jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
The Zion Williamson Lottery Is the NBA’s Mega-Millions
Almost half the league has a shot at the biggest phenomenon since LeBron James. But no team has better than a 14% chance. Not even the New York Knicks.
May 14, 2019 / Wall Street Journal
The New York Knicks have spent the last couple of decades being awful at basketball. But for the last year, being awful at basketball has actually been their strategy, and they executed it to perfection. They did everything in their power to lose as many games as possible this season.
Their reward for being so terrible: slightly better than terrible odds of landing Zion Williamson.
The entire NBA will be standing around to watch a bunch of ping-pong balls on Tuesday night because this is the draft lottery that can change the league. It’s the Mega Millions of the NBA. There are 1,001 ways for a team to win the Zion Williamson sweepstakes, and the 14 teams in the lottery can still delude themselves into believing they’re about to land the most coveted basketball prospect since LeBron James, the only player who also happens to be a sneaker bulldozer.
No team has better odds than the Knicks. But only the Knicks could have picked the worst possible year to be purposefully horrible. Because this year, for the first time, the worst team in the NBA doesn’t have sole possession of the best lottery odds.
Until last season, the NBA’s worst team had a 25% chance at the No. 1 pick, and that team happened to win the last four lotteries. But in an effort to disincentivize teams from tanking, the league gave the three worst teams an equal 14% shot at the right to draft Williamson. The Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Phoenix Suns still have a few hours left to rub their rabbit’s feet, while the Chicago Bulls (12.5%), Atlanta Hawks (10.5%) and Washington Wizards (9%) are hoping they sacrificed enough games to please the basketball gods.
Most people look at low-probability events and trick themselves into thinking they can never happen. Knicks fans have looked at this low-probability event for the last year and managed to come away thinking that it’s definitely going to happen.
The Knicks’ quest for Williamson began as an accident and turned into a mission. They once had visions of actually being good at basketball this year, but those went kaput the season before, when Kristaps Porzingis tore his ACL. Then the Knicks did everything within their power to finish at the bottom of the league.
They preached the concept of player development more than most college teams. They stopped playing Enes Kanter and cut him only to watch him play a key role for the Portland Trail Blazers in the playoffs. They traded a rehabbing Porzingis and their leading scorer Tim Hardaway Jr. to clear salary-cap space at the trade deadline.
Those moves gave the Knicks two types of hope. One was quantifiable: all that tanking left them with a 1-in-7 chance at Williamson. The other remains a mystery: what they’ll do with their mountains of cash this summer. They hope to land a pair of top free agents, but hope has never really worked for the Knicks. If they win the lottery, though, they could be a more attractive destination to stars like Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. In other words, if they want the improbable to happen this summer, they may need something even more improbable to happen on Tuesday night.
It’s not just the Knicks. Williamson appears to be the type of generational talent who could turn the fortunes of any team that takes him. He’s a one-man stimulus plan.
John Beilein, the Michigan coach who took over Cleveland this week, will have lucked into the NBA’s most interesting coaching job if the Cavaliers win the lottery. The Suns could add Williamson to the league’s most tantalizing collection of young talent. The Wizards could land someone with unanimous approval ratings in Washington. The Dallas Mavericks (6%) have visions of him with Luka Doncic, and the Atlanta Hawks (10.5%) are dreaming about Trae Young throwing alley-oops to basketball’s largest trampoline. The New Orleans Pelicans (6%) could back into a player who helps them convince Anthony Davis, the Zion Williamson of his draft, to stick around for another season. The Philadelphia 76ers (1%) could put him next to Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and dominate the Eastern Conference for a decade. And the Bulls could finally have the heir apparent to some other guy who could dunk from the foul line.
Then there is the Armageddon scenario: Zion Williamson to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers were not very good in their first season with LeBron James, but even they weren’t bad enough to delude themselves into thinking Williamson can be their next savior. Their probability of the No. 1 pick is 2% while they have a 9.4% shot at sneaking into the top four.
But here’s the scary thing: LeBron James’s teams have been built around overcoming worse odds.
The year after he left Cleveland for the first time, the Cavaliers were predictably dreadful. They had the second-worst record in the league. But they didn’t get the No. 1 pick that year because they were bad. They got it because they were ridiculously lucky.
A few months before the 2011 draft, the Cavaliers traded Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to the Los Angeles Clippers for Baron Davis and their 2.8% chance at the No. 1 pick. It turned out to be a trade that deal that would change their entire franchise. The lottery balls went the Clippers’ way, which meant they really went the Cavaliers’ way, and they used the first pick on Kyrie Irving. (Minnesota Timberwolves fans don’t need to be reminded that with the No. 2 pick, they took Derrick Williams, who’s currently playing in Germany.)
It was another unlikely bounce of some ping-pong balls that helped bring James back to Cleveland when Irving blossomed into the kind of star he wanted to play with. This one was even more of a long shot. The Cavaliers had a 1.7% shot at No. 1 in 2014—worse than the Lakers’ odds this season—when they got lucky again and parlayed that pick into a trade for Kevin Love. (Minnesota Timberwolves fans also don’t need to be reminded that Andrew Wiggins, that No. 1 pick, hasn’t exactly turned out as they hoped.)
James, Irving and Love were the three players who brought a championship to Cleveland two years later, in a reminder of why the stakes are so high on nights like Tuesday: They couldn’t have won a title if they hadn’t won the lottery.
Almost half the league has a shot at the biggest phenomenon since LeBron James. But no team has better than a 14% chance. Not even the New York Knicks.
May 14, 2019 / Wall Street Journal
The New York Knicks have spent the last couple of decades being awful at basketball. But for the last year, being awful at basketball has actually been their strategy, and they executed it to perfection. They did everything in their power to lose as many games as possible this season.
Their reward for being so terrible: slightly better than terrible odds of landing Zion Williamson.
The entire NBA will be standing around to watch a bunch of ping-pong balls on Tuesday night because this is the draft lottery that can change the league. It’s the Mega Millions of the NBA. There are 1,001 ways for a team to win the Zion Williamson sweepstakes, and the 14 teams in the lottery can still delude themselves into believing they’re about to land the most coveted basketball prospect since LeBron James, the only player who also happens to be a sneaker bulldozer.
No team has better odds than the Knicks. But only the Knicks could have picked the worst possible year to be purposefully horrible. Because this year, for the first time, the worst team in the NBA doesn’t have sole possession of the best lottery odds.
Until last season, the NBA’s worst team had a 25% chance at the No. 1 pick, and that team happened to win the last four lotteries. But in an effort to disincentivize teams from tanking, the league gave the three worst teams an equal 14% shot at the right to draft Williamson. The Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Phoenix Suns still have a few hours left to rub their rabbit’s feet, while the Chicago Bulls (12.5%), Atlanta Hawks (10.5%) and Washington Wizards (9%) are hoping they sacrificed enough games to please the basketball gods.
Most people look at low-probability events and trick themselves into thinking they can never happen. Knicks fans have looked at this low-probability event for the last year and managed to come away thinking that it’s definitely going to happen.
The Knicks’ quest for Williamson began as an accident and turned into a mission. They once had visions of actually being good at basketball this year, but those went kaput the season before, when Kristaps Porzingis tore his ACL. Then the Knicks did everything within their power to finish at the bottom of the league.
They preached the concept of player development more than most college teams. They stopped playing Enes Kanter and cut him only to watch him play a key role for the Portland Trail Blazers in the playoffs. They traded a rehabbing Porzingis and their leading scorer Tim Hardaway Jr. to clear salary-cap space at the trade deadline.
Those moves gave the Knicks two types of hope. One was quantifiable: all that tanking left them with a 1-in-7 chance at Williamson. The other remains a mystery: what they’ll do with their mountains of cash this summer. They hope to land a pair of top free agents, but hope has never really worked for the Knicks. If they win the lottery, though, they could be a more attractive destination to stars like Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. In other words, if they want the improbable to happen this summer, they may need something even more improbable to happen on Tuesday night.
It’s not just the Knicks. Williamson appears to be the type of generational talent who could turn the fortunes of any team that takes him. He’s a one-man stimulus plan.
John Beilein, the Michigan coach who took over Cleveland this week, will have lucked into the NBA’s most interesting coaching job if the Cavaliers win the lottery. The Suns could add Williamson to the league’s most tantalizing collection of young talent. The Wizards could land someone with unanimous approval ratings in Washington. The Dallas Mavericks (6%) have visions of him with Luka Doncic, and the Atlanta Hawks (10.5%) are dreaming about Trae Young throwing alley-oops to basketball’s largest trampoline. The New Orleans Pelicans (6%) could back into a player who helps them convince Anthony Davis, the Zion Williamson of his draft, to stick around for another season. The Philadelphia 76ers (1%) could put him next to Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and dominate the Eastern Conference for a decade. And the Bulls could finally have the heir apparent to some other guy who could dunk from the foul line.
Then there is the Armageddon scenario: Zion Williamson to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers were not very good in their first season with LeBron James, but even they weren’t bad enough to delude themselves into thinking Williamson can be their next savior. Their probability of the No. 1 pick is 2% while they have a 9.4% shot at sneaking into the top four.
But here’s the scary thing: LeBron James’s teams have been built around overcoming worse odds.
The year after he left Cleveland for the first time, the Cavaliers were predictably dreadful. They had the second-worst record in the league. But they didn’t get the No. 1 pick that year because they were bad. They got it because they were ridiculously lucky.
A few months before the 2011 draft, the Cavaliers traded Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to the Los Angeles Clippers for Baron Davis and their 2.8% chance at the No. 1 pick. It turned out to be a trade that deal that would change their entire franchise. The lottery balls went the Clippers’ way, which meant they really went the Cavaliers’ way, and they used the first pick on Kyrie Irving. (Minnesota Timberwolves fans don’t need to be reminded that with the No. 2 pick, they took Derrick Williams, who’s currently playing in Germany.)
It was another unlikely bounce of some ping-pong balls that helped bring James back to Cleveland when Irving blossomed into the kind of star he wanted to play with. This one was even more of a long shot. The Cavaliers had a 1.7% shot at No. 1 in 2014—worse than the Lakers’ odds this season—when they got lucky again and parlayed that pick into a trade for Kevin Love. (Minnesota Timberwolves fans also don’t need to be reminded that Andrew Wiggins, that No. 1 pick, hasn’t exactly turned out as they hoped.)
James, Irving and Love were the three players who brought a championship to Cleveland two years later, in a reminder of why the stakes are so high on nights like Tuesday: They couldn’t have won a title if they hadn’t won the lottery.
