SAN ANTONIO (AP) — San Antonio businessman Roland Ramirez predicted the outcome of the NBA draft lottery months before Commissioner Adam Silver announced the Spurs had won the No. 1 pick.
Ramirez believes it was fate that Victor Wembanyama is on his way to San Antonio as the first overall draft pick.
As the Denver Nuggets continue to celebrate their first NBA championship, fans in San Antonio are counting the days until the 7-foot-3 French phenom officially joins the Spurs. Sure, San Antonio’s front office is doing its due diligence and interviewing other players, but Wembanyama is the unquestioned No. 1 pick on June 22.
Ramirez was so sure of San Antonio’s lottery hopes that he put pen to paper. Well, paint to canvas.
The owner of Rudy’s Seafood restaurant, Ramirez had local artist Nik Soupe paint a mural of Wembanyama in a Spurs uniform at the entrance of his restaurant near downtown, about eight miles from the team’s home arena. Ramirez did so. In March. While the season was still taking place. Even when the Spurs were not guaranteed a top three pick.
“Everybody says I brought good luck to them,” Ramirez said. “A few people were telling me, maybe you jinxed them. I said, ‘It’s either going to give us good luck or jinx them.’”
It was wondrous luck for a franchise and fan base that has never gotten over Kawhi Leonard’s departure. Leonard was supposed to bridge the championship-winning dominance of the Spurs’ Big Three — Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili — to a new era of prosperity. Instead, Leonard demanded and was granted a trade on July 18, 2018.
After matching a league record of 22 straight playoff appearances, San Antonio has not made the postseason the last four seasons, the longest drought in the franchise’s 50-year history.
Now, the San Antonio Spurs have won the right to draft a transformative player with the No. 1 pick for the third time in franchise history.
