Why Does Conan O'brien Say Adam Sandler's Saturday Night Live Success Only Looks Inevitable In Hindsight?

Adam Sandler was 23 when he joined the show, and Conan O'Brien says people at the network weren't thrilled and didn't get him, so Lorne Michaels was probably getting pressure along the lines of "what's with the Adam guy?" Conan says the same revisionist history applies to Norm Macdonald, whom everyone loves now but who got fired. Looking back, everything seems inevitable, like Franklin Roosevelt becoming president, but at the time it could have gone a million different ways.