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With a chance for for hope, the NBA Lottery tonight will bring in a lot of Minnesota sports fans who aren't always familiar with the mechanics of the NBA lottery system. I thought a brief primer would help them enjoy watching the lottery more.

The NBA is a superstar league, where a single player can radically affect a team's success for years to come. The league needs to add players like this to weaker teams to create parity, but at the same time, they need to prevent poor teams for tanking the last month of the season to try to get those players. To try to balance both goals, the league has installed a lottery. The worse a team finished, the greater the odds that they will get a top pick, but even the worst team in the league last year (SAC) has only a 25% chance of getting the #1 pick. Minnesota has a 7.6% chance of getting the #1 pick.

If you're interested in the odds or more history on the Lottery, here's a great article to bring you up to speed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery

During the lottery show, the draft positions are presented in reverse order. If a team fails to win a top three pick in the lottery, their draft position is assigned in ascending order by record. For instance, PHO had the best record of the lottery teams, and so has a very slim chance of winning a top three lottery pick. If they do not, their name will be in the first envelope presented, meaning they have the 14th pick. This is the order.

14 Phoenix
13 Indiana
12 Charlotte
11 New Jersey
10 Milwaukee
9 Toronto
8 New York
7 Golden St.
6 Memphis
5 Minnesota
4 Oklahoma Cty
3 LA Clippers
2 Washington
1 Sacramento

You may want to keep the list handy, because as they unveil the names, if a team is missing, it means they won a Top Three pick. This is obviously bad for the Wolves for two reasons. First, it uses up one of the three lottery spots, reducing the wolves chances. Second, if a team with a worse record leapfrogs us in the draft, it pushes us down a slot. If we don't win a lottery spot and one team passes us, it pushes us back to 6th. Hope that picks 14-through-6 go in precisely the order listed above.

Keep an eye on when its our turn (it should follow MEM). We want to hope they don't call our name in that spot, which would mean we won one of the Top Three spots in the lottery.

After that, we need to just hold on. This draft has two prospects in Blake Griffin and Ricky Rubio that are far better than anyone at #3, so a Top Two pick means we came out of this draft a big winner. And of course, this is just the lottery -- you'll need to wait a month for the NBA draft.

I think we got this, I just have that same good luck feeling I had right before I got fired from my last job. I remember that day because I found a dollar on the ground on the walk home in the rain. It wasn't enough for a bus ride, but as the wise say, he who buys what he does not need steals from himself.

shrink wrote:This draft has two prospects in Blake Griffin and Ricky Rubio that are far better than anyone at #3, so a Top Two pick means we came out of this draft a big winner.

Yep....I see a #3 pick coming for the Wolves tonight.

Shaq/Mourning.....Laettner
Griffin/Rubio........???????????

On another note, do you think whoever winds up being the VP of Basketball Operations will get to make the pick, or will Taylor insist that the new guy allow McHale to make the call?

If would be ironic if we sent Love and we got #1. His face would be priceless. So....am I being traded now?

MN Die Hard wrote:
On another note, do you think whoever winds up being the VP of Basketball Operations will get to make the pick, or will Taylor insist that the new guy allow McHale to make the call?

Nice.

Worm Guts wrote:

MN Die Hard wrote:
On another note, do you think whoever winds up being the VP of Basketball Operations will get to make the pick, or will Taylor insist that the new guy allow McHale to make the call?

Nice.

I don't know about you, but if I was one of those GM's under consideration, I would have waited until after the NBA lottery. Remember D'Antoni's face when he found out he had the 6th pick and Chicago had a top 3 pick

If would be ironic if we sent Love and we got #1. His face would be priceless. So....am I being traded now?

OK, I did a spit take on that one.

Fearless (or maybe fearful) prediction:

14 Phoenix
13 Indiana
12 Charlotte
11 New Jersey
10 Milwaukee
9 Toronto
8 New York
7 Memphis
6 Oklahoma Cty
5 LA Clippers
4 Washington
3 Minnesota
2 Sacramento
1 Golden State

Three sounds about right, since this is a two player draft.

You guys need to remember that we are fans of the Timberwolves. Simply getting the 3rd pick is not enough torture. We will get pick #2; then Rubio will publicly claim that he only wants to go to a large market, and if we draft him he will stay in Spain. That's more like the wolves I know and love.

im gonna say

1. Thunder
2. Kings
3. Memphis
4. Wizards
5. Clippers
6. Wolves
.
.
.

Dr.Krapinsky wrote:If would be ironic if we sent Love and we got #1. His face would be priceless. So....am I being traded now?

This.....was awesome LOL

1. OKC
2. NYC
3. WDC
4. SAC
5. LAC
6. SOTA!

That's my prediction.

1. Clips
2. Wolves
3. Kings
4. Memphis
5. Wash

Memphis can't get #4.

ritt0093 wrote:You guys need to remember that we are fans of the Timberwolves. Simply getting the 3rd pick is not enough torture. We will get pick #2; then Rubio will publicly claim that he only wants to go to a large market, and if we draft him he will stay in Spain. That's more like the wolves I know and love.

I had the same horrible thought.

I don't envy your position. IMO its a 4 person draft. Griffen, Rubio, Harden, Lawson. Any of the guards would be a good fit for you.

Dear god I hope Lawson goes 4th. But that's drunk talk.

Lawson/curry/holiday would be nice in the 8-12 range (hopefully a slip to 18) but before that it is nuts.