You're playing your favorite NBA video game. It could be 2K10, it could be Fast Break Basketball ? it doesn't matter. What does matter is that it's the draft and, yet again, the first overall pick has gone to a CPU team.

The team in question stares blankly at the draft board in a way that only a machine can. It sees a draft board containing a couple dominant point guard prospects, a multiple-position Swiss army knife at shooting guard, a power forward with an all-around offensive game and a center who's slated to block shots like Hakeem. The top small forward has ratings worthy of the second round.

Naturally, the computer team has a roster looking something like this: two marginal backups at every position but small forward, and one All-Star small forward. The team drafts the small forward, filling a clear hole in the roster. For a video game draft, it makes some twisted modicum of sense.

Do people actually think this is how the NBA draft works?

One of the most discussed issues in terms of NBA draft strategy is the concept of drafting for need versus drafting the best player available. According to this dichotomy, some teams will do everything to take a player that fits a specific position on the floor, while others will take talent regardless of position. This often breaks down into topics like which teams should follow which strategy, like the common belief that a team closer to contention should have a higher propensity to pick for need. In other cases, the concept of picking for need at all is lambasted severely, with the best player available being the obvious pick.

Unfortunately for those who like to be right, yet fortunately for the others who like surprises, the draft isn't that simple. Different types of players occupy each position on the floor and they often take up more than one. Players' vastly different skill sets and levels of achievement render the concept of a factual best among them useless ? much like the never-ending squabble over who is a top ten player in the league, the same can be said of draft prospects.

The true needs are at skill sets, not positions.

When a team falters, whether in winning 15 games or losing Game 7 of the Finals, it's not because that team lacked a player who could be slotted neatly into a specific position. It's because the team lacked a specific skill set that the missing piece brings to the game. That might sound obvious but it seems to be forgotten around draft time.

A dead horse of an example of the fictitious phenomenon of drafting for positional need is the Raptors' ill-fated decision to draft Rafael Araujo eighth overall in 2004. He was big, NBA ready and could clog the paint in order to make the team good enough to quell Vince Carter's desire for a trade... right? As it turned out, ?Hoffa? played two unsuccessful seasons in Toronto, was traded to Utah, barely left the bench there, and is now playing in his native country of Brazil.

He's the benchmark for disastrous need picks but he wasn't a need pick at all. Why the Raptors drafted him is something only a few ex-members of their brass know. It certainly wasn't for his quickness, shot-blocking or post defense Indeed, Araujo came out of Brigham Young billed as an offensive center, averaging 18.4 points per game in his senior season ? and only 0.8 blocked shots. His lack of speed and awareness were sub-par for a player so dependent upon rebounding to stay on the court. His best attributes, like a jumper out to 18 feet, weren't even what the Carter and Chris Bosh-led Raptors needed.

Looking back, the need pick would have been Andris Biedrins. The best player available would either have been Andre Iguodala or Josh Smith, and the skills both players bring on defense would have satisfied more of the team's needs than Araujo's mass of fouling did anyway. Araujo didn't fill the Raptors' seemingly perpetual need for defense He just filled a position.

Many players can play multiple positions.

The advantage to drafting a player who has a skill set that fits the team rather than a CPU-style plug-in is that the player can contribute in a way that makes the team better. Likewise, drafting the best player available ensures that the most possible talent will be added to the team.

Perhaps most damning to the fabricated notion of picking for a positional need is that most players who are any good can play well whether they're at their own position or someone else's. Aside from the numerous pure point guards and pure centers populating draft boards, the combo guards, wings, combo forwards and position-less big men can be inserted into a lineup fairly easily.

One of the best recent examples is Al Horford. The Hawks were desperate for a point guard and a center in 2007, and top point guard prospect Mike Conley was sitting right in front of them waiting to be picked. Meanwhile, the team had taken Shelden Williams, a power forward with a body type similar to Horford's, the previous year. More relevantly, the Hawks were also converting Josh Smith to power forward. They took Horford anyway, and his All-Star nod this season is a testament to the hard work he's put into becoming one of the cornerstones of the team.

Asking why the Hawks took Al Horford seems silly now. He provided size, defense and rebounding, all in a wide, athletic NBA-ready body. Although he's had to play out of position for almost his entire career, he's contributed more than any of the players at the Hawks' needed positions have. The Hawks, like other teams in their situation, didn't need a position. They needed someone who could give them specific skills and they got him.

It can be impossible to determine the best player available.

One of the defining features of the draft is the uncertainty surrounding it. Any player can be a steal and any player can be a bust. Players come from top-ranked universities, obscure junior colleges, top international basketball programs, and far-away countries that are difficult to pronounce. Their skills span all the ones found in the league, although very few players possess all of them at once.

The search to find the elusive best player available leads teams to adjust their draft boards after each individual March Madness game or mid-June workout. It causes fans to have heated debates over the merits of the NCAA's leading scorer against those of an 18-year old beanpole from halfway across the globe who oozes potential.

With no one in agreement as to what constitutes a best player available, a team aiming to pick that player has no alternative but to craft some makeshift criteria and then snag the player best fitting them. In 2005, that responsibility fell to the Hawks with the second overall pick. The Hawks clearly needed Deron Williams or Chris Paul, and even a CPU would have taken one of the two, but they took North Carolina forward Marvin Williams instead.

Williams's attributes, those of being a 6'9?, athletic forward, overlapped with Smith. His position, and some of his skills, overlapped with Josh Childress. He was clearly not a need pick in any sense of the term. The Hawks had singled him out as the best player available, for whatever reasoning they had determined. As the past five years have proven, largely thanks to the aforementioned Williams and Paul, the Hawks could not have been more wrong.

With examples like these, how can teams identify the best player available?

Many players are taken for completely different reasons.

Some players are drafted for reasons having nothing to do with need or perceived talent. In 2005, the Clippers allegedly promised Russian forward Yaroslav Korolev they would take him with their 12th overall pick so he would stay in the draft. As tormenting as watching Danny Granger fall past them must have been, the Clippers stayed true to their word and picked Korolev anyway. Granger would have satisfied a need or a best talent to the Clippers, as his play in Indiana has no doubt reminded them.

Likewise, some picks are made not based on any production that has come from the player, but on what might happen someday. When the Supersonics saw Saer Sene in 2006, they saw a legitimate seven-footer with a enormous 7'8? wingspan and monstrous athleticism. What they hadn't seen was solid play at a high level of competition. To this day, four years later, they still haven't.

The Bulls decided to take Tyrus Thomas instead of LaMarcus Aldridge in that same draft, going so far as to make a draft-day swap with a Portland team that was drafting two spots later. Aldridge had proven more in college, and indeed, Thomas and future Celtics reserve Glen Davis had to double-team Aldridge in the NCAA tournament that year. Thomas had potential, athleticism, and the still-undefined ?motor?, but Aldridge had two things that Thomas still doesn't have. Aldridge had a higher talent level, and a skill set, not to mention size, that made him more suitable to a Bulls team that was based around a perimeter trio of Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon and Luol Deng. The Bulls clearly did not take Thomas over Aldridge to fulfill a need of any type or to take the best player available. It was a pick based on potential, like so many others that have gone right or wrong.

The notion that need versus best player available is an unalterable dichotomy has about as much of a point as drafting a player with the outlook of a Korolev. There are as many reasons to draft a player as there are players in the draft. Maybe he's friends with a top free agent the team wants, maybe he's a hometown hero, maybe he has the capability of drawing more fans... whatever it may be, there's a team somewhere, some year, that will use it as justification to hand a young man millions of dollars and, in some cases, the keys to a franchise.

If a player is a good fit on the team, take him. If the player is an apparent shoo-in as the best, like John Wall this year, take him. If his improvement is so drastic against all levels of competition that his potential is impossible to resist, take him. Don't promise to take a player unless, when you're on the clock, he'll still be the player you want.

There's no method in all of this, no rule governing the use of draft picks. There's only the necessity of scouting, evaluating, discussing, repeating those steps about ten thousand times, and then selecting a player who will improve the team.

Matthew Gordon can be reached at matthewpmgordon@gmail.com