Would You Rather Have a Team of NBA Lottery Picks or Non-Lottery Picks?

A leftover argument from the day before spilled back onto the show, and it produced one of the better hypothetical brawls of the offseason: could a team built entirely from non-lottery picks hang with the best of the lottery?

The spark came from Vincent Goodwill's earlier point about the depth of this draft, the idea that real impact talent thins out fast after the top four. Chris Brockman ran with the broadcast angle. Since the NBA has copied the NFL and split its draft across two nights, he argued the league should put the 14 lottery picks on night one with longer gaps between selections, more time at the desks, more family interviews, because those are the picks history says become stars.

"The list of NBA Hall of Famers who were second-round picks, you could fit all of them in this room," Brockman said. That set TJ off, because TJ's whole position was that plenty of greatness gets drafted after pick 14.

So TJ built the team to prove it. His starting five, every player taken outside the lottery: Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Dennis Rodman, Kawhi Leonard and Tony Parker. The bench ran just as deep with Manu Ginobili, Draymond Green, Steve Nash, Jalen Brunson and Bill Laimbeer. TJ could not resist the Jokic detail everyone loves.

"I'm surprised he and Taco Bell never worked out some type of deal," he said, nodding to the legend that the two-time MVP was drafted during a Taco Bell commercial.

Brockman pushed back on the premise. TJ had 40 years of drafts to cherry-pick five names. Could he find a single draft year that produced a non-lottery starting five capable of competing?

"One draft? You could, but it wouldn't compete," TJ admitted. The hit rate is low, he conceded, but the point stood that the talent is out there.

The bit that drew the most grief was Brunson, whom TJ had argued elsewhere is a top-five player in the league, riding the bench on his own squad. He shrugged it off, insisting whoever coaches the team can manage the minutes.

For balance, Brockman offered the other extreme, a roster of this century's biggest No. 1 overall busts, rattling off Andrea Bargnani, Greg Oden, Anthony Bennett, Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz. The verdict was unanimous: TJ's group wipes the floor with them, no contest, with Jokic and Ginobili alone tilting it. The crew even invoked Brian Scalabrine's old line about being closer to LeBron than the average fan is to him.

The conversation drifted to Naz Reid, freshly traded to Charlotte and, fittingly, a former undrafted player himself. TJ walked back calling the Hornets a rebuild after a look at the roster, noting they ranked among the league's top two in three-pointers made before LaMelo Ball opened things up.

Brockman closed with two fixes for the draft broadcast. Let teams trade picks live instead of leaking deals on social media and handing out the wrong hats, and hold the actual lottery right before the draft, so front offices scout all 14 without knowing whether they pick first or last.

"I would absolutely love the pure chaos of that," he said.