Zach Lowe, ESPN Senior WriterMay 13, 2024, 08:00 AM ET
"Can you imagine if this happened last year?"
That was a common sentiment in the private lottery drawing room, where about three dozen people give up their laptops and cell phones and sequester themselves to watch the real lottery about an hour before the televised version.
A year ago in Chicago, with Victor Wembanyama atop every draft board, you could feel the tension among the 14 team officials -- one for each lottery team -- in that drawing room. Everyone knew the stakes. Everyone was on edge. The usual small talk before the drawing was stilted and fidgety. Even the media members and NBA staffers in attendance were nervous.
This year, it was borderline casual. There is no consensus No. 1 pick, though several team officials and agents gathered in Chicago for the draft combine told ESPN that center Alex Sarr is the one player most likely to fall in the top two or three of almost every team's draft board. Beyond that, it's chaos. Team officials expect several teams might investigate the return for trading down a few slots -- only to have trouble finding a trade partner eager to deal meaningful assets to move up.
In the weeks leading to Sunday, even officials from teams who stood to potentially lose their first-round picks depending on the luck of the draw -- the Toronto Raptors, Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors among them -- seemed indifferent to the results.
But the lottery has a way of delivering anxiety, and you could feel it ripple around the room after an NBA staffer pressed a button to suck the first three numbered pingpong balls from the classic air-powered lottery machine the NBA uses for this theater of the bizarre. The machine holds 14 balls, numbered 1-14. The league draws four in sequence, creating a four-digit combination. There are 1,001 such possible combinations. All combinations but one (11, 12, 13, 14) are assigned to one of the 14 lottery teams, with the teams at the bottom of the standings owning the most combinations.
In a four-page packet provided to each team representative, the combinations are listed in numerical order with the numbers flowing from lowest to highest (1, 3, 8, 12, for example). But the order in which the balls emerge does not matter; if you own that four-number combination, it belongs to you regardless of whether the 12 or 8 ball is the first one pulled. (Legend has it one high-profile GM from the past 20 years did not understand this, and thought for a few seconds his team had lost out because of the order in which the four balls emerged, when his team in fact had won the lottery.)
The Detroit Pistons and Washington Wizards, the teams with the two worst records last season, each owned 140 of the 1,000 combinations. The Warriors -- the lottery team with the best record -- owned only seven.
The worst teams own most of the combinations featuring 1, 2 and 3. When one of those numbers rises from the machine, the suspense ends for most of the room.
The first three numbers pulled Sunday were, in order, 6, 10 and 14 -- all high-ish numbers. The ensuing 10 seconds -- if you are lucky enough to get them -- are the most delicious part of the lottery. For those fleeting moments with all high numbers out, something like half the teams have a chance at the No. 1 pick. Team officials rifle through their packets of combinations, searching for the fourth number that would win it for them.
At that moment, seven teams (by ESPN's informal count) owned combinations featuring 6, 10 and 14 and thus had a chance to win the No. 1 pick: the Atlanta Hawks, San Antonio Spurs (again?), Raptors, Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers and the Brooklyn Nets -- who, of course, did not own their pick, having traded it without any protection to Houston in the James Harden deal in 2021.
The last ball came up: 13. The Hawks had defied the odds, winning the No. 1 pick despite coming in with a 3% chance of doing so. And thus came the whispering: Imagine the scene if this kind of leap had happened last season?
But Atlanta's winning immediately triggered a wave of speculation, in that drawing room and outside of it, about what the Hawks might do with the pick -- and how rising to No. 1 might impact Atlanta's offseason approach to gauging the trade market for either Trae Young or Dejounte Murray.
That pairing has largely been a bust, and the first-round picks and swaps Atlanta traded to acquire Murray from San Antonio make it very hard for it to tank over the next four seasons.
Would the Hawks think about trading the pick (plus some major salary) for veteran talent, keeping both guards and trying to win big next season? Would they keep it, select the player they want and go about the offseason the same way they would have had they kept the No. 10 pick? Could they try to have it both ways by trading down, and acquiring both a lottery pick and a veteran who might help them win next season?
Landry Fields, the team's GM, told ESPN after the televised lottery it was too soon for answers. "I don't know yet," he said, amid exchanging hugs with a parade of well-wishers. There was a sense of jubilation among Hawks officials in Chicago, that this was the kind of luck the franchise never enjoys, something that might jolt it out of mediocrity.
"This is what you need to build out teams," Fields told ESPN.
About an hour before Fields grinned on the dais, Daniel Starkman, the Hawks' vice president of player personnel and drawing room representative, vibrated with joy in the wake of the actual lottery. "I can't wait to get back into our Slack channel," he beamed. Starkman was wearing a pair of lucky Hawks peach-tree-themed socks designed by his brother Rob's apparel company.
The Hawks have won zero playoff series and three total playoff games over the past three seasons. They are far from contending, and the roster is expensive. They went 12-11 without Young from Feb. 25 through April 9. Trading the No. 1 pick outright for veteran talent would be overexuberant unless this particular No. 1 pick slot draws far more interest than insiders expect at this point.
The cleanest path is probably keeping the pick, taking the player they deem best and trading whoever between Young and Murray fetches the most assets in return. The Hawks in that scenario get a needed injection of young talent, recoup the assets they sacrificed for Murray and probably hang in the play-in range in the East. If they find a workable trade-down deal in which they get a little more present-day help without knee-capping their future too much, that's fine too.
Other tidbits from an eventful lottery day:
• The Spurs were big winners again, jumping one spot to No. 4 and then watching Toronto fall from No. 6 to No. 8 -- meaning the Raptors must send their pick to the Spurs as penance for the Jakob Poeltl trade. (The pick was top-six protected.)
Toronto is probably not that broken up about losing the pick now. It extinguishes its obligation to San Antonio, freeing it to trade more picks going forward. Had it retained its pick this time around, it would have owed it next season -- when the draft is projected to be much stronger -- with the same top-six protection. The Raptors hold the No. 19 and 31 picks in this draft after acquiring both in their respective trades of Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby.
• After the first four-number combination determines which team gets the No. 1 pick, the league then draws combinations for the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 picks. The Raptors had three of the four numbers in each of those combinations, too.
• With the phenom Wembanyama, the Spurs could make a big leap next season if they want to. Insiders wondered whether they might package both the No. 4 and No. 8 picks and chase some young-ish veterans who fit around Wembanyama. They could have about $19 million in cap space even with those two picks factored in, meaning the Spurs could trade them for significant incoming salary.
The Spurs will surely look at everything, but flipping both picks for veterans only feels a little rash. San Antonio could trade one, or go the other way, and package them to move up. Rival executives in Chicago pegged Serbian point guard Nikola Topic and French forward Zaccharie Risacher as nice potential fits around Wembanyama. They could also keep both and keep building (mostly) organically.
Wembanayma is so good already, the Spurs are going to win lots more games next season almost no matter what they do this summer.
• I ran into Spurs CEO R.C. Buford after the televised lottery, and he assured me his now-famous leather blue chair -- the one he was sitting in when the Spurs won the Tim Duncan lottery in 1997 -- made no appearance this year in Chicago. A year ago, with Wembanyama in play, Buford's family had secretly arranged for that same chair to be waiting in Buford's Chicago hotel room when he arrived for the lottery and combine.
• The Nets. Oh, the Nets. Their pick rocketed (pun intended!) up from No. 9 to No. 3, yet another instance of an ill-fated trade -- for Harden -- costing Brooklyn a top-five pick in the end. "And Danny Ainge was even in the room," one executive in the drawing room quipped.
• The Rockets already have six intriguing young players in Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson, Tari Eason and Cam Whitmore. Paying all of them will be hard. Finding minutes for all of them was already hard. They signed Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks last summer, and won 41 games.
None of this means Houston has to trade the found money of the No. 3 pick. It's a relatively affordable salary slot, and the key to sustained contention is getting more bang for the buck from as many non-star roster spots as possible. The return on that pick alone may not be sufficient for the Rockets to move it. That could change if they attach one of their young players, but it would have to be worth their while.
Houston indeed wants to win more next season. Sources expect it to investigate the market for that No. 3 pick alone and in combination with other assets. But don't be shocked if it keeps it, either.
• The Grizzlies are expected to explore the potential return for the No. 9 pick, sources said. Again, that does not mean they will end up trading that pick or trading out of the lottery. They will look at everything, sources said. But if their core returns healthy next season, they are set to compete again near the top of the West after something of a gap year. Seeing what kind of veteran help a trade might fetch makes sense.
• Ainge was indeed there representing the Utah Jazz, who owed their first-round pick -- with top-10 protections -- to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Utah entered at No. 8 and fell back to exactly No. 10 -- meaning it will keep its pick this season. The pick rolls over to next season with the same protections.
• There was a brief flicker of confusion in the lottery room when Houston was awarded the No. 3 pick: Was it Houston's own pick, or the Brooklyn pick? That meant a lot for those two teams, plus the Thunder -- who were not represented in the room but stood to receive Houston's pick unless it landed in the top four. There was only about a 7% chance of that. The real downside for Oklahoma City: If it doesn't get Houston's first-rounder this season, it would only receive the Rockets' 2025 second-round pick. It was now or never for a first-rounder.
The pingpong balls designated the Brooklyn pick at No. 3; the Rockets' own pick ended up at No. 12, and it now belongs to the pick-rich Thunder.
• What an unbelievable stretch of bad luck for the Detroit Pistons, who for the second straight year entered the lottery with the best odds at both the No. 1 pick and a top-four selection -- and fell all the way to No. 5. That is the farthest any team in their perch could fall, and Detroit has now done it two times in a row. All that pain ... for this?
• Notably absent from the dais for the Hawks: Jami Gertz, the famed actor and wife of Atlanta governor Tony Ressler -- and a delightful presence at past lotteries. Gertz developed a tradition of eating a slice of chocolate cake from the same Chicago restaurant on lottery day. She even baked her own chocolate cake in 2020, when the NBA held the televised lottery virtually because of the pandemic.
There was some snickering in Chicago on Sunday that perhaps the Hawks -- or even Gertz herself -- had determined that she was bad luck, given the Hawks had never won the No. 1 pick and rarely leaped up in the lottery. Had she stayed away for that reason? Had the team quietly reassigned her?
Grinning Atlanta officials clarified that Gertz had other obligations.
• Garin Narain, the Hawks' executive vice president and chief communications officer, had contemplated leaving Chicago early because of other obligations. At the last minute, he changed his flight and decided to stay in case the Hawks won the lottery and the team needed him to direct Fields' public appearances, Narain told ESPN. The lottery -- it's magic!
• The Warriors came into the night owing the Blazers their 2024 first-round pick unless it fell in the top four. In the unlikely event the Warriors jumped into that range, the pick obligation would roll over into a top-one-protected first-round pick in 2025 and an unprotected pick in 2026. In a turn of events that could only happen at the lottery, is it possible both teams were rooting for the other one to get the pick?
For the Warriors, sticking at No. 14 means getting the obligation over with and controlling their picks outright in stronger upcoming drafts. Is that "better" than picking, say, No. 3 in this draft but having a lot of risk attached to next season?
For the Blazers, acquiring the lowest lottery pick in a blah draft is probably less enticing than the possibility of Golden State falling on its face next season -- with less protection on its pick. The Blazers ended the night with the No. 7 and No. 14 picks. They are already facing luxury tax issues even though they are ostensibly a rebuilding team.
