The NBA Draft Lottery is an event where the non-playoff making NBA teams get their chances to win the first overall pick of the forthcoming NBA Draft. Subsequent picks, second and third overall, are also determined by the lottery with the remaining picks determined by a team's respective regular season record.
It should be noted that a playoff team can still get into the NBA Draft Lottery if a non-playoff team trades their first round draft pick to them before the lottery is held.
The first NBA Draft Lottery was held in 1985 where Georgetown University's Patrick Ewing was the unequivocal number one pick. The New York Knicks won the lottery that year for which many people thought it was rigged in order to restore glory to a fading franchise. You be the judge. In any case, the draft order was determined for all of the non-playoff teams with each team having the same chances of taking the top pick, which the Golden State Warriors missed out on as they had the worst record that season.
In 1987, a format change was implemented in which only the first three picks would be determined by the lottery process, with the remaining picks would be determined by the respective team's regular season record. This rule has been enacted ever since.
1990 saw another change in format that would help the team with the worst record get the best chances of winning the first overall pick, the team with the second worst record the second overall pick, etc. The change was made as such - the team with the worst record would get 11 chances put into the pot to get the first pick. It's 11 because in 1990, there were 11 teams that did not make the NBA Playoffs. Continuing, the team with the second-worst record would get 10 chances, the third-worst team would get nine, the fourth-worst teams would get eight, and so on.
There was change once again in 1994 that placed greater odds (25%} of the team with the worst record winning the top overall pick and the team with the best non-playoff record having an even more decreased chance in winning the lottery (0.5%). Below is a list of the number of chances a team has to win the top pick. Note that currently there are 14 teams that do not make the playoffs and they are seeded below with Team 1 having the worst record, Team 2 the second-worst, etc.
- Team 1 - 250 ping pong balls (25.0%)
- Team 2 - 199 ping pong balls (19.9%)
- Team 3 - 156 ping pong balls (15.6%)
- Team 4 - 119 ping pong balls (11.9%)
- Team 5 - 88 ping pong balls (8.8%)
- Team 6 - 63 ping pong balls (6.3%)
- Team 7 - 43 ping pong balls (4.3%)
- Team 8 - 28 ping pong balls (2.8%)
- Team 9 - 17 ping pong balls (1.7%)
- Team 10 - 11 ping pong balls (1.1%)
- Team 11 - 8 ping pong balls (0.8%)
- Team 12 - 7 ping pong balls (0.7%)
- Team 13 - 6 ping pong balls (0.6%)
- Team 14 - 5 ping pong balls (0.5%)
The drawing of the ping pong balls is done privately with private auditors and a representative for each of the lottery teams. The lottery draft order is then announced to a national television audience.
Despite this change, there have only been two instances as of this writing that the team with the worst record was rewarded the first overall pick since the format change in 1994. Those instances occured in 2003 and 2004.
In the end, the NBA Draft Lottery is a means to improve an NBA team as quickly as theoretically possible since a team would be getting some top players. Sometimes it works out for a team like the 1985 Knicks, but every now and then, you get a 1998 Los Angeles Clippers team that takes Michael Olowokandi. Yikes!
