It is entirely possible that Phil Jackson — or rather Steve Mills — worked the phones into the dying seconds of the Knicks’ five-minute allotment after the third pick of the N.B.A. draft Thursday night, shooting for a deal that would have brought them a veteran and an escape hatch from what seemed like the dreaded No. 4 slot.

Or, to put it another way, the slot the Knicks inadvertently set themselves up for by winning two insanely worthless games as their worst season in history was ending, ceding the league’s worst record to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

So the Timberwolves had the best lottery odds and the first pick, and chose Karl-Anthony Towns, another huge Kentucky talent ticketed for stardom after a year of John Calipari’s babysitting in Lexington. The Los Angeles Lakers then chose the dynamic Ohio State point guard D’Angelo Russell, another acknowledgment of the N.B.A.’s emerging spread-the-floor speed game — everywhere, it seems, but in Philadelphia.

Out came Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, to offer a lovely tribute to Harvey Pollack — the 76ers’ longtime statistician, who died Tuesday at 93 — before announcing the latest addition to Philly’s ever-expanding skyline, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor.