Clippers hit the lottery, get No. 1 NBA draft pick

Danny Manning, Michael Olowokandi . . . and now Blake Griffin.

The Clippers have twice had the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft, and will get it again for a third time, having won the league's draft lottery Tuesday night at Secaucus, N.J.

"Clearly, we're taking Blake Griffin," Clippers General Manager and Coach Mike Dunleavy said in a telephone interview from Barcelona, Spain.

"This guy is the No. 1 pick. We're extremely excited. He's the guy."

There wasn't much of a question the Clippers would do anything other than take the dynamic, explosive forward from Oklahoma. Dunleavy, though, wasn't about to be coy in the wee morning hours in Spain and erased any shred of doubt about the team's intention in the draft June 25 in New York.

They moved up from third to first -- armed with a 17.7% chance of winning -- and their upward progression had international reverberations for a beleaguered, hard-luck franchise.

Memphis will pick second, moving up from sixth, followed by Oklahoma City and Sacramento, which had the league's worst record. The Kings, represented by Chris Webber, had a 25% chance of winning. Washington dropped from second to fifth, and Minnesota and Golden State will pick sixth and seventh, respectively.

At the NBA Entertainment Studio, the league and ESPN put on quite a production, which had the look of a sports event morphed with a quiz show.

Webber joked the Kings' owners, the Maloofs, wouldn't let him come back to Sacramento if he didn't get the top pick. And Mr. October, baseball legend Reggie Jackson, tried to become Mr. May, joining the Knicks' effort as a guest on a late whim, more or less.

Clippers team representative, President Andy Roeser, looked jubilant on the ESPN broadcast, having gutted it out through a long commercial break before the drama of the final three. He doesn't consider himself to be superstitious, but his wife had a Clippers No. 1 sewn into his jacket.

"We had a tough season. There's no hiding from it. Not only did we have a tough season, we didn't perform well on top of it. We needed some good news and this is a great day for us," Roeser said later on a conference call.

Said Griffin, in an ESPN interview: "I was obviously excited. . . . Just to play in the NBA has been a dream for so long. It's a great feeling I'm going to try to make the best out of whatever situation I'm put in. Hopefully I can make a big impact. I'm going to try to come in and learn as much as I can on the fly, and hopefully help the team out in any way I can."