BILL DANDRIDGE is the winner of the 2002 Predict the Draft Contest for the third time in eight years. Bill also won in 1996 and 2000. However, he did not have the best score. That honor went to Chris Monter of BASKETBALLNEWS.COM, who had the best predictions of all the media outlets for the second straight year. NBADRAFT.NET, the website entirely devoted to the draft, again faired rather poorly, at least with respect to the west coast players.

With all the foreign players chosen, this was probably the most difficult draft to predict and the low scores verified that.

Notable stats:

Easiest pick: probably Tito Maddox, with ten entrants within 5

Toughest picks: Freddie Jones (nobody within 7), Randy Holcombe (only Phil had him to be picked)

Exact picks: Matt Barnes (Dandridge, Ross), Curtis Borchardt (LATIMES.COM), Dan Dickau (Egashira), Casey Jacobsen (Stillman, BASKETBALLNEWS.COM), Tito Maddox (Becker)

          FINAL STANDINGS
-----------------------------------------
 1 BASKETBALLNEWS.COM                  38
 2 Bill Dandridge                      36
 3 D. Rivero                           33
 4 Hank Stillman                       32
 5 Linas Polikaitis                    26
 6 Ben Browdy                          23
 7 David Egashira                      23
 8 Ed Becker                           22
 9 Jeff Fawcett                        22
10 Rob Wall                            20
11 Kelly Ross                          19
12 Dave Lombard                        19
   Dave Patterson                      19
14 Vartan Madoyan                      18
15 NBADRAFT.NET                        17
16 ccbruin84                           17
17 Jay Man                             17
18 Phil                                16
19 Les Canterbury                      15
20 Larry Harris                        15
21 Matt                                14
22 Rajesh Krishnan                     10
23 Barry Beck                           9
24 BearFanInPhilly                      6
25 Joe Cohen                            4

(first round picks only)

 1 LATIMES.COM*                        17
 2 FOXSPORTS.COM*                      13
 3 BASKETTRUE.COM*                      9
 4 CNNSI.COM*                           8
   MSNBC.COM*                           8
   FATGUYS*                             8
 7 CBS.SPORTSLINE.COM*                  7
 8 THESPORTINGNEWS.COM                  5
   ESPN.COM*                            5
   DIME MAGAZINE*                       5
11 USATODAY.COM*                        4