced to undergo brain surgery and chemotherapy to combat the effects of the disorder), left the lottery with the top overall pick and two selections in the top four. City icons like former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar were on hand to share the excitement, which seemed like the first positive sports news Cleveland received since the team landed the top pick in 2003.

For Clevelanders, Tuesday was the rare chance to forget about LeBron James and “The Decision,” and it’s hard to find a more compelling subtext to the draft process. But the Cavaliers weren’t the only winners in Secaucus. Yes, all eyes were on Nick Gilbert, but the figure towering over the exhilarated young man, Jazz GM Kevin O’Conner, had every reason to be celebrating as well.

Like Cavaliers GM Chris Grant, O’Conner has two lottery picks including a top-three selection in this year’s draft, but that’s where the similarities end. O’Conner presides over a team that was in the playoff race for the majority of the season, and one that has posted only two losing records in the last 28 years. Utah, unlike Cleveland, could be ready for a turnaround next year if O’Conner and new coach Ty Corbin can forge a new team identity in the post-Jerry Sloan era.

“We had been together 12 years,” O’Conner told HOOPSWORLD about his time with Sloan, “but you’ve got to remember that Ty Corbin has been there seven. That’s a long time to be somewhere. I think the major concern we have is getting the players working out, understanding. Coach Corbin has been out to see some three or four of them already, working them out. And those are the things we’re going to stay with until we know something about the situation with collective bargaining.”

The Jazz have as much uncertainty as any team heading into this offseason, but theirs is compounded by the abundance of moving parts: new coach, new players, multiple draft picks, etc. Utah is building around only its third point guard in the last quarter century; and while it’s hard for Devin Harris to compare with Deron Williams and John Stockton, O’Conner has been very impressed with the former All-Star.

“I think one of the things we learned is the kind of person he is,” O’Conner said of Harris, who averaged 15.8 PPG and 5.4 APG in 17 appearances with the Jazz. “I think he really assimilated himself in the community pretty darn well, pretty quickly. I think he understands he’s at that point in his career where we’re going to put a lot of responsibility on him to lead the team. We surrounded him with some good players, and he’s a very good player. So let’s see what we can do together.”

Besides Harris and the third overall pick of this year’s draft, the Jazz also received last year’s third overall pick Derrick Favors from New Jersey in the Williams trade; but unlike the veteran, Favors is slowly adjusting to his new environment. After all, Salt Lake City can be intimidating to a 19-year-old who, until recently, had been living in New Jersey and Atlanta. That’s why O’Conner is letting Favors grow comfortable at his own pace

“You can’t do it right away,” O’Conner said. “You’ve got to get him so he’s learning the plays and spending more time learning what our system is and everything. He’s not a kid who has really wanted to go out. We were playing four games in seven nights that whole stretch [after he arrived] and he didn’t really have a chance [to get comfortable in Utah].”

Of course, “comfortable” is a relative term, and it doesn’t matter if the quiet, humble Favors enjoys himself as long as he’s producing on the court.

“We’re trying to get him to block shots and rebound and score and help us win,” O’Conner said of Favors, who averaged 8.2 PPG, 5.2 RPG and made 52.9% of his field goals in 22 appearances for Utah. “If he wants to be in his shell, that’s great. He’s quiet by nature, but he’s not quiet around teammates. I think he’s just a little bit more quiet and reserved around people he doesn’t know. You’ve got to remember, he’s 19 years old. My God, if I was put in that situation when I was 19, probably if you were too, I don’t know how you’d react. He knows what he needs to do. We laid it out for him this summer pretty good. Hopefully he follows through with it and will be ready to go.”

Like teammate and fellow rookie Gordon Hayward, Favors became increasingly more productive down the stretch and really seemed to excel with the more playing time he received. Favors played at least 29 minutes and averaged 14.3 PPG in April games against the Lakers, Spurs and Nuggets, while Hayward started seeing major minutes in March before averaging 16.4 PPG and hitting 12 of 21 3-point attempts over the final seven games of the season.

Mot importantly, O’Conner says Hayward and Harris “match up well together” because the former is more of a distributor, despite being a 6-9 small forward, while the latter is primarily a scorer.

“At the end of the year. I think he was underrated at Butler because he did handle the ball a lot,” O’Conner said of Hayward. “He was the facilitator as much as he was a scorer. He had 11 games where he played over 30 minutes per game and in those 11 games he averaged like 17 [PPG], shot 59% from the floor and 49[%] from three. So when he got the playing time, when he got significant minutes in games, he really helped us and, hopefully going forward, he improves… We had a game, we beat LA out in LA, Favors had 17 and Gordon Hayward had 26. Those two kids are a little bit of our future as well as our present—adding to that young core and keeping the core we’ve got is key.”

The biggest area of concern, according to O’Conner, is the team’s porous defense, which seemed to suffer the most against the pick and roll.

Some questioned undersized post players Al Jefferson and Paul Milsap’s ability to defend the frequently used offensive set, but O’Conner thinks the entire team has to make the effort to correct the situation.

“I think we’ve had that problem for the last couple of years and I think it all starts with our perimeter people too, being able to put a body and somebody and not let him go somewhere,” O’Conner said. “That’s been a consideration too.

“You always need a shot blocker when you talk about defense,” he continued. “Everybody needs one. If you have one, you need another. Not many even have one. I think our young kids gaining some experience.”

Utah did finish the season tied for second with 5.9 BPG.

Since owner Larry Miller died in February of 2009, the Jazz have undergone more upheaval than at any time in their history. The defense is as bad as it’s been in years and there seems to be a revolving door of personal on the roster. But if you’re wondering about the team’s leadership in the wake of Sloan’s departure, O’Conner has another thing for you. The way he sees it, this is Corbin’s team sink or swim.

“We thought we’d hired a guy who would be a great head coach,” O’Conner said. “If we didn’t think that, we would have waited until the end of the year and hired someone else. He’d been there seven years, and even from his position as the No. 2 assistant, he got four or five job interviews from that position. He had interviewed with Chicago, he interviewed with Phoenix, Oklahoma City and there’s one other. So we knew there were people trying to call him. We knew had something that was pretty darn good and we wanted to make sure, even though we struggled at the beginning.

“We wanted him to have some assurance that we were going to be sticking behind him,” O’Conner concluded.

He may not have a 23-year run like Sloan, but it’s clear the Corbin has the blessing of O’Conner and the Miller family to develop this talented, young team for the foreseeable future. 

{AUTHOR_BOX}Irving Proved Something in March

Former Duke point guard and likely top pick Kyrie Irving played in only 11 collegiate games, but he feels he showed NBA teams his perseverance by returning from his toe injury to play in the NCAA Tournament.

“I believe if I had played only eight games and I didn’t come back and play in the NCAA Tournament, I would be even more limited, but I think being able to play NCAA Tournament proved that my toe is okay and I’m as healthy as can be right now,” he told HOOPSWORLD at Tuesday’s Draft Lottery. “That lingering thought of me not being healthy as an issue is all gone.”

Irving, who said he will have plenty of family in Newark’s Prudential Center on draft night, said he’s putting away half of his endorsement money in “Kyrie’s Bucket” in case of a lockout.

Kahn Not Crying

A lot has been made about David Kahn’s statements following the NBA Draft Lottery, which some took to mean that the Timberwolves president was suggesting the process was rigged. What people may not have noticed is how Kahn reacted to getting the second pick and not the first.

“I don’t think it’s anything to cry about,” he told reporters. “It is what it is.”

“We’re very, very young,” he continued. “That’s what we are. We are exceedingly, extraordinarily young at almost every position. And we were the youngest team in the league last year. And so while this draft is important, it will also be important this summer that we begin to fine tune certain things and make some adjustments so we can continue on a path that we set out on a few years ago, and hopefully in a few years, to be one of the very best teams in this league.”

There’s a lot of speculation that the Wolves could trade the pick, and if you’re paying attention to how many times Kahn referred to the team as “young,” it seems they’ll be willing to deal their pick for a veteran.

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