There’s only so much you can focus on what essentially amounts to a big raffle, but if there’s a way to focus any more on the 2007 NBA Draft Lottery, Celtics fans have probably found it.
To fuel the fire, here’s a condensed history of what the draft landscape used to look like for the league’s worst teams and what it looks like now. All of the information was provided by the NBA:
Before 1984, the teams that finished with the worst records in each conference flipped a coin to determine the top pick. The remaining teams picked in inverse order of their records.
The NBA Draft Lottery began in 1984, when the NBA’s board of governors voted to set up a lottery system for non-playoff teams for the 1985 season. Since that time, the lottery has undergone many changes to get to its current state.
In 1986, the Lottery was changed to determine the drafting fate of the worst three teams only. The remaining teams selected in the inverse of their regular-season records.
In 1990, the NBA adopted a weighted system with 11 teams. The team with the worst record received 11 chances (out of 66) at the top pick (16.67 percent). The team with the second-worst record got 10 chances (15.15 percent).
In 1994, the NBA increased the chances of the worst teams in the league to land one of the top three picks. With that change, the team with the worst record now had a 25 percent chance at the top pick.
In 1995, the NBA increased the number of teams participating in the lottery from 11 to 13 for the addition of expansion teams Toronto and Vancouver. The worst team continued to have a 25 percent chance at the first pick, while teams 2-6 had slightly fewer chances. The league’s second-worst team (which the Celtics are this year) had a 20 percent chance to nab the top pick.
In 2004 the lottery expanded to 14 teams with the addition of the Charlotte Bobcats to the NBA. The league’s worst team maintained a 25 percent chance at the top pick, while the second-worst team’s chances dropped to 19.9 percent. Most other positions in Lottery decreased their chances at the top pick by 0.1 percent to accommodate for the extra team.
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