Hottest seats in the NBA draft

The NBA draft is a game unto itself or, for our purposes here, a combination of games: equal parts musical chairs and hot potato.

All seats are hot when you're talking about the millions of dollars, thousands of hours of prep work and years (or not) of productivity an NBA team invests, devotes and expects, in order, from the "pro-tentials" whose names will be read Thursday by commissioner David Stern and wingman Adam Silver. Some, however, are hotter than others.

For players, it's always a question of right team, right time. For teams, it's a defensive don't-mess-up pressure that intensifies after the first couple of picks -- as consensus falls away -- and doesn't begin to let up until Round 2. For general managers, of course, draft night is Showtime, their "King me!" moment (only a precious few are playing chess) that sets up subsequent maneuvers in free agency, trade talks and general bush-beating for help.

For a coach, what happens on draft night can be like an unstoppable force grabbing the tiller of next season, probably several, because the direction of his team can get altered for years; it's hard to go true north when your roster abruptly gets pointed south-by-southeast.

Here are just some of the participants who face hot seats in this draft:

• Blake Griffin. Hey, what did Griffin do wrong to get on this list? Nothing actually, but he will be wrestling with the basketball gods from draft night forward. Here are the paths he faces: Either Griffin -- the Oklahoma forward with the most can't-miss body and talent in this year's class -- will get dragged down by the Clippers' sorry draft fortunes or he will risk hernias nightly wrenching the franchise's tradition in a happier direction. If the No. 1 pick in general, and Griffin in particular, is supposed to be the NBA's Road Runner, hitting the ground at full speed, the Clippers historically have been that tunnel merely painted on the mountain wall.

• Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace. Getting bumped down or not moving up in the draft lottery stinks, but moving up -- only not up far enough -- can sting, too. The Grizzlies vaulted from seventh (by odds and tiebreaker) to second this spring, landing smack at the intersection of Dilemma and Quandary.

The early line had Spain's Ricky Rubio as the presumed second-best prospect, which meant Memphis had to weigh the relative merits in their backcourt of Rubio, Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo. Then came word that Rubio might not be interested in the Grizzlies, a Steve Francis flashback in waiting, with the added leverage of simply staying and playing in Europe.

More recently, the mock drafts have moved Rubio around some, with UConn center Hasheem Thabeet looking like a better fit and safer pick. Except that we all know what often happens when teams pick safe. The adage about "if you're going to make a mistake, make a mistake big" too often is self-fulfilling. But wait, our man Ian Thomsen thinks Memphis might go with local college guy Tyreke Evans. Wallace's pick of Conley after his arrival shortly before the 2007 draft and his delivery of Pau Gasol to the Lakers should already have him riding on a heated leather seat, not good when it's June in Tennessee.

• Ricky Rubio. This hot-seat stuff cuts both ways. Rubio is the pivotal player in this draft from No. 2 through mid-lottery, and it's not just based on teams' evaluation of him. He and his agent, Dan Fegan, have his European contract as both a problem to unsnarl and a fall-back position. His Sacramento workout was spoiled when he got sick, and the sizable gap between his pros and cons has been polarizing scouts' and GMs' assessments. If he does come over but doesn't show flashes of brilliance swiftly enough, the second-guessing will commence.