If viewers tuned into Tuesday’s NBA draft lottery show to see where their team would pick in next month’s NBA draft, many appeared to stay for a different reason. Twitter blew up with tweets fawning over Mallory Edens, the Milwaukee Bucks representative and 18-year-old daughter of Bucks’ owner Wesley Edens (yeah, we’re just as creeped out … doesn’t she have to be in high school home room tomorrow?). Despite her limited TV time, she became an instant sensation with viewers. She was trending nationally and, since the end of the selection show coverage, has seen an enormous growth in her number of Twitter followers. She’s up to 18,300 … at the start of this post she had 17,100.
Before the announcement of the top three picks, Edens was standing next to Julius Erving, who represented the Philadelphia 76ers, and David Griffin of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who, by the way, will have their third No. 1 pick in the last four years. Does anyone even remember that, or were they too busy gushing over Edens? She’s up another 400 followers since this paragraph was written. We asked a couple of friends what they thought about the lottery results, but all we got in return were a bunch of responses with, “Huh, what draft?” as they quickly closed out of Edens’ Facebook page.
Milwaukee Buckes co-owner Wes Edens gave the reins to his daughter Mallory for the 2014 NBA Draft Lottery. If the world didn’t know who Mallory was before Tuesday night, it sure does now. Mallory’s good luck was not enough to bring the Bucks the No. 1 pick, despite having the best odds. Milwaukee won the No. 2 selection, while Cleveland once again walked away with the top pick. The Cavs had just a 1.7 percent chance of winning the No. 1 selection.
The 18-year-old daughter of new co-owner Wesley Edens represented the organization at the annual event and saw her Twitter account go from 249 followers to more than 25,000 by midnight PT. The high school senior, who will graduate next month, was also the top trending term on the social media site. She told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that sitting next to Philadelphia 76ers legend Julius Erving during the festivities was “sort of unbelievable.” And while her pair of lucky pins didn’t deliver the No. 1 pick to the Bucks, her appearance did give us this meme.
