10 Best Moments In NBA Draft Lottery History

The 2016 NBA Draft lottery is just hours away, and unless you’re a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s hard to get super excited about the event.

The lottery is usually pretty boring. The process itself is technical and about as bland as could possibly be. First, a few guys go into a room and watch as four of 14 ping pong balls are pulled from a lottery machine. Those four balls create one of 1,000 combination and the franchise that holds the winning combination gets the top pick in the draft. Thrilling, right?

Then deputy NBA commissioner Mark Tatum gets his big moment as he stands at a podium and lets spectators know who is picking where. The reveal of the picks is typically just as boring, as a group of franchise representatives sit at podiums waiting for their teams’ names to be called. Seriously, doctors should stop prescribing Ambien and just force people to watch the lottery.

While it sounds like I’m pretty down on the whole production, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some legitimately great moments.

Here’s a look at the 10 best moments in the history of the NBA draft lottery.

The NBA began the draft lottery process in 1985, and the top prize was Georgetown star Patrick Ewing. The early lottery system involved the random drawing of envelopes from a hopper. The names of each non-playoff team were placed in each of the envelopes and the first name drawn would get the No. 1 overall pick. Every non-playoff team had an even chance to win it.

In 1985, the New York Knicks won the first lottery amidst an enormous amount of controversy and conspiracy theories. The NBA badly needed a star on the Knicks, and the franchise got a future Hall of Famer.

Video of the first lottery is absurd, as everyone looks on while the envelopes are churned in a clear globe. It’s just a silly process that has all the production value of bingo night at the senior center in Dubuque.

The best part of the whole thing is how the Knicks already had a jersey with Ewing’s name on it made up. As he was interviewed, Knicks director of basketball operations Dave DeBusschere unveiled it. That has been done a few times since, but the Knicks were the first to do it.

During the 2014 lottery, the Twitterverse exploded with questions about who the lovely young woman representing the Milwaukee Bucks was. Turns out, it was Mallory Edens, the daughter of Bucks co-owner Wes Edens. The reaction of most people viewing the event was “wow, she’s an attractive girl” and that’s about as far as it went. Sure, some people went a little overboard, and yes, she was suddenly incredibly popular in Internet searches and people looked up her social media profiles. But for the most part the reaction never really got over the top, probably since she wasn’t even out of high school yet.

But the next year when writing about news that the NBA would limit who could sit in on the lottery, veteran reporter Chris Sheridan referred to Edens as a “trophy daughter.” Well, Edens – who attends Princeton – wasn’t a fan of that comment and let Sheridan have it:

Boom! That’s two times Ms. Edens has absolutely won the Internet and, by association, the draft lottery.

After losing David Robinson and Sean Elliott to injury early in the 1996-97 season, the San Antonio Spurs entered the 1997 draft lottery with the second-best odds to land the No. 1 pick. The Boston Celtics held two lottery picks that year, and with the second-worst record in the league, they had a 36 percent chance to win.

The Spurs landed the top pick, made the obvious choice by selecting Tim Duncan and the rest is history. They were extremely lucky because the 1997 draft was one of the worst in history and produced just three All-Stars (Duncan, Chauncey Billups and Tracy McGrady).

The Celtics missed out on a huge chance to completely revamp their franchise. Instead of Duncan at No. 1, they wound up with the third and sixth picks, with which they selected Billups and Ron Mercer respectively. They then traded Billups after one season. Woof.

You want to talk about lottery luck? The Cleveland Cavaliers have always had it. In 2011, they landed the top pick and selected Kyrie Irving, in 2013 they won the lottery again and took Anthony Bennett. Then in 2014 they had a 1.7 percent chance to win and somehow their numbers came up. That tied the Bulls for the second-biggest long-shot to every come through in the lottery. The Cavs won the lottery three times in four years. That’s insane!

In 2014 they jumped up from the ninth slot in order to score the top pick, which they used on Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins was later sent to the Timberwolves as part of the Kevin Love trade.

The Cavs have actually won the lottery a ridiculous four times in 12 years (more on that later). The likelihood of that happening is roughly 1-in-10,000, or 0.00012 percent. And people say God hates Cleveland’s sports teams.

The Orlando Magic won one of the biggest prizes in draft lottery history when they got the No. 1 pick in 1992 and were able to select Shaquille O'Neal. During the 1992-1993 season the Magic missed the playoffs thanks to losing a tie-breaker with the Indiana Pacers. Their 41-41 record made them the last team in the lottery and they had a 1.52 percent chance of landing the top pick. Guess what? They won the lottery for the second-straight season.

Those were the longest odds a team has every overcome to win the draft’s top selection. The Magic selected Chris Webber with the No.1 pick, then traded him to the Golden State Warriors for No. 3 pick Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway and three future first-round picks.

The big losers in the ’93 draft were the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were in line to have the second overall pick but wound up picking at No. 5. Three of the first four picks wound up being perennial All-Stars, and the other was Shawn Bradley. Instead of having a shot at one of those guys, the Timberwolves wound up with Isaiah Rider, which didn’t exactly turn out well.

For almost two full years heading into the 2003 NBA Draft lottery people knew a high schooler named LeBron James was going to be the top pick in that year’s draft. The only question was who would win the right to select him? Well, the Akron kid’s closest NBA team was the Cleveland Cavaliers, who tied the Denver Nuggets for the worst record in the NBA during the 2002-03 season. Both teams entered the lottery with a 22.50 percent chance to land the top selection. As we all know, Cleveland won.

Former principal owner of the team Gordon Gund (he is now a minority owner) immediately joked that “We don’t know who we are going to pick.” Then Gund held up a Cavs jersey with James’ name on the back above the number 23.

That began a string of ridiculous luck for the Cavs who – as mentioned above – went on to win the lottery four times in 12 years.

The Nuggets wound up with a nice consolation prize, as they fell to No. 3 and selected a forward out of Syracuse named Carmelo Anthony.

The Chicago Bulls finished the 2007-08 season 33-49 and received the ninth spot in the lottery. They only had 17 out of 1,000 ping pong ball combinations in the lottery. Miraculously they converted their 1.7 percent chance at landing the top pick into reality, tied for the second slimmest odds ever for a team winning the No. 1 selection.

The prize of the 2008 NBA Draft was Memphis point guard (and Chicago native) Derrick Rose, who wound up winning the league’s MVP award in just his third season. While he has battled near-constant injury problems since, the Bulls certainly made the right selection with their pick.

The Philadelphia 76ers entered the 1996 draft lottery with a 33.73 percent chance at landing the top pick. The Vancouver Grizzlies had the worst record in the NBA (15-67) but as part of their expansion agreement, they were barred from winning the top pick during their first three years of existence. In what might have been the best draft in NBA history, the top pick was an enormous prize.

When the 76ers’ number came up, Pat Croce, the team’s newly-minted team president, freaked out. Instead of fist-pumping and walking to the podium, Croce went about high-fiving all the other team representatives in attendance. Yes, he sought dap from the guys he had just beaten for the top pick. It was a moment of absolute pure joy. Love it.

Croce’s victory lap was great television, and Philadelphia didn’t waste the top pick, selecting a guard out of Georgetown named Allen Iverson.

The guys Croce high-fived shouldn’t have felt too bad, since 10 out of the first 20 picks in the 1996 draft wound up being All-Stars. Even without getting the top pick it was hard to miss with that draft.

While this ended up being tragic, the Boston Celtics’ maneuvering centered around the 1986 NBA Draft was brilliant. Boston had posted a 67-15 record and won the 1986 NBA championship which meant it should have had the final pick in the first-round of the draft. But in October of 1984, Red Auerbach was able to send Gerald Henderson and cash to the Seattle SuperSonics for their first-round pick in 1986. Then the Celtics converted that lottery chance into the No. 2 pick.

The rest is depressing history for Celtics fans. The franchise selected Maryland All-American Len Bias with the second pick in the draft. Everyone assumed Boston had its next superstar to complement, then supplant Larry Bird. Sadly, two days after being drafted, Bias died of a cocaine overdose.

If you take the Bias story out of the equation, what Auerbach did to get the Celtics in the position to get the No. 2 pick was pretty incredible.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have easily had the worst luck in lottery history. Entering the 2015 event, Minnesota’s bad luck had become legendary. During the team’s 25-year history, the Timberwolves had been in the lottery an insane 19 times, and had never improved their draft position. Not once. Instead, their position had dropped a whopping 10 times. They had dropped two positions three times, and three positions once. Every lottery was like a nightmare for Timberwolves fans.

Well, the T’wolves still haven’t ever improved their draft position, but in 2015 they entered with the highest odds of landing the number one pick and finally caught some luck. They cinched the top selection and wound up taking Kentucky forward/man-child Karl-Anthony Towns.

In 2016 the Timberwolves have the fifth-highest odds of landing the top selection (8.8 percent). Has their luck turned or was 2015 a one-time event?