On one beautiful day every 12 months, up to 14 franchises have the chance to change their fortunes for the foreseeable future by doing absolutely nothing. Last year this was the New Orleans Pelicans, who moved from 7th to 1st, grabbing a truly generational prospect in the process.
With the draft lottery approaching, here’s a look into which teams have been screwed the most!
*For this exercise, lottery data was only collected from 2004 onwards (when the league moved to a 14-team lottery)
First up, a naïve look at lottery luck by examining the average movement of each franchise’s lottery selections:
Clearly the Pelicans, followed by the Lakers have had the most luck! Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Such an approach fails to account for the value of moving up. For example, moving from 5 to 3 is a considerably less significant change than from 3 to 1, yet both are +2 in terms of movement. Thus, we can use a scale to look at the change in value of picks.
Using Kevin Pelton’s draft value calculator from 2017 (found here), we get the following results:
Such a method looks at the expected value of a team’s draft picks heading into the lottery, and what they ended up with.
You’ll notice a fair bit of movement, most notably Memphis, who moved from 4th to 22nd. This can be attributed to moving down on two separate occasions from 1st and 2nd to 4th, a huge loss in points that outweighs the times they moved up.
In the far-right column, equivalency, this represents the pick that on average, a team has given up/received in theory, each time they were in the lottery. For example, the 7 times the Knicks selected in the lottery, on average the drop in their pick value from pre to post lottery, was the equivalent to giving up pick 34 each time.
This method as well however, is flawed. There is inherently a lot more volatility with say a team with the projected 3rd pick and where that could end up post lottery, and a team with say the 13th pick.
For example, Atlanta finished with the 4th worst record in the league this season, and therefore have the 4th most favourable odds in the draft. However, there is a 52% chance they move down. Compare that to Charlotte, a team with the 8th best odds, who only have a 39% chance of moving down, and you see where the above analysis falls apart. Thus, comparing who has moved down/up the most based on position change and on change in value isn’t really a fair comparison.
To counter this, I came up with a basic little multiple. Essentially, it allocates value based on chance and importance. I.e. When Chicago jumped from 9 to 1, this resulted in a change of draft points of +2,170 and had a 1.7% chance of happening - an unlikely and hugely positive event, giving it significant weighting. The results are below, normalised for easy comprehension.
There is a tonne of ways to look at lottery luck, and we are working with a small sample size, but I think it’s fair to say that in recent history, the Cavaliers, Bulls and Pelicans have benefited the most from the draft lottery.
From a Phoenix perspective, the above supports the idea that the Suns have been one of the unluckiest teams in the league, but not to an overly absurd extent like some might think. Take last season for example. Moving down from 3 to 6 isn’t ideal, but funnily enough it was our most likely outcome entering into the lottery, with a 26% chance of happening.