Scooby Doo could have been drafted to the Lakers

Scooby Doo could have been drafted to the Lakers

Scooby Doo could have been drafted to the Lakers

Wish I was kidding, but I am not. The Los Angeles Lakers, yes of the official NBA, tried drafting Scooby Doo. It wouldn’t be a day that we don’t think about the strange NBA Draft that happened in 1977; the 1977 NBA Draft will go down as one of the oddest days in sport’s history. I have never seen a headline like this before that a professional team would be trying to draft an animated TV character… but I guess there is a first for everything.

Real quick, what makes the 1977 NBA Draft the weirdest ever?

It wasn’t only Scooby Doo that was drafted in 1977, it was actually a few other names and an object (yep… getting to that now). To begin the list, we have the Sacramento Kings. Kings selected Bruce Jenner in the seventh round, why not, right? The Jazz drafted a pregnant woman named Lusia Harris, she actually set NBA history by becoming the first (and only) female to be drafted in the NBA. But she never played, mainly cause you can’t have a pregnant woman playing basketball. I don’t even know how that is possible, anyways, back to the article.

We then had the Celtics drafting a water boy. Yes, you read that correctly. Boston selected a water boy to be apart of their team; again, don’t see that in the headlines too often. Lastly, we have the Lakers trying to draft not only Scooby Doo (who isn’t real) but also drafting a chair.

A pregnant woman, a chair, water boy, Scooby Doo, and Bruce Jenner highlighted that draft. Also, as a side note, Bernard King and Eddie Johnson were drafted in that draft too. So, some good players getting drafted. But, I gotta say, that Scooby Doo probably would have been averaging 44 Scooby Snacks per game if eligible. Darn shame we never got to see his true talents unleashed before our very eyes.

Why were teams doing selecting these random guys?

Let’s give some context to the era of drafting here. Since the NBA had eight rounds back in 1977 and teams had to use those picks, it got interesting on who they were going to select. Historically, and just because no one sees value in those later rounds, anyone beyond the second and third round never played. Rarely did you see a quality guy come out of those rounds. Rounds four-to-eight were rounds that meant nothing and teams were just selecting random players to fill their rosters. To put it in the simplest way possible.

So, since teams just built their roster around rounds one-to-three, those other rounds were just fillers for fun. Teams got creative, but not like the Lakers. What the Lakers did was creative, yes, but did not fly with the NBA. They forced the Lakers to use the picks another way as they didn’t seem to make sense of a wooden chair playing defense and a character from a TV show chasing food on the court – and, no, we do not mean Charles Barkley.

Who knows what happened to those picks that the LakeShow had to use, all I know is that the 1977 draft will go down as one of the craziest drafts ever. At least the Celtics drafted a water boy, something the league did permit, to give the players refreshments during the game. The water boy pick is not so bad, in comparison to Scooby Doo. At least one is useful.

There was good coming out of this draft!

After all these interesting picks and many years later, the NBA started to develop criticism for all the rounds that they had. It took 12-years, but they finally decreased it to two-rounds. The max rounds we see today. So you have that, but it was very interesting to see that two storied teams in the NBA had three draft picks that made the NBA Draft into something funny and strange at the same time.

To be honest with y’all, I thought this was fake. I thought this was for April Fools Day until I researched this some more; this is real and this is super, duper funny. Go look this up for yourself as you will have a laugh and will have another accomplishment to add to the resume of Scooby, Dooby, Doo!