Thunder drama: Re-figuring the lottery odds
For a minute or two, you allowed yourself to believe that the Thunder might actually win the NBA draft lottery. We were down to three teams — the Clippers, Grizzlies and Thunder — and you had to re-configure the odds, though the actual winner had been decided in secret before the lottery show.
Oklahoma City no longer had an 11.7 percent chance of winning the lottery. When Phoenix went out first, that percentage rose a fraction. Then the Pacers, the Bobcats and so on.
Finally, we were down to the final three, and OKC’s odds had shot up to 32 percent in the minds of everyone who didn’t know the results, which was only a handful of people in that secured room.
A one-in-three chance to get Blake Griffin. At that point, the Clippers had a 47.7 percent chance; the Grizzlies 20.2 percent.
Those are odds you can live with. Of course, the Thunder’s luck ran out, and it was handed the No. 3 pick in the June draft. Griffin will not be coming to OKC, barring cataclysmic events.
The lottery worked, reasonably well. The lottery exists so that teams won’t tank the season. Won’t give up early and try to lose often, just to secure the No. 1 draft pick.
The Clippers did a little of that. They don’t have a great roster, and they had some injuries, but no way should the Clippers have checked in with fewer than 30 wins, much less 19.
The Wizards were worse. Washington lost Gilbert Arenas and basically quit playing. It would have been a crime had the Wizards received the No. 1 pick. The primary difference on the fairness scale in this lottery is that the Wizards would have used the pick to become a force in the Eastern Conference. The Clippers will use it and stay irrelevant in the NBA hierarchy, as they’ve been for most of the last 30 years.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Comments
I don’t care for the weighted lottery at all. I would rather see either of the following two alternatives:
1. Give all non-playoff teams the same chance. One ping pong ball per team. No team would have a reason to tank anything.
2. Let the non-playoff teams pick in order of best record to worst. Reward the fact that teams kept working hard all year and almost made the playoffs. Absolutely no tanking under this scenario.
The Clippers have proven that getting high picks is no guarantee that a team will improve its product on the floor. It has as much to do with ownership and management as it does with players and coaches, if not more.
I’ve always thought that the lottery odds should be based on the records of the past two years. Less of a need to tank games at the end of the season if you were a playoff team or a near playoff team the year before and have an injury to a star player, like Washington, and it doesn’t necessarily reward a team that dumps vets in the previous off season. The record of the past two seasons is I think the best indicator of a team with inferior talent.