The Coin Has Been Flipped -Lottery Odds

For a team with a leprechaun for a mascott, the Celtics have never had all that much luck in the lottery. Celtics fans remember all too well two lotteries they should have won and ended up with terrible lottery luck. Today the league conducted the coin flips to break the ties in the lottery standings and the Celtics non-luck in the lottery continued. Before I continue, it should be noted that although we talk about coin flips, there is no coin actually flipped. Draft tiebreaks are done via random drawings not an actual coin flip.



According to reports, the Celtics lost their coin flip, or drawing, to the Jazz. This means that the Celtics will have 103 ping pong balls to 104 for the Jazz. This also means that if neither team move up into the top 3 by lottery drawing, the Jazz will get the higher pick. Let's assume that in the highly unlikely case that 3 teams ranking after the Celtics move into the top 3, The teams with the 3 worst records would pick 4, 5 and 6. Utah would then pick 7th and the Celtics would slide all the way down to 8. That's the worst case scenario. Of course, we are hoping for the Celtics to move on up into the top 3. I won't be holding my breath, however. The Celtics will have a 51.7% chance at a top 5 pick. They would've had an 80.9% chance had they won the tiebreaker.

The Celtics also own the lower of the Nets/Hawks picks. The Hawks finished 15th and will take that pick. The Nets finished tied for 17th and so had to have a tie breaker of their own. The Nets won that drawing and so the Celtics will pick 17th along with their own pick, which is yet to be determined on May 20th by the lottery drawing. Here is a run down of the ping pong ball numbers in case you are counting.
No. 1 gets 250
No. 2 gets 199
No. 3 gets 156
No. 4 gets 104
No. 5 gets 103 (Celtics)

But even with all those ping pong balls, the team with the worst record doesn't always get the top pick. In fact, the last time the team with the worst record won the lottery was in 2004. Since 1985, the team with the worst record has won just 4 times. The team with the 2nd worst record has also won 4 times. The team with the 3rd worst record has won 7 times. The team with the 4th worst record has won just twice while the team with the 5th worst record has won 4 times. Teams with the 6th or worst record won the lottery 8 times.

Now we wait for the ping pong balls to drop and hope that the Celtics lottery luck can somehow turn around. Since they haven't ever won the lottery, I think they are about due for it.

[Discuss on CG Forums!]