Last year at this time, the Bucks were coming off a disappointing 30-52 season that found them in the draft lottery with a 6.3 percent chance of winning the rights to the number one overall pick. As luck would have it, General Manager Larry Harris, armed with lucky charms given to him through a fan contest on Bucks.com, found himself in a state of surprise as Milwaukee “bucked” the odds and wound up winning the lottery and the right to pick first in the 2005 Draft.

Now, one year later, Harris sat down with Bucks.com to talk about the lottery, drafting Andrew Bogut and how it affected the direction of the Milwaukee Bucks franchise.

How did winning the lottery last year change the direction of the Bucks organization?
I think the biggest thing is that it has accelerated the process. When you go into the lottery process thinking you have the 6th pick there are a certain number of players that you think can help you. Then when you get the number one pick, there are immediate expectations that come with that, not only for the player that’s picked but for the organization. With our organization, which has had three previous number one picks, there has been a positive game improvement, which there should be. The biggest adjustment is that we felt we were a playoff team with the pieces we wanted to add in free agency. Now you add the number one pick and it’s like how good do you want to be? That is probably what the number one pick brings. The excitement that the city has, the fans have, the season ticket holders have, as well as the organization and the players. We got a significant player at the number one pick that should be able to help us improve quickly, not down the road progress or building or developing. Those words don’t generally come with the number one pick.

As the number one overall pick, how would you categorize Andrew’s year, both individually and how he fit within the team structure?
I think he’s been really hard on himself. Certainly as the season wore on he experienced some frustrations where he felt he could be more of a part of what was going on. I think that’s more of his own personal pride and his competitive nature. People in the draft process thought there was some arrogance or some cockiness to him, but that’s just his confidence. I anticipate this summer will be huge for him. He’s going to come back with a much more renewed focus offensively – not necessarily taking a certain number of shots – but to be more involved and more aggressive offensively. The things that concerned me or things that I saw as possible hurdles for him were the overall physicality of the NBA game and would he be able to rebound at a high-level, which he did in college, in the NBA. In both cases, having Jamaal Magloire playing alongside him was beneficial. He was able to figure things out with a more bulky, physical center there to take some of the punishment. Now, Andrew will transition into that if he’s going to be a center for us next year. Secondly, the rebounding numbers proved not to be an issue. I wouldn’t be shocked if when it’s all said and done that he’s a double-double guy, knowing his competitiveness and his great feel for the game, knowing going into it that he had a high basketball IQ. I think the one thing people did not see that if they did watch him in college was that offensively he could do a whole lot more. He’s a great passer, but he was a much more prolific scorer facing the basket, shooting all the way out to the college three-point line. Now he didn’t do that every night, but he could make that and the 15-or-16 foot jump shot, that was one of his bread-and-butter plays. He has that game in his arsenal but didn’t always get in a position to show that. We saw glimpses of that during the season and anticipate seeing more of that going forward. His area of improvement will be in his maturity, being able to keep his emotions in check because he certainly is an emotional player. I think he’ll be able to fight through some of the ups-and-downs he will face in his second year that he may not have seen this year.

With quality big men so hard to find, is it easier to be a General Manager knowing you have three players in Andrew, Jamaal (Magloire) and Dan Gadzuric to man the middle?
People say you can never have enough big guys and I think that’s true. You have to have quality big guys, I mean you can have a lot of tall people but if they aren’t quality, then that’s a problem. Having Andrew and knowing his first year he played more of the power forward, he did some impressive things. Now center is probably his natural position. Knowing we also have Dan Gadzuric and Jamaal Magloire, it gives us the ability to perhaps move a piece to attain some more assets. As any general manager will tell you, when you’re putting together a team, as much as you’d like to get the best talent in the world – if you could afford it and makes sense within your budget – the more assets you can get the easier it can be to add pieces and change pieces around without really messing with the chemistry and core of your team. Center is one of the pivotal pieces in trying to build a foundation. Everybody would love to have two or three, and to have Andrew and Jamaal, then you add in Danny (Gadzuric) who brings a different element, so it’s great to have all three. I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep all three, but in a perfect world it would be great.

Describe what it feels like not to be in New York/New Jersey today?
It means we made the playoffs, which is a goal that I think every team wants to get to. We’d love to be playing right now and hopefully that’s where our progress leads us to. To be honest, I had to ask my staff yesterday when the lottery was taking place, just because it wasn’t relevant to what we are doing and knowing that the draft wasn’t until June 27. This day, a year ago, was huge. I was sitting in New York probably hanging out at my hotel and waiting a few hours until going over to Secaucus, N.J. It’s interesting what a difference a year makes. I would love being there if I was like Chicago, where I made a trade and the team I traded with gave me their number one pick. That I don’t have a problem with. If you win the lottery, you win, if you don’t, no sweat. Hopefully it’s not a place we get back to because our record shows we weren’t one of the top 16 teams in the NBA. I’m much happier being in Milwaukee today, than in New York or New Jersey.

Any advice for the general manager or team representative who wins the lottery tonight?
I would love to have it over, I would hopefully not be as nervous. If you’re the team who is supposed to be number one and you have the best odds, you probably go into it thinking ‘What will I do when we get it?’ It probably crosses your mind as to how you will react. Now we were supposed to end up sixth and we move up and everything is happening so fast, that it never crossed my mind how to react. If someone outside of number one (Portland) should win, just try and be yourself. And if the emotion takes over you and you jump up or you whatever, relish it, because you get about 10 seconds, but it’s going to get remembered for a lifetime. Trust me. The shaking of my hands and my nervousness probably lasted a good year, and it’s still probably a comment that will come back to haunt me every now and then.

Lucky "Little Cleo" helped land the Bucks the #1 pick

LUCKY BUCKS!
Last season, Bucks.com held a pre-lottery contest and asked fans to tell us about their lucky charms. The winning entry was a fishing lure named "Little Cleo" and the lucky fishing tool accompanied Larry Harris all the way to New York for the Draft Lottery. The little lure proved to bring loads of luck as the Bucks "caught" the number one overall pick.

2005 Lucky Charms

Lucky, Lucky Bucks

Larry Harris Q&A following 2005 Draft Lottery

Milwaukee's All-Time #1 Draft Picks