{"id":746575,"date":"2026-05-28T23:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/746575\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T23:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:18:20","slug":"a-history-of-the-nba-draft-lottery-and-its-changes-over-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/746575\/","title":{"rendered":"A history of the NBA draft lottery and its changes over time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the beginning, tails failed.<\/p>\n

Detroit player-coach Dave DeBusschere called \u201ctails\u201d at the very first version of the draft lottery<\/a> in 1966, which was a coin flip between the Pistons<\/a> and the New York Knicks<\/a> \u2014 the worst teams in the Eastern and Western Divisions that season.<\/p>\n

And no, it wasn\u2019t even called the \u201cdraft lottery\u201d in those days, since it wasn\u2019t a lottery.<\/p>\n

Pistons owner Fred Zollner even provided the coin, a $20 gold piece from 1907. The value of the gold today would be about $4,200. (There was no social media then; imagine the outrage if a team arrived at the lottery now toting its own ping-pong balls.)<\/p>\n

The Knicks won that 1966 flip and chose Cazzie Russell with the No. 1 pick. The coin flip remained in place through 1984, with the two worst teams letting \u201cheads\u201d or \u201ctails\u201d decide who got the No. 1 selection.<\/p>\n

The lottery has been changed many times since that first coin flip, including Thursday<\/a> with the introduction of a bigger-than-ever, 16-team lottery designed to flatten odds of winning the No. 1 pick and discourage tanking.<\/p>\n

A brief history of the versions of the lottery:<\/p>\n

1985-1989: Seven (or nine) teams, equal odds<\/p>\n

The envelope era was how the draft lottery started, with seven teams all having the same odds of having their envelope selected and winning the No. 1 pick. This grew to nine teams when Miami and Charlotte were added to the 1989 lottery.<\/p>\n

The lottery originally established picks 1 through 7 in the draft, then the rules were changed in 1986 to have the lottery determine only the order of the first three selections.<\/p>\n

1990: The weighed lottery era begins<\/p>\n

In October 1989, the Board of Governors decided to expand the lottery to 11 teams (in part because the league was expanding) and do weighted odds based on where a team finished in the standings.<\/p>\n

1994: New odds<\/p>\n

For the 1994 lottery and beyond, the team with the worst record would have a 25% chance of winning the rights to choose No. 1, up from 16.7% in the previous format.<\/p>\n

That largely remained the case through 2019, with some tweaks along the way \u2014 such as growth to a 13-team lottery after more expansion, and then a 14-team lottery in 2004 when the Charlotte Bobcats were added to the league.<\/p>\n

2019: Another odds revision<\/p>\n

In September 2017, the Board of Governors changed the odds considerably, giving the teams with the three worst records matching 14% odds of winning the No. 1 pick. The lottery drawings grew as well and began determining the order of the first four picks.<\/p>\n

2027: Expanded lottery, flattened odds<\/p>\n

The \u201c3-2-1 Lottery\u201d goes into effect for 2027 and expands the event to 16 teams, flattens odds of winning the No. 1 pick and will try to deter teams from tanking \u2014 losing in order to help draft odds \u2014 by lowering lottery chances for teams that have the worst records.<\/p>\n

They can still win the lottery, but they\u2019ll have to buck odds to do so. The three worst teams will have 5.4% odds of winning, while teams that finish with the fourth- through 10th-worst records will all have 8.1% chances of winning.<\/p>\n

Teams will get somewhere between one and three lottery balls, depending on where they are in the standings.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the beginning, tails failed. Detroit player-coach Dave DeBusschere called \u201ctails\u201d at the very first version of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,1914,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":["post-746575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-wizards","tag-basketball","tag-draft-lottery","tag-nba","tag-washington","tag-washington-wizards","tag-washingtonwizards","tag-wizards"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116654761785723966","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}