Hi! It's Seth from the computer. Today I bring you another story I had to cut out of my Big Upcoming Piece, and now Will said it's a good time for me to tell you about what the Big Upcoming Piece is.
Ryan and I, with the immense help of Stathead, built a gigantic visualization of every single draft pick in NBA history. Just one big draft board of like 9,000 names. I love it. This is what it looks like (right now, it's not totally done) zoomed out all the way.
I call it the Draft Cavern. We'll explore it together.
My intent is to use the Draft Cavern as an anchor for all kinds of stories, big and small, the first of which I've been calling The Donnie Expedition.
Donn "Donnie" Nelson (son of Don with one N) is a key figure in the history of NBA scouting overseas. From his days as his dad's assistant in Golden State to his brief stay in Phoenix to his long and complicated time in Dallas, Nelson managed to involved himself in nearly every frontier of NBA scouting around the world.
Beginning in March, The Donnie Expedition will release in (I think) five videos that tell a history of players getting drafted directly from overseas by roughly following Nelson's rise as an NBA talent-finder and executive. The five stories are:
GEORGI '85
SARUNAS '87
DIRK '98
WANG '99
LUKA '18
If you know anything about that history, you'll know that the 1980s Atlanta Hawks factor heavily into it. (If you don't know that history, don't look it up! Come back in a few weeks and let me tell it to you!) In the meantime, the story I told Will and Ryan here gets only passing mention in The Donnie Expedition, but it's fun and bizarre, so here you go. This is the story of Stan Kasten's rise as an NBA executive, and what it's like when Ted Turner owns an NBA team. Enjoy, and see you soon for the big thing!