Sunday, May 19, 2002
A peek inside the NBA draft lottery
Witnesses now welcome
By CHRIS SHERIDAN
AP Basketball Writer
SECAUCUS, N.J. — When four pingpong balls are chosen one at a time to determine the winner of the NBA draft lottery, four new sets of eyes will be watching.
Although the NBA says the policy change has nothing to do with debunking conspiracy theories, it has decided to let The Associated Press, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine and USA Today watch the proceedings in person.
The lottery results will be announced at halftime of Sunday's Boston-New Jersey playoff game, with the Chicago Bulls and Golden State Warriors having the most chances — 225 each out of 1,000 — of winning the rights to the first overall pick.
Chinese center Yao Ming and Duke undergraduates Jay Williams and Mike Dunleavy have been projected by many as having the best chances of landing among the top three picks.
“I think there is potentially a number of players that could go No. 1 this year,” said New York Knicks president Scott Layden, whose team finished with the seventh-best record and has only a 4.4 percent chance of landing the first selection.
The last time the Knicks won the draft lottery was 1985, when every team that missed the playoffs had an equal chance of landing the top pick.
New York won the right to choose Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, and conspiracy theorists have long suggested that the envelope containing the Knicks' logo had been placed in a freezer prior to the drawing, or doctored in some other way.
The NBA has dodged more than its share of conspiracy theories over the years, sometimes to the amusement and other times to the chagrin of commissioner David Stern.
A representative of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, along with the four media members, various league officials and a representative of each of the 13 lottery teams, will witness the actual drawing, which takes place about an hour before the results are announced.
Pingpong balls numbered 1-14 are placed in a hopper, and four are drawn in succession. There are 1,001 possible ways those numbers could come up, and each combination is assigned to a different team. (There are 1,000 assigned combinations; the 1,001st is assigned to no one. If it is drawn, or if the team that won the first pick is also chosen for the second pick, extra drawings will be held).
The Bulls and Warriors have 225 different combinations, the Memphis Grizzlies (who had the league's third-worst record) will be assigned 157 combinations, and so on. The non-playoff team with the best record, the Milwaukee Bucks, will have only five winning pingpong ball combinations, or a 0.5 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick.
Drawings determine the top three picks, and the remainder of the draft order is determined by inverse order of finish during the season.
So when the first envelope is opened, the Bucks will know whether they will pick 13th or have lucked into the top three. Same thing for the Clippers at No. 12, the Wizards at No. 11, the Heat at No. 10, and so on.
The other teams in the lottery, along with their chances out of 1,000, are: Denver (120), Houston (89), Cleveland (64), Atlanta (29) and Phoenix (15).
Although the four media members will watch the drawing and learn who has won, they will not be allowed to leave the room where the drawing is held until the winner is announced, league spokesman Tim Frank said.
“We've gotten input in the past from people who were curious as to how it works. The more we talked, the more we learned that people don't realize how it functions. Some people thought there were 1,000 balls in the bin. We feel this will give a clearer picture of how the process works,” Frank said.
Although talented 7-foot-5 centers rarely come along, Yao is not a sure thing to be the No. 1 pick.
Part of the reason is the conditions that Chinese authorities have placed upon him, a list so restricting that Dallas owner Mark Cuban recently joked that Yao will have the largest posse in the NBA — about 2 billion Chinese.
The Chinese National Team will have the right to recall Yao to his homeland at any time, and the team selecting Yao will be asked to send a replacement player to Yao's former team, the Shanghai Sharks.
With the Asian games scheduled for October, Yao probably will miss his first NBA training camp and will not join the team that drafts him until after the 2002-03 season has started.
Also, Chinese authorities said they would like Yao to play for a team in a city with a large Asian population.
Several NBA teams have sent scouts to China to watch Yao play, while others got their only look at him during an hourlong workout this month conducted by former NBA coach P.J. Carlesimo.
“I was really impressed with him, but I don't know enough to say he's a lock No. 1 pick,” Carlesimo said. “This guy is 21, and you have to factor in what his learning curve will be — if he does get stronger and how much he'll pick up by coming over.
“I only saw him for one hour, but what I saw in an hour I liked a lot,” Carlesimo said.
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