Starting shortly after 8 p.m. Wednesday night, the heat will be on. Not the Miami Heat...they'll be on at 8:30. We're talking about the Draft Lottery and Billy King. As King has said, this is when everyone finds out the draft order, when everyone can finally end speculation and and start making phone calls.

To that point, the Orlando Sentinel's Brian Schmitz tweets Friday that "Magic will be pulling hard for N.J. Nets (he means Brooklyn) in Wednesday's NBA lottery, envisioning a Dwight Howard/Anthony Davis trade scenario." But win or lose the lottery, win a top three or go into June 28 with only the #57 pick, the Nets say they're confident they have enough assets to get things done, starting with Mikhail Prokhorov's money.

In conversations both public and private, the Nets front office points out the team has scenario after scenario worked out for most eventualities and that when they say they plan to be aggressive, they're not just blowing smoke. The Nets recently revamped their scouting database so that everything about draft prospects and NBA players -- contracts, measurements, injuries, salaries, videos, news items -- is online, password-protected, for King and Bobby Marks to access, whether in their office or an Istanbul hotel room. Expect it to get a lot of use.