2014 NBA Draft Lottery

[UniquePerspective]

Cleveland is now officially the luckiest team in NBA history. Third overall number one pick in four years, and did it for two years consecutively. I think the last team to do that was the Magic about 20 years ago (I may be wrong).

What do you think? I'm not comfortable saying rigged since I don't know how the process works, but I've never seen anything like this.

[moneygamelover]

1st of all it's NOT rigged. Cleveland is a small market team. Had it been rigged it would have been: 1. Lakers. 2. Celtics. 3. 76ers. However Cleveland has had mixed results with the brilliant Krie Irving pick and the wasted Anthony Bennett pick. The system is a ping pong ball system. Balls numbered 1-14 are selected at random and each ball contributes to part of a 4 number combination. 4 balls are drawn and that 4 number combination is matched with a board to see which team it had been assigned to and that team gets the pick. Picks 1-3 are decided in this way with every pick based on reverse order of record barring trade situations. The teams with the worst few records have the most combinations and thus the best odds while the last few teams that barely missed the playoffs have only a few combinations and thus slim odds. That's how it works.

[UniquePerspective]

I ran 10 "lotteries", slightly different system, I assigned the teams numbers 1-1000 appropriately. Here's what I got.

1.   76ers
2.   Magic
3.   Bucks


1.   Jazz
2.   Magic
3.   Lakers

1.   Magic
2.   Jazz
3.   76ers

1.   76ers
2.   Bucks
3.   Magic


1.   76ers
2.   Magic
3.   Bucks

1.   Magic
2.   Lakers
3.   Bucks

1.   Magic
2.   76ers
3.   Bucks


1.   Magic
2.   Bucks
3.   76ers

1.   Bucks
2.   Magic
3.   Jazz

1.   Bucks
2.   Nuggets
3.   76ers

So what does this mean?

It's not so surprising to see a non top 3 make it, in my example the Jazz and Lakers were fairly frequent visitors, and also an appearance by the nuggets.

In terms of teams with the number 1 pick in this example: Magic won it 4 times, followed by 76ers with 3, Bucks with 2, and Jazz with 1. So it did relatively hold to form that the Bucks won 20% of the time, but it skewered towards the top 4.

It was difficult to get a team not in the top 6, the only team I had that did it was the Nuggets. Mostly it was the top 6, but no Celtics, interestingly enough.

Take that as you will.