SAN ANTONIO -- If only for a couple of minutes, Tony Parker started thinking about life as a member of the Boston Celtics. Sitting inside Madison Square Garden and waiting for his name to be called late in the first round of the 2001 NBA draft, Parker had been handed a Celtics cap, an indication that the team planned to select him with the No. 21 pick that was approaching.

But before Boston's selection even went on the clock, former NBA vice president of player development Chrysa Chin, lovingly nicknamed "Hat Lady" by those who received draft-night caps from her through the years, swooped in to retrieve the lid. The Celtics, she apologized, were going in a different direction.

For the better part of the past two decades, fans of the Celtics have lamented how Boston missed out on the opportunity to draft Tim Duncan. The truth is that, once the pingpong balls defied them, the Celtics never truly had a chance to nab Duncan.

Now that Duncan has retired, it's time to shift the spotlight to another future Spurs Hall of Famer, one whom the Celtics whiffed three times on picking, none more noticeable than with their final pick in the 2001 draft, when Boston instead selected guard Joe Forte.

"I don't remember what happened [with Parker], but normally what happens when a player doesn't get the hat that he's supposed to is there's been a change in the pick or there's been a trade, or a trade is coming, or there was discussion of a trade and maybe it was unsettled," said Chin, who now serves as the executive vice president of strategy and development for the National Basketball Players Association.

"It happens quite a bit where, at that time, I would give a player a hat, then you'd have to go back and get the hat back. Sometimes families want to keep it to sort of document the history and all of that, but it's normally not anything sort of catastrophic. It's sort of an operations issue."

Yes, the perils of live TV. Fortunately, in the days before Twitter and cellphone cameras, no one noticed the switcheroo. Still, poor Parker, who sat in the stands despite not being one of the invited draftees, then had to wait until San Antonio finally selected him with the 28th pick. This time, Chin greeted Parker on the arena floor with a Spurs cap and directed him to the stage. During TNT's broadcast, former Celtics coach Rick Pitino detailed why Parker might have been on Boston's radar.

"The Boston coaching staff, they thought this was the premier point guard in the draft," Pitino said. "They loved him. If Forte was not available, they probably would have gone with Tony Parker. This is someone who is very, very highly valued in the league and can really shoot it and play the point position."

With three picks, including two in the lottery, the Celtics essentially emerged with 48 games of Joe Johnson at No. 10; Kedrick Brown, a freak junior college athlete who was heavily rumored to be heading to Portland but never did at No. 11; and one forgettable season with Forte.

Six All-Star appearances and four NBA titles later, it's fair to say things worked out just fine for Parker. But that night has certainly stuck with him.

"[The Celtics] made my eyes water on draft night," Parker recalled during Grantland's BS Report podcast at All-Star weekend in 2013. "I'm going to tell you a true story. True story. True story. The draft, you have that NBA lady, Chrysa -- she comes to me, and it was the 19th pick, she gives me a Celtics cap and says, 'They are going to pick you.' And it was like three minutes left on the clock, and you have five minutes to pick. Then at one minute she comes back and takes the cap, [and says,] 'Oh no, they changed their mind.' They took my cap. I was like, 'What?'

"And so then they drafted Joe Forte. I was always curious what happened. One day I asked the GM, Chris Wallace, I was like, 'What happened in the draft, like when you changed your mind?' Because the day before, I had practiced for Boston. So I did two workouts -- I did the normal workout, then the day before the draft they did a workout. It was Jim O'Brien at the time, the coach, and he was like, 'We want to draft you, but the Spurs are going to try to make a trade at 20, but if you're available at 21, for sure we'll take you.' The coach and the GM, they wanted me, but the president, big boss, he changed his mind."

How would Boston history be different if Doc Rivers had Tony Parker as his point man? AP Photo/Eric Gay

That big boss, of course, was Red Auerbach, who lit two cigars in celebration of the Forte pick. And while it's now well-documented that Forte was the last hand-picked selection for Auerbach, who had watched Forte play in high school in Maryland and likely trumped those who might have preferred Parker. Remember, too, the pick was widely praised at the time.

In the aftermath of the draft, Auerbach proclaimed that Forte was an, "ideal 2-guard; he can flat-out shoot the ball." Alas, Forte could not flat-out shoot the ball. He made only one field goal in 12 career attempts with Boston. He played a mere 39 minutes in eight games. Thirteen months after drafting Forte, the Celtics traded him to Seattle as part of the package that returned Vin Baker (and somehow that might have been an even worse personnel decision).

Forte is otherwise remembered in Boston only for his curious fashion choices. He once reportedly wore a Magic Johnson jersey to a team meeting, seemingly oblivious at the time to the history between the franchises. He atoned by wearing a Bill Russell throwback jersey on the bench during one of the games he was inactive for, though he's better remembered for donning a Scooby-Doo sweater in the days before a more stringent NBA dress code.

Forte appeared in just 17 games for Seattle and had an even rougher go there (the Washington Post detailed how he wore a Michael Jordan jersey the night of a Wizards game that ended with him getting in a fight in the team showers). Forte's final NBA career averages: 1.2 points, 0.7 rebounds, 0.7 assists over 5 minutes per game. He briefly latched on with the Asheville Attitude of the NBA D-League, playing close to his college roots in North Carolina, before embarking on a decade-long overseas career that included stops in Greece, Italy, Russia, Iran and Israel.

Now in his 16th NBA season, Parker isn't quite the force he once was. But he can still turn back the clock, as he did in Saturday's win over the Nets when he put up 12 points on 5-of-8 shooting over 20 minutes.

That's twice as many points more than Forte ever scored for Boston.