THE LOTTERY
The NBA draft lottery took place last Wednesday night, and for the
eighth consecutive year and 19th time in 23 years, a team other than the worst
won the rights to the No. 1 pick.
New Orleans will draft in the top spot this year, a convenient
result that should have conspiracy theorists grousing about the league. More on
that later.
The Charlotte Bobcats, who at 7-59, finished with the lowest
winning percentage in NBA history, will draft second. Michael Jordan's team had
a 25 percent chance of fielding the top pick.
The Hornets tied for the third worst record in the league and had
a 13.7 percent chance of winning.
Going back in recent history, the unfairness seems to swell like a
sprained ankle.
A year ago, as the eighth worst team, the Clippers won the
lottery. (Through a trade, Los Angeles begrudgingly passed it off to the
Cleveland Cavaliers.)
More fantastical than even that was when the Chicago Bulls
charged past eight others, including a Miami team with 18 fewer wins, to grab
Chicago native Derrick Rose in 2008.
The year before was almost as screwy. Portland got Greg Oden with
the first pick, despite being the seventh worst team. Seattle (now Oklahoma
City) went from fifth to second, grabbing Kevin Durant before the team's move
to a new city; and the Atlanta Hawks moved up from fourth to third. The three
worst teams were stuck drafting No. 4-6.
But the greatest hoodwink had to be 1993. Orlando finished with
the best record among non-playoff teams thanks to a rookie named Shaquille
O'Neal. At 41-41, the Magic had nearly four times as many victories as
bottom-feeder Dallas (11-71). Yet, despite the glaring disparity, the lottery
ball turned up Disney.
At least changes were made after that surprise twist.
In 2006 and 2010, the fifth worst team landed in first place in
the lottery sweepstakes. And in 2005, the Bucks of Milwaukee (30-52) bypassed
five teams, including the 13-win Atlanta Hawks in taking Andrew Bogut.
Not since the Orlando Magic, in 2004, has the worst team actually
selected first.
Overall, only four times has the lottery draft given the top pick
to the previous season's worst team — Orlando in '04, Cleveland in '03 when it
selected LeBron James, and Philadelphia twice, in 1996 and in 1990, the year
the league adopted the weighted lottery system in place today.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
There are plenty of drafts to feed this elephant in the room. From
Rose and James getting picked by their hometown teams, to Cleveland scoring the
No. 1 pick the year after the King's departure, the draft has certainly been
marked with suspicious fingerprints.
Now this.
The NBA owns the Hornets. Stern runs the league. Ipso facto, Stern
controls the team that just landed the No. 1 pick and chance to take an
extraordinary talent in Anthony Davis of Kentucky.
Thickening the plot, the team that was coaxed into trading away
Chris Paul, its franchise player and the NBA's best point guard prior to the
start of last season, now has the necessary place in the welfare line to make a
quick recovery.
FIXING THE STERN RULE
After the Magic scored the No. 1 pick in the '93 draft (then
traded it Golden State), despite having but one chance to win, Stern adjusted
the weight of the lottery.
He increased the worst team's chance to win from 16.7 percent to
25 percent; the best team's odds were lowered from 1.5 percent to .5 percent.
But the system is still glaringly flawed.
The probability of the lottery ball coming up is 25 percent. As it
has played out, the team with the worst record lands it 17.4 percent of the
time (not statistically significant).
That's not the issue. Neither are the conspiracy theories. Rather,
it's that the share is just 25 percent.
For a man who quashed the Paul trade because he said more parity
needs to exist and smaller market teams need a fighting chance, it's obnoxious
that Stern continues to allow all 14 non-playoff franchises a shot at No. 1.
The best chance a bottom feeder has at improving and rostering
stars is through the draft. Yet draft history shows the weakest few teams,
namely, the worst one, do not benefit by the lottery system currently in place.
If the commish is so concerned about teams skimming off the top to
ensure they have the worst record, which seems to be more of a knock on him for
believing his league to be dishonest, keep the lottery.
Reduce it to the bottom-tier of teams, though.
THE MATH
To classify a bottom-tier team, let’s use basic statistics and
standard deviation. Most data will be within two standard deviations of an
average (in the NBA’s case, a .500 record). The intent of this new lottery
concept isn’t to completely hand the worst team from that season the No. 1
pick, though. One standard deviation is a good place to start.
Comparing this past season's .500 mark (33 games) with the number
of victories all 30 teams recorded in 2011-12 produces a standard deviation of
10.3.
Subtract that from 33. The result is 22.7 wins.
Let’s see where that number checks out with actual records from
this past season.
Six teams finished with a record worse than 22.7 wins (New Jersey,
New Orleans, Charlotte, Sacramento, Washington and Cleveland).
Seems like a pretty reasonable number.
Toronto and Golden State would just miss the cut with 23 wins
apiece.
Now let’s try the standard deviation rule for the 2010-11 season.
The cutoff would be 27 wins.
Again, six teams would make it. Not among them, the actual lottery
winner Los Angeles Clippers.
The next step is figuring out how to fairly divide the chances at
the top pick among these teams.
A sound concept would be to basically break down the shares by win
totals.
For instance, Charlotte had seven wins this year. The next worst
team had 20 — nearly three times more wins than the Bobcats.
Under this proposal, Charlotte would have odds nearly three times
better than Washington of winning the lottery. The Wizards would then have only
mildly better odds of getting the top spot, as compared to 21-win New Orleans
and Cleveland. And so on.
Saving the mathematical explanation, Charlotte would receive a
37.7 percent chance of drafting in the first position. Washington would have a
13.2 percent chance, followed by the 12.6 percent chances of New Orleans and
Cleveland and the 12 percent likelihoods of Sacramento and New Jersey.
For 2010-11, the six lottery-eligible teams were all similarly
bad. Minnesota had 17 wins at one end. New Jersey and Sacramento had 24 at the
other. While the odds would be in the Wolves' favor to snatch the first pick,
they wouldn't be as favorable as Charlotte's this year.
The breakdown would go as follows: 20.7 percent to Minnesota; 18.6
to Cleveland; 16.0 to Toronto; 15.3 to Washington; and 14.7 to Sacramento and
Jersey.
Ultimately, teams that finish the season in the second through
sixth positions in the lottery sweepstakes would learn their percent chance of
landing the No. 1 pick based on the ratio of wins they had compared to the
worst team.
WHY THIS WORKS
Charlotte was bad this year because it lacked enough decent
players. A No. 1 pick and the selection of Davis would help to fix that.
The two questions that need to be addressed are, "what will
prevent teams on the outside looking in of this proposal from intentionally
losing games?" and "once teams know they are in the lottery grouping,
what will prevent them from playing more lax?"
To the first question, since the standard deviation is based on
end of the year data and there are a bunch of variables to consider (29 other
teams), franchises would not know what the magic cutoff is until they've
stopped playing.
A team could intentionally lose and still miss out on a lottery
chance.
To the second question, nothing can prevent these bottom feeders
from quitting before the season is over. To the formula's credit, however, it
would be silly to try and lose every game if five other teams are doing the
same thing.
Someone's going to have to win. And given the competitive nature
of most athletes, those teams are going to want to win as much as they
can.
And in the event they try as they might but find victories more elusive
than Bigfoot, the standard deviation-based lottery system is set up to possibly
bail them out.
