NBA Draft Lottery 2014: How it works
By Josh Sanchez
On Tuesday night, the NBA Draft Lottery will be held as teams around the league eagerly wait to see who will be the proud owner of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. The lottery is actually held in a room before the television broadcast begins, so we never get to see how the lottery actually plays out — it would be rather boring to see ping pong balls bouncing around, anyways.
But that leaves people wondering, “how does the NBA Draft Lottery” actually work?
It is actually rather simple.
The process begins with fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1-14 being placed into the lottery machine. Each team in the lottery is assigned a certain amount of four-number combinations.
For this season, since the Milwaukee Bucks ended the regular season on with the worst record in the league, they will get 250 out of 1,000 number combinations available. For those like myself who struggle with math, that is a 25 percent chance to win the top pick. The team with the best record in the lottery, this year that is the Phoenix Suns, has only five combinations translating to a 0.5 percent chance to win the No. 1 pick.
They are just along for the ride.
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Once each team in the lottery is assigned their number combination, four balls are drawn at random. According to the NBA, the order of the numbers drawn are not important, 1-2-3-4 is considered to be the same as 3-4-2-1.
If you own the numbers called, you get the pick.
There is one misconception about the NBA Draft Lottery that teams seem to have, however. While there are fourteen teams that are in the mix for the No. 1 overall pick, the entire order from picks No. 1 to No. 14 is not up for grabs.
It is only the top three picks that are drawn via the lottery.
The remaining picks are decided by reverse order of finish. That is good news for the Bucks, who could only drop as low as the No. 4 overall pick if they miraculously are not drawn within the selections for the top three picks.
Now that we all know the rules, we can sit back and enjoy tonight’s lottery.