Timberwolves: History of the NBA Draft Lottery and how it works today
Another year, another NBA Draft Lottery in which the Minnesota Timberwolves will be featured prominently.
The NBA Draft Lottery happens Tuesday. For most fans of the Timberwolves, Tuesday’s lottery will be the most exciting occurrence since the end of the season.
It’s during this event that the Wolves will receive their official draft position in the upcoming NBA draft, which takes place on June 22.
A brief history of the NBA draft lottery
The draft lottery started in 1985 and began as a way to more fairly determine how the first several picks in the NBA draft would be determined.
Prior to the lottery, the draft was sorted out by a simple coin flip. The winner of the flip was award with the first pick overall, with the loser would picking second.
The coin flip wasn’t the best system and was ousted after 1984. Because the odds of receiving the first pick overall were much higher (50 percent), many teams were accused of tanking in the regular season in hopes of securing the worst record and the best odds.
While tanking during the regular season is still prevalent in today’s NBA, it ultimately seems like a problem that can’t be fixed as long as the draft continues to work the way it works.
In 1987, the lottery shifted to a process that only determined the top-three picks overall.
They originally used envelopes which contained the names of the lottery teams. The envelopes were tossed around in a rotating sphere, and were selected by hand by then-commissioner David Stern.
How the NBA draft lottery works today
Fourteen ping pong balls are placed into a standard lottery machine. They’re numbered from one to 14.
Then, four balls are selected at random from the machine to determine the order of the first three picks.
There are 1,001 total combinations for the four balls selected – the order in which they are selected does not matter. The NBA takes 1,000 of those possibilities and assigns them to each of the fourteen lottery teams.
This year, for example, the Brooklyn Nets, who finished 20-62 in the regular season (good for dead last), are given a 25 percent chance to get the first pick. This 25 percent chance, means they are assigned 250 of the 1,000 combinations.
The Timberwolves, by comparison, have a 5.3 percent chance to land the first overall pick. Their chance for any top-three overall pick is 18.2 percent.
After the balls are selected to determine the first three picks, the draft order is determined by reverse order of how teams finished in the regular season.
For the Timberwolves, this means if they don’t get a top-three pick, the best they can manage is the sixth pick overall.
The envelopes came with their own set of controversies and were done away with in 1993 when the NBA once again shifted how the lottery would work.
They adopted the ping-pong ball system, which is still used today, in order to give teams with a worse regular season performance better odds at obtaining a top pick.
How the NBA draft lottery works today
Fourteen ping-pong balls are placed in a standard lottery machine. The balls are numbered from one to 14. Then, four balls are selected at random from the machine to determine the order of the first three picks.
There are 1,001 total combinations for the four balls selected. The order in which they are selected does not matter. The NBA takes 1,000 of those possibilities and assigns them to each of the fourteen lottery teams.
This year, for example, the Brooklyn Nets, who finished with the worst regular season record in the NBA at 20-62, are given a 25 percent chance to get the first pick. This 25 percent chance means they are assigned 250 of the 1,000 combinations.
The Timberwolves, by comparison, have a 5.3 percent chance to land the first overall pick. Their chance for any top-three pick is 18.2 percent.
After the balls are selected to determine the first three picks, the draft order is determined by reverse order of how teams finished in the regular season.
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For the Timberwolves, this means if they don’t get a top-three pick, the best they can manage is the sixth pick overall. On the flip side, they cannot fall any further than the #9 overall selection.