The Milwaukee Bucks select Yanis.

Ditto combo from Athens, Greece.

Last place will feel athletic coast in Greece.

This is the first time way are in a New York city.

If I go like when I go back, I'm gonna change now from the watched pot.

This'll This is the honest draft.

Did somebody had the idea to bring a Greek flag into the arena with you, your boss Pan, who had brought a Greek flag, I think all the way from Greece.

And it was a It was a historic moment for Greeks.

You had two Greek brothers who had to Greek agents all born in the same country, right?

All grew up with the same, I mean different values.

But feeling Greek having Greek nationality, let's show our pride.

As Yanis attend, a couple prepared to introduce himself to the MBA.

David Stern prepared to say goodbye 30 years.

His commissioner neared an end, and so much of his legacy was a prelude to the emergence of this 18 year old Ah, Greek with Nigerian heritage.

This was a proper and perhaps an inevitable manifestation of David Stern's global vision.

Do you remember meeting Stern before the draft?

He knew he knew I waas.

I knew who he waas.

I didn't know the story behind.

Then I like now that I'm older, our research, what he did on High changed the game and I made the game global and big part of them.

But you can talk about them because David Stern right?

So at the time, I just knew he was the one that tells you with team you're going you know that I came from Greece.

He knows have Nigerian.

He told me I notice in Nigerian way to say that I know it is a quick way to say Which way would you want me to say it?

How should I say that told him exactly how to Yonas Adecco combo for the Cavaliers.

2013 MBA draft represented the third time in a decade the franchise landed the number one pick for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Select LeBron James Kyrie Irving from Duke University.

Those were easy choices coronations, raucous draft night celebrations.

This time number one felt more like an albatross than a blessing in a perpetual state of predraft crisis.

Cavaliers front office searched out trade scenarios and talk themselves in and out of players.

They never stopped hoping for someone to bail them out, but no teams were inclined to pay a premium of players or picks to move up to number one.

It felt like something bad was about to happen with the first pick in the 2000 and 13 NBA draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select Anthony Bennett, a Las Vegas.

A tough number one.

There's no consensus, the newly hired general manager of the Denver Nuggets, Tim Connolly.

So I think there was five or six guys gonna go home.

One.

I thought I had a pretty good sense of how things were gonna develop in that draft and specific to Yanis.

I had a good sense, so I felt as if I had a good sense that two or three teams were kind of jockeying for him, and I knew that two or three teams that lights in the teens.

Ryan McDonough, now the general manager of the Phoenix Suns, possessed two picks in that first round.

He made a final call to reach Cleveland general manager Chris Grant about brokering a trade to move the sun's up to number one.

I believe the deal was the fifth pick in the 30th pick for number one.

And then we were going to take back Alonso G's contract where they were trying to move to clear cap space.

And I think the Cavs seriously considered that I got the feeling they were seriously considering it.

And I got a call back from the guys who worked for Chris and said, Um, no, you know, we're not gonna do the deal with you guys were sticking and keeping number one and I said, Okay, we're sitting here at five.

Can you tell me who you guys were gonna take?

And this was after David Stern, the commissioner of the time, it got up to the podium and said, The Cleveland Cavaliers are on the clock.

They have five minutes, and the guy I talked to in Cleveland said, I don't know who we're gonna take And I said, What do you mean you don't know?

He said, You've got three minutes left or whatever it was at this point and he said, Yeah, we're still talking about it in the room.

If I would just sum it up that drives the sheer lunacy.

The gulf between Cleveland's evaluation of Bennett and the rest of the league's was dramatic.

Questions about his desire and issues with his weight overrode his talent in the hours before the draft.

Conversations with executives well past the middle of the first round make one thing clear.

Nobody else was taking him.

Did you know anything about any of these players?

I didn't know nothing about?

Nobody.

E.

I think that's what made me fearless.

E didn't know my teammates.

I went to practice, and, uh, there was O.

J.

Mayo and I was like they told me you were with O.

J was like, Who's Who's o.

J?

And he said 30 from my life.

He said, E don't know who I am.

He was passed like surely I've never watched in there.

What's Euroleague basketball?

You know, I want you to be in basketball on.

Even if I watched the NBA, it was highlights what made me not being scared about the MBA because I did not know who they were, what they did in college, Um, what they were about to.

I was just seeing people and I was like from now on, can you perform?

Can you be better?

That's all that.

So I never judge people from the past, just from now on, in the week of the draft, working through Alex, talking through the positions like 10 is Portland.

They like him, but they may go with it.

Sounds like they made, like somebody else better that end up being C.

J.

McCollum.

A great pick for them.

11.

Was Philly Philly?

Alex didn't feel like he felt like he could get past Philly.

They drafted Michael Carter.

Williams, 13, was Dallas, and they were concerning because Alex said consistently.

Dallas likes Yanis.

Mike Procopio was the director of player development for the Dallas Mavericks.

The team's general manager, Donny Nelson, had a long infatuation with European players.

He had been an assistant coach with the Lithuanian national team and the 92 Olympics, had drafted Germany's Dirk Nowitzki to the Mavericks in 1998 and would ultimately be the driving force in trading up to require Luca Don check in 2018.

But Nelson's owner, Mark Cuban, was hell bent on signing the biggest free agent in that summer's marketplace.

Dwight Howard.

The Mavericks needed cap space and trading down the board was a way to free up more of it.

13 players selected Yannis was still on the board.

All these players under David's uh, Bennett known is no Michael Vick.

Alex, Lead C J.

McCollum.

All these guys Ben McLemore.

All these guys.

Trey Burke knows what's up.

Steven Adams, E.

I remember all of these guys we heard early on when war.

He was on the clock e and didn't believe it.

With the 15th pick in the 2000 and 13 NBA draft, the Milwaukee Box Select Yanis.

Ditto gumbo from Athens, Greece.

He last place will feel athletic coast in Greece.

Then I saw David Stern and shake this hand.

Nervous.

I saw, like a bunch of people Look at me in my eye was, like, Nervous as hell.

Then I put my head I was like, Thank you so much.

Thank you so much that he tells you.

Look over here.

Look over there.

Look over there.

Good luck with your journey.

Yeah.

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