FFBlitzace wrote:The odds sound staggering when you speak them, but anyone who has dealt with RNG knows that you can have improbable runs of good or bad luck. And we're still at a small number of lotteries to use as data, so it's volatile. Maybe in 200 years if we're up to like 25+ miracle winners like the pace we're on now, we can conclude there's something fishy going on. And by "we" I mean the lizard people that have taken over the world by then. We'll be long dead.
I mean the odds any of us are even here are astronomically lower than a 1.8% chance or whatever the Mavs had. People talk as if 2% chances are so impossible, 2% chances happen to you several times in your day. Stuff even rarer happens all the time. The odds of any individual team getting the #1 pick were extremely unlikely and all combinations of the final lottery order are statistically improbable.
Biggest takeaway for me is the odds structure probably isn't ideal. I get that they want to dissuade tanking, but it seems like it over rewards decent teams who get hurt or just bench everyone to end the year to improve lottery odds a little. I don't know really know what the answer is, but it is also worth noting that #1 picks rarely win a title with their team that drafted them and good players come from all over the draft, especially within those first several picks and the teams who tanked are still relatively near the top.