Draft lottery trickier than it might appear

The worst record in the NBA guarantees a team the best chance to win the No. 1 pick in the draft lottery, and it guarantees that team no worse than the No. 4 pick. But it does not guarantee the No. 1 pick, and more often than not the team with the best chance doesn’t get it.

Since the NBA began employing a lottery-style system in 1985, the team with worst record has won the top pick four times.

Even if the Minnesota Timberwolves don’t get the top pick today at 8 p.m. ET (ESPN), they are in line to get a good player in a draft lottery class that is considered deep, especially among the top 10 picks.

Of course, getting one of the top picks guarantees nothing. The draft is just one way to rebuild. Risk is involved.

There is added intrigue because the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers are in the lottery, and particular attention will be on the Lakers. With the fourth-worst overall record, the Lakers can pick no worse than seventh, but the pick is top-five protected, meaning if it’s pick 1-5, the Lakers keep it. But if they fall to sixth or seventh, it goes to the Philadelphia 76ers. There’s a 17% chance that happens.

The Sixers also will be watching Miami Heat’s pick. The Heat’s pick is top-10 protected, but if the Heat fall out of the top 10, that pick will go to the Sixers. If the ping-pong balls go the Sixers’ way, they could have three of the top 14 picks in the draft June 25.

The NBA uses a lottery-style ping-pong ball machine with 14 balls numbered 1-14, and 1,000 four-digit combinations are assigned to the 14 lottery teams, with the Timberwolves receiving 250 four-digit combinations of 1,000, the Knicks 199, the 76ers 156, the Lakers 119, the Orlando Magic 88 and so on.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, the lottery team with the best record, receive five four-digit combinations and have less than 1% chance of winning the No. 1 pick and less than a 2% chance of getting one of the top three picks.

There are 1,001 combinations, with one unassigned. If that one comes up, it is discarded and four more numbers are drawn.

The NBA uses a representative from accounting firm Ernst & Young to oversee the process, which is conducted just before the TV broadcast of the event.

The ping-pong selection is done in a separate room, and inside the room are NBA officials, reporters, Denise Pelli from Ernst & Young, representatives from each of the 14 lottery teams, a ping-pong machine operator and a timekeeper.

The people in the room are sequestered without communication devices until the No. 1 pick is revealed on the TV broadcast.

The league uses a ping-pong machine designed by Smartplay International, which makes lottery equipment for clients all over the world. Smartplay weighs, measures and certifies the pingpong balls before the drawing, according to the NBA.

The drawing works like this: The 14 balls are placed in the machine and mixed for 20 seconds, then the first ball is drawn. The remaining balls are mixed for 10 more seconds, and the second ball is drawn. That process is repeated until four balls are drawn and the team that has been assigned that four-digit combination is awarded the No. 1 pick.

The timekeeper monitors the length of the time the balls are mixed and, while facing away from the lottery machine operator, the timekeeper signals when the next ball should be drawn.

This process is done for the first three picks, and the remaining draft order will be determined by inverse order of teams’ regular-season record.