Joel Glass, the Orlando Magic’s chief communications officer and representative in the closed-off room where the NBA’s actual lottery happens, entered the building Tuesday afternoon with three pingpong balls from past Orlando lottery triumphs: one apiece from their “wins” in 1992 (Shaquille O’Neal), 1993 (Chris Webber, traded for Anfernee Hardaway), and 2004 (Dwight Howard).
Other Magic officials have brought those balls to recent lotteries, which have not gone well for the Magic since Howard pushed for a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2012.
On his way into the drawing room, Glass impulsively snatched a fourth ball — with a Magic logo — from a lobby table display. Maybe Glass felt lucky. Perhaps it was an omen. About two hours later, Glass walked out with four more balls: the four numbered balls (14, 1, 13, 6, vacuumed up by the lottery suction machine in that order) that delivered Orlando the No. 1 pick — the almost-no-doubt, blue-chip asset that has been missing since Howard’s wanderlust plunged the Magic into a ceaseless rebuild.
The Magic over that decade have mostly fallen back in the lottery. The one year in which they picked very high — 2013, when they selected Victor Oladipo No. 2 — turned out to be the wrong year to be at the top. They have lurched from abject losing to dull mediocrity and back again.
That is what made the stakes Tuesday so high. Glass’ 21-year-old daughter, Madeline, an aspiring sports public relations official herself, hammered that home into her father with one final line of pre-lottery advice, Glass recalled: “Don’t f— it up.”
George David, the Detroit Pistons assistant general manager, sat to Glass’ left in the drawing room front row — feet away from the machine that would determine an important piece of the NBA’s next half-decade. This is the real lottery — a rapid-fire drawing in a locked-down room consisting of one representative from each of the 14 lottery teams, several league officials, and eight media members (including one from ESPN) — all of whom surrender cell phones, smart watches, recording devices, and anything else that might link them to the outside world.
The lottery itself takes a few minutes. Then, the sequestered group waits together, eating and chatting, for the next 90 minutes — until the televised lottery broadcast concludes. It is, to say the least, a bizarre happening.
David watched as the machine spit out the first three balls: 14, 1, and then 13. There are 14 balls. The NBA draws them in sequences of four. There are 1,001 possible four-number combinations.
The lottery teams are assigned some number of those 1,001 combinations, depending on their odds. The three teams with the worst records — Orlando, Detroit, and the Houston Rockets — get the most, with 140 combinations each. The team that owns the first four-number sequence that comes up gets the No. 1 pick. An official then returns the balls to the machine, and sucks up another four-number combination; the corresponding team gets the No. 2 pick. The league then draws for picks No. 3 and No. 4, and slots the rest from there in reverse order of record.
David had Detroit’s list of combinations in front of him, and knew right away the Pistons owned at least a few featuring 14, 1, and 13. They had a shot at the No. 1 pick. After the prescribed 10 seconds, the fourth ball whizzed up: 6. Agony for Detroit. If that had been a 10, 11, or 12, the Pistons would be celebrating the pairing of Cade Cunningham with their pick among Chet Holmgren, Jabari Smith, and Paolo Banchero.
Instead, the Pistons fell two spots — from No. 3 going into Tuesday’s proceedings, to No. 5. It is a surreal experience, sometimes funny and sometimes almost profoundly sad, watching wildly intelligent humans who have poured their lives into finding every edge in basketball fret over the air-powered zooming of 14 inanimate objects.
If you know the rules, there are also some fleeting thrills. In general, the worst teams have all combinations featuring 1, 2, and 3. If you see one of those numbers, the pick in question belongs to one such team. High numbers create drama. Everyone is in play. The team with the worst chances — the Cleveland Cavaliers this season — owns only five of the 1,001 combinations, with no number lower than 9 in any of them.
When 14 came up first, for 10 glorious seconds, the whole room was alive.
“I allowed myself to dream for 10 seconds,” said Jon Nichols, the Cavs’ vice president of basketball strategy and personnel — and drawing room rep. The machine crushed his dreams, fast.
Other tidbits from the drawing room and lottery day:
• Among the best parts of the drawing-room experience: gathering to watch the broadcast knowing the results. Who on the dais might make a funny face? Who is in for some televised heartbreak? How will he or she take it? Will the winning representative celebrate, or stay calm?
Sam Presti, the Thunder GM, was excited to see Nick Collison — a member of the Thunder front office — in the spotlight on the dais. “He’ll be sweating,” Presti chuckled. “He sweats a lot.”
“Oh, he seems very happy to be there,” another official snickered when cameras showed an admittedly glum-looking P.J. Washington on the dais representing the Hornets.
• Landing at No. 2 is a massive win for the Thunder, who have been stockpiling picks for three years but had yet to snare one in the range with the best chance at yielding a foundational superstar. They made the playoffs in 2020, their first season after trading both Paul George and Russell Westbrook. The 2021 lottery was a gut punch. They entered with a decent chance at two top-five picks — their own and a lightly protected Rockets pick — and came out with only the No. 6 pick.
Presti bought two stones — one green, one turquoise — in his pocket as good luck charms. One was from his wife. Presti’s son, now 7, gave him the other years ago after finding it outside. “That one,” Presti said after the drawing, “is very important to me.”
• This was the fourth lottery under the recently revised odds system, which reduced the chances of the very worst teams grabbing the top picks — and bumped up the odds for everyone else, most notably teams in the middle of the lottery order. (The idea, of course, was to disincentivize extreme tanking.)
In the first “new” lottery in 2019, three teams — the New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies, and Los Angeles Lakers — all leaped from the middle into the top four, with New Orleans and Memphis later selecting Zion Williamson and Ja Morant at No. 1 and 2, respectively.
That led to some hand-wringing, even in the drawing room that night: Had the league evened the odds too much? Some team officials started pitching alternate ideas, including two separate lotteries — one among the worst six or seven teams for the best picks, and a separate lottery for the back-end picks.
The new system certainly introduced more randomness. But league officials urged patience — to see how the system looked after five, 10, 15 runs. The worst teams still had the best chance at top picks, after all.
Tuesday was a reminder that in some years, the lottery will still be boring and hold close to form. The Sacramento Kings‘ leap from No. 7 to No. 4 — sending Detroit plummeting to No. 5 — was the night’s biggest drama, and it’s a pretty small jump. The worst teams got the best picks.
• If Glass was feeling a little lucky for the Magic, so was Jamahl Mosley, their head coach. He wasn’t supposed to be involved with the lottery. But on Tuesday morning, he asked Jeff Weltman, Orlando’s president of basketball operations, if he might replace Weltman on the dais. (Such switcheroos are highly unusual once the league has announced the names of team reps.)
“I told Jeff I was feeling lucky,” Mosley said. Three people close to Mosley had birthdays on Sunday: his son; Nate Tibbetts, an Orlando assistant coach; and Cole Anthony, Orlando’s young guard. On that same day, Mosley also attended a memorial service for the father of one of his closest friends — a man Mosley counted as a mentor.
“I thought someone would be watching over me,” Mosley said.
Weltman agreed to the switch.
• John Kehriotis, one of the Kings’ minority owners, represented the team in the drawing room and brought along maybe the strangest good luck charm in lottery history: a googly-eyed red Koosh ball doll with blue hair, glasses, and green sneakers. A fan mailed the doll to team headquarters when the Kings put out a call for good luck charms ahead of the 1998 lottery, Kehriotis said after the drawing. Geoff Petrie, then the team’s GM, named the doll simply, “The Man,” Kehriotis recalled.
The Kings ended up at No. 7 in 1998, and drafted Jason Williams. The Man has come to several lotteries since, Kehriotis said. After one lottery failure, Joe Maloof, one of the Kings’ former owners, hurled The Man across the room in anger (whether it was real anger or faux anger is lost to history, apparently). “I brought him out of retirement today,” Kehriotis said.
• Kelly Krauskopf, the Pacers assistant general manager and representative on the dais, wore a pair of lucky socks inscribed with the word “believe” — and most crucially, she wore them all day and not just to the lottery show.
“By the time I get to the stage, the drawing is done,” Krauskopf explained. “At that point, I am just the recipient of the news. I needed something to bring the good luck energy during the day.” The lottery gods did not quite reward the Pacers, but they did not punish them either. They are impressed with Krauskopf’s understanding of the rules, and may remember her ingenuity if the Pacers return to the lottery.
• Washington had no real good luck charms on stage, he said before the show. He did say he would like to reach an agreement on an extension with the Hornets this summer. Much of his family, including his sister recently, has moved to Charlotte. “I love Charlotte,” Washington said. “I want to be there. They took a chance on me, and my whole family is in Charlotte now.”
• The league held its usual lottery-day general managers meeting, and the move to eliminate transition take fouls was among the central topics, sources said. There is broad agreement that the league needs to (and likely will) legislate them away by the start of next season. Discussion centered around mimicking the G League rule, under which the fouled team gets one free throw and retains possession.
A potential two-shot penalty was discussed, sources said, but one free throw appears to be the wider preference. Some officials Tuesday expressed concern that players will just get cagier about disguising take fouls as “legitimate” reaches for the ball, sometimes in ways that might increase the risk of injury or violent collision, sources said.
• The league also provided an update on its midseason tournament proposal, and invited input from teams on potential bonus compensation for players on the winning team and other structural issues — including how the tournament might fit into the schedule, and when and where the final games might take place. The belief leaguewide remains that 2023-24 would be the earliest possible introduction of the tournament, sources said.
• It was clearly here to stay already, but the meeting featured pretty full-throated support for the current play-in tournament concept, sources said.
• Swin Cash brought several potential outfits for her night representing the New Orleans Pelicans on the dais, but most of them did not make it to Chicago; they were in her checked bag, which got lost in transit, she said.
Cash was careful to bring one potential dais outfit in her carry-on — a lesson she learned flying to some WNBA games on the same day as the game, she said. Team officials in those circumstances urged players to pack their jerseys in carry-ons in case some checked bags ended up in the wrong city.
• Some representatives from Eastern Conference teams in the drawing room were relieved no one from the East’s middle tier made a huge leap — and that only Orlando moved up among East teams.
• Finally, always remember this: The NBA has a backup lottery machine if the first one fails. They have a second backup in the event the venue loses power: an official NBA basketball with a hole cut into the top of it. With no power, they would stick the 14 pingpong balls inside the basketball and have an official draw them by hand. (In the old days, they used that ball now and then for smaller decisions, including breaking ties in draft order, officials have said.)
The world needs this to happen one year. It should really be part of an “Ocean’s 11”-style plot in which one desperate team cuts the power to the venue as one step in some scheme to rig the lottery.
On Tuesday morning, the NBA went to retrieve the ball-with-a-hole-in-it. They found it, but there was a problem: It was a Spalding. The NBA switched from Spalding to Wilson this season. Officials scrambled to find a Wilson ball, and then sliced a hole in the top of it.
That is the lottery in a nutshell, folks.
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