NBA Draft: New lottery wrinkle doomed Washington Wizards
By Ethan Smith
The Washington Wizards should be drafting in the top three, but they aren’t.
The Washington Wizards weren’t exactly unlucky in the NBA Draft lottery. They entered with the ninth-best odds and they left with the ninth pick. So, things went as expected for them.
Unfortunately, a new wrinkle to the NBA Draft Lottery could have kept them from drafting in the top three instead of the top ten.
The Washington Wizards entered the lottery with the ninth-best odds for the number one pick. However, they finished the season with the eighth-worst winning percentage in the NBA.
So wait…why didn’t they have the eight-best odds at the top pick?!
New lottery rule screwed the Washington Wizards out of a top pick.
Well, like everything else these days, the lottery went a little differently than usual. Because the NBA stopped, then started again but with only 22 teams, the NBA decided that the fairest way to do things was to determine lottery seeding based on team standings before the NBA restart.
That means the Wizards 1-7 bubbe record did not help their lottery chances. It only hurt their playoff chances.
If lottery seeding had been determined by each team’s final record, whether they played in the bubble or not, the Wizards would have come into the lottery with the eight-best odds of landing the number one pick.
Instead, the Charlotte Hornets had the eighth-best odds. But the Hornets didn’t stand pat as the Wizards did at nine. The Hornets jumped five spots and left with the third pick in the draft.
THAT SHOULD BE THE WIZARDS IN THAT THIRD SPOT! WE SHOULD BE LICKING OUR LIPS AT THE JAMES WISEMAN OR LAMELO BALL POSSIBILITIES!!
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But alas. We are not. Of course, the ping-pong balls may not have bounced the same way if the Wizards and Hornets had swapped spots, but it’s a haunting ‘what if’.
Hopefully, the Wizards can find some value at number nine – like they did with Rui Hachimura – and help us forget what could have been. If not, Adam Silver becomes enemy number one until he makes this right!