DAN DALY: In draft, timing is No. 1 thing

Once again at lottery time, the Wizards were cursed with too much ping - or not enough pong. The jewel of the 2009 draft, Blake Griffin, will go to the Clippers, and Washington fans will spend the next decade wondering how a power forward with Karl Malone’s muscle and Amare Stoudemire’s spring might have fit in with Agent Zero and Co.

(Wild guess: They probably would have found a way not to bump into one another.)

Yes, you can obsess too much about getting the first overall pick. As history has shown, it’s not always the key to happiness. But consider the recent record:

Dwight Howard just led the Magic to the finals. Howard was the first pick in the 2004 draft.

Two years earlier, LeBron James led the Cavaliers to the finals. LeBron was the first pick in the 2003 draft.

Not long before that, Kenyon Martin was Jason Kidd’s sidekick on the Nets clubs that made the ‘02 and ‘03 finals. Martin was the first pick in the 2000 draft.

In fact, going back to 1999, there has only been one NBA championship series that didn’t involve at least one former First Pick, usually in a prominent role. (Surprisingly, it was last year’s star-studded finals, which featured Kobe Bryant and the Celtics’ Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen but nobody who went No. 1 overall.)

Heck, in six of those series, you had at least two former First Picks playing for the title, and in ‘99 you had four on the rosters of the two finalists - Patrick Ewing (No. 1 in ‘85) and Larry Johnson (‘91) for the Knicks and Tim Duncan (‘97) and David Robinson (‘87) for the winning Spurs.

A quick rundown:

2000 - Shaquille O’Neal (1992’s Numero Uno).

2001 - Shaq and Allen Iverson (‘96).

2002 - Shaq and Martin.

2003 - Duncan, Robinson and Martin.

2004 - Shaq.

2005 - Duncan and Glenn Robinson (‘94), who got some perfunctory minutes off the San Antonio bench.

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