lilfishi22 wrote:Golanator wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:Dumb question again but how does the lottery actually work with the whole 4 pingpong balls get selected and somehow the combination gives you the draw? I get how it would work if there were 1000 balls and we have 250 of them but I don't quite get how this works with 14 balls
There are 1001 combinations of the 14 balls and we had 250 of them. 1 combination (11, 12, 13, 14) is unused.
You draw 4 balls and one of our 250 combinations came up first.
I feel like a dumbass. So the balls don't draw the draft position, it just draws the combination and the combination holds the 250 chances

To determine the winner, fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1–14 are placed in a standard lottery machine and four balls are randomly selected from the lot. Just as in most traditional lotteries, the order in which the numbers are drawn is not important. That is, 1–2–3–4 is considered to be the same as 4–3–2–1. There are a total of 1,001 combinations (or 14! / (10! x 4!)). Of these combinations, one outcome is disregarded and the remaining outcomes are distributed among the 14 non-playoff NBA teams. The combination 11–12–13–14 (in any order that those numbers are drawn) is not assigned and is ignored if drawn; this has never occurred in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_draft_lottery