Can worst team can the 14th pick? Like the bobcats? I have never watched the lottery actually happen. Is it all based on luck?
No lottery is only for top 3 picks, picks 4-14 are based or record. The team with worst record not in top three picks gets pick 4, the 2nd worst get 3 etc.
Not true. It's based on an odds system where the 3 worst teams gets more lottery balls but it's still a lottery. The team with the 14th best record could land a top 3 pick....it's just 1.5% chance of that happening though. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mJSnuK30gT0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He's right, just didn't word it well enough. He's saying only the top 3 picks are determined via lottery, once that is determined, the rest are handed out based on record.
Then how would Houston move up? They have a .5% to getting the 1st pick. How does that happen? Is it the nba that decides it? Or is it random?
They do a lottery for the top 3 picks. They include every team that didn't make the playoffs, including Houston. However, the lottery is weighted, so more losses means more ping pong balls, or a higher chance of winning a top 3 pick. They draw three balls and those teams get the top 3. The losing teams get picks 4-15 based on record. The rockets will have a chance, but their record was too good to get a lot of ping pong balls, so their percentage is low, compared to others.
good info here, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery It's how RV6 describes, but for more detail what they actually do is put 14 balls in the lottery machine, then pull out 4 balls to select a combination. With the 14 balls, there are 1,001 combinations (since for example 1,2,3,4 is treated the same as 4,3,2,1 or 3,2,1,4 or any combination of those 4 numbers like all lotteries - order drawn doesn't matter, just what the numbers are). They throw out one combination to make 1,000 and then give those combinations to each team based on record. The Rocket's 0.5% chance of winning the first pick is because they have 5 combinations, and the first pick is drawn first. 5/1000 = 0.5% Their 0.6% chance of winning the second pick is because the team that won the first pick is then eliminated. The math becomes a little more complex here without knowing who won the first pick. But once you know who wins the first pick, if it was the Bobcats for example, their 250 combinations would no longer count. So the Rockets would then have a 5/750 chance of winning the second pick, or 0.667%. Alternatively, if the Suns won the first pick, only 6 combinations would be eliminated, so the Rockets chance of winning the second pick is still basically 0.5%. And the repeat the process for the 3rd pick. Another math point to note, I believe everyone else's odds increase the same to win the second pick, regardless of who wins the first pick. in other words, if the Bobcats win the first pick, the Rockets odds of winning the second pick I believe increases the same as the Suns odds of winning the second pick increases. So if the Rockets don't get the first pick, it doesn't matter who does from an odds perspective. Of course from a non-odds perspective, you'd prefer a team from the East won the first pick. Not that it matters that much, we won't know until its happened anyway. Then the remaining teams are slotted by worst record, subject to the tiebreaker coin flips that already occurred. An interesting thing to note: Does anybody know if this is the same team representative that you see in the seats when they reveal the order? I.e. - will Chandler already know the outcome? My recollection is it isn't, and the Rockets will have another back-office person watching, but just curious. I know they'll never change it, but I think they could make the lottery meaningfully more exciting if they did televise the drawing live. They'll never do it because as noted there are only 3 selections done, so how do you fit 30 minutes in there?
Aren't the odds are actually higher (5.3%)? It's the third time in a row we have the 14th pick. 100% - (100% - 1.8%)^3 Roll a die three times and the probability of not getting the number you want all three times is smaller than not getting the number in one roll.
