With the NBA Draft being the socialist vehicle that it is, rare is the day that the team in Conference Finals contention picks near or at the top of it. After all, by the draft’s very design, the good teams pick at the bottom. To be good and still pick towards the top takes a good trade, or some good luck, or normally both. The Boston Celtics certainly enjoyed that combination of good trade and good luck when they flat out fleeced the Brooklyn Nets in the July 2013 deal that saw Paul Pierce finally leave Boston. In that deal that saw them trade away Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry and D.J White, Boston received five players, yet none of note. Of all of Kris Humphries, Gerald Wallace, MarShon Brooks, Kris Joseph and Keith Bogans, only Wallace stayed with the team for more than a year, and even then, that was merely because his contract was too big to easily disappear (they were able to shift it in the end only when it was expiring, and only then for an even bigger expiring one in David Lee). Humphries lasted one year before leaving via a sign-and-trade for a protected second round pick that never came, Bogans lasted one year but only played 55 total minutes, Brooks lasted six months before being the token outgoing piece in a salary dump that saw the Celtics secure yet another first round pick and yet another second round pick, while Joseph lasted only three days. With no incoming players of note, that trade, and all the ones subsequent to it, were about the future. With the number one pick in the upcoming draft, that future could here now. Much like when the 2002-2003 Detroit Pistons, fresh off a 50-win season and their first trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in more than a decade, picked up the #2 pick in the following month’s draft due to an archaic and highly one sided trade with the Memphis Grizzlies, the Celtics are going to pick first overall in three-and-a-bit weeks’ time, despite the 53-win season and Conference Finals season of their own. Hopefully, they’ll do better with it than Detroit did with Darko Milicic.