In order to “level the playing field,” the National Basketball Association (NBA) allows teams with poor regular season records priority in the draft of college, foreign and (now) high school players. From 1966 to 1984, the teams that finished with the worst records in the Eastern and Western conferences participated in a coin flip to determine which team would draft first. The remaining teams then picked in inverse order of their won-lost records. Starting with the 1985 draft, the NBA began to use a lottery to determine the order of selection for those teams missing the playoffs (or the teams holding their picks through trades) for the first round, with teams picking in inverse order of their records in all succeeding rounds. From 1985 to 1989, the draft lottery consisted of a random drawing of envelopes containing the names of the non-playoff teams. In the 1985 draft lottery, the Indiana Pacers and Golden State Warriors shared the league’s worst record at 22-60; by the luck of the draw, Indiana picked second but Golden State picked seventh (last in the lottery). Since that infamous day, the draft lottery has only been used to determine the order of the first three “lottery” picks in the first round, with all remaining (playoff and non-playoff) teams selecting in inverse order of their regular season records. Therefore, the team with the worst record in the league is assured of picking no worse than fourth, the team with the second-worst record no worse than fifth and so on.
In a
further refinement, the NBA adopted a weighted system beginning with the
1990 draft lottery, which by then included 11 teams due to expansion.
The team with the worst record during the regular season received 11 chances
at the top pick (out of a total of 66), the second-worst team got 10 chances
and the team with the best record among the non-playoff clubs got one chance.
This system was modified for the 1994 draft lottery to increase the chances
of the teams with the worst records in the league winning one of the top
three picks in the draft while decreasing the lottery chances of the teams
with the best records. For the team with the worst record, the odds of drawing
the first pick in the draft increased from 16.7 percent to 25 percent while
it decreased from 1.5 to 0.5 percent for the team with the best record among
lottery teams. Under the system, 14 ping-pong balls numbered 1 through
14 are placed in a drum. There are 1,001
possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard
to their order of selection. Prior to the lottery, 1,000 combinations
are assigned to the lottery teams based on their order of finish during the
regular season. Four balls are drawn to the top to determine a four-digit
combination. The team that has been assigned that combination will
receive the number one pick (unless the one unassigned combination is drawn,
in which case the balls are replaced). The four balls are placed back
in the drum and the process is repeated to determine the number two and three
picks. Since two new teams joined the league in 1996, the combinations
have been assigned as follows:
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Tied teams split the number of chances and a blind draw determines which team receives an extra chance if the combined number of chances cannot be split evenly. In the 2002 draft lottery, Houston picked first (with 89 chances out of 1,000). Amazingly, not once in the last twelve years has the NBA’s worst team been able to capture the number one selection in the draft lottery!
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