The Hawks won't finish with the worst record

[Diesel]

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The whole reason the lottery exists is to lessen the incentive to lose.

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This is about the biggest oxymoron that has ever been produced...

Let's examine it.

IF the lottery is geared to favor the teams with the worst record... How is having a lottery a deterent to teams tanking games???

UNLESS...

There is some way to fix it so that if a team does tank games they can be penalized by the draft lottery.

For instance... IF Jordan went into a time machine and hopped out as Jordan from 1983 and entered the NBA draft, do you think teams wouldn't tank to get him?? Seriously... What is the deterant for a team like NY if they said.. Hey, we want Jordan... Let's start tanking some games so that we can get him. It's still a win win proposition. If they don't get the best player, they will get either the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th best player.

My point is that the lottery give better probabilities to teams with bad records. It's not a guarantee, but it's a probability.

Something is horribly wrong with the system if it only pays out the way it should 2 out of 14 times...

For the draft lottery to work the way you say it should and be a deterant, it would need to have every lottery team get 1 ball and have an even chance at #1. However, that's not the case. So there is NO real deterant for tanking games... UNLESS. The draft lottery is fixed.

[Diesel]

Computers are made to be programmed Lascar.

Why do you think they went to this fancy dancy system that only a few people would really understand?

The math is not that hard...

They need to go back to the Balls with teams logo... Give each team a certain number of balls and do the drawings live for the top 3 spots....Starting with the #1 team. The suspense is not that great anyway.

[Lascar78]

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In 14 years, there have only been 2 teams that has every had the worst record and WON the draft lottery. Now, let's think about that... 2 out of 14. If the lottery was not fixed, you would assume that it would favor the team with the worst record....

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No, you don't understand probabilities. The only thing you would expect is that in the LONG RUN (there have only been 13 or 14 so far which is not much) there will be more teams that finished with the best lottery odds that win than any other position. Even the worst team in there only has a one in 4 chance of winning. So in the long run they should win roughly a quarter of the drafts, not most of them. Also, probablilities only become visible over alot of tries. Take a coin and flip it 6 times. Odds dictate 3 heads and 3 tails, but if you do it right now and get 5 heads is your coin rigged? Of course not. Again, the NBA has SOOOOOOO much more to lose than to gain by doing this, not to mention that again I dont even see how it could be done. If you really want to read more about this you can read this

word document

Not to mention, if you look at the odds, the worst team was due to win last year as they hadn't won yet. And then when they finally do, people still cry conspiracy because of it! This is retarded...

[AHF]

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The whole reason the lottery exists is to lessen the incentive to lose.

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This is about the biggest oxymoron that has ever been produced...

Let's examine it.

IF the lottery is geared to favor the teams with the worst record... How is having a lottery a deterent to teams tanking games???

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You tell me. Is going from a 100% of getting the #1 pick to a roughly 25% of getting the #1 pick a lessening of the incentive to lose? It is in my book.

[Nicholasp27]

diesel, u need to take some statistics classes

14 is WAY too small of a sample size to judge on

1/7 chance is worse than the 1/4 actual probability that the worst record has, but it's by no means statistical evidence

u can flip a coin (1/2 chance) and have it land heads 12/14 times...

the EXPECTED VALUE of worst record is 25%, so over time, it will approach that...but not over 14 times

and the lottery is overlooked by an independant group, just like real lotteries

it isn't rigged and a few coincidences about timing of teams getting picks doesn't change that...the mind is beautiful and thus sees many connections in anything

[Nicholasp27]

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My point is that the lottery give better probabilities to teams with bad records. It's not a guarantee, but it's a probability.

Something is horribly wrong with the system if it only pays out the way it should 2 out of 14 times...

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?@the way it should

the worst record is only given a 25% chance to win, so "the way it should" is to give a non-worst record team the pick...

if it had given the worst record #1 pick 4 out of those 14 then would u say it was rigged? 4/14>25%, so would be biased TOWARD worst record...the point is, if 2 times makes that big of a difference, then it's not a big enough sample size, which it isn't

are u one of those people that sees 10 blacks in a row in roulette and then puts all ur chips on red, cause "it's due" or "the wheel is rigged for black?"

[Lascar78]

Because with the odds of 13 teams all together you'd need 1000 balls in there at once, that's not easy to do. Typical lotteries have anywhere from 10 to 50 balls. You're talking about 20 times more balls here. Sure they could make the biggest ping pong ball drawing machine in the world and remove the suspense of hearing the first pick last ... OR... they could do it the way they do now, knowing that any reasonable person will know it's not rigged due to the people there verifying

Again, the drawing does not involve computers, but usual balls. It's really not that hard to understand

[Weez]

Additionally, for the past two years, media members (select ones from select papers) have been in attendance for the ball selection process.

[BlackHawkDown]

.. when you need him.

[Diesel]

I didn't know that you could put word documents in text....

However, from the word document.

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Chicago 15-67 250 0.2500

Golden State 17-65 200 0.2000

Washington 19-63 157 0.1570

Vancouver 23-59 120 0.1200

Atlanta 25-57 89 0.0890

New Jersey 36-56 64 0.0640

Cleveland 30-52 44 0.0440

LA Clippers 31-51 29 0.0290

Detroit 32-50 18 0.0180

Boston 36-46 11 0.0110

Denver 40-42 7 0.0070

Seattle 44-38 6 0.0060

Houston 45-37 5 0.0050

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However, in 2000...

NJ had 64 chances in 1000 (6.4%) and they won.

The Clippers had 29 chances in 816 (3.5%) and they came in third.

Chicago had 250 chances in 816 (30.6%) and their ball was not pulled.

It's just very hard to imagine somebody starting with 25% of the balls for 14 years only winning twice.

[Diesel]

It's easy to look at the numbers like that and say, the worst record has a 25% chance to win and a 75% chance to lose....

But that's not really the case.

The team with the worst record has a 25% of the balls.

How is it that they consistently lose to somebody (like in 2000) who had 6% of the balls or 3 % of the balls.

Look at 2000's draft, I would understand if GS or Vancouver had won the draft... because between the three of them, they had ~60% of the balls however, NJ won and they only had 6%.

I understand it's probability, but I don't understand how over 14 years the person who has 1 out of 4 balls ball is only pulled 2 times.

[Catapult]

So how many times the #1 seed should have been picked?

I suggest you make an experiment: take deck of cards, lets say hearts are the "#1 seed" here, and randomly pull one card out. Make a note if you got hearts (25% of the deck), put the card back. Repeat 14 times.

Repeat this whole procedure 20 times and report us how many times the "#1 seed" occured in each procedure. You should get a hint whether 2 out of 14 is reliable evidence of cheating.

To get you started; I did it 3 times: the first time I got hearts 3 times, the second time I got hearts just once and the third time I got 5 hearts...

[pathway23]

In statistics the key is sample size....a sample as small as 14 would normally be worthless as a predictor of outcome, doesn't even fit on the pdf curve.

[Catapult]

"a sample as small as 14 would normally be worthless as a predictor of outcome"

And that pretty much was my point. When one does a sample of 14 a few times, one will see that the outcome can differ a lot between those samples.

(like it already did in my 3 samples: outcome already had a spread from 1 to 5)

[Nicholasp27]

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It's easy to look at the numbers like that and say, the worst record has a 25% chance to win and a 75% chance to lose....

But that's not really the case.

I understand it's probability, but I don't understand how over 14 years the person who has 1 out of 4 balls ball is only pulled 2 times.

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actually, that is the case...

the probability of something not occuring is 1-(probability that it will occur)

so 1-.25=.75 or 75% chance they won't get top pick

2/14=.14

3/14=.21

4/14=.29

so it should be between 3 and 4...instead it's 2...that's very normal for that small of a sample size

i just flipped a dime and got head 9 times and tail (worst record team) 1 time...and tail had a 50%, not 25%...

see my statistics thread (soon to come) for more a more in-depth analysis of the 14 lotteries and probabilities of 2/14 getting top pick

[Wretch]

I tend to agree D. Last year during the All-Star game, Stern publicly expressed his concern over our situation; which led me to believe that he would hook us up then (word is that we missed out on Melo by one ping-pong ball). I've pondered this year's scenario too...hell, I think if we had managed to squeeze a lottery pick out of Portland (assuming they don't make the playoffs), Stern would have probably "bumped" that pick too.

But, don't you think this year it'd be kinda obvious though? The setup with LBJ was the same as ours (he's from Ohio, Cleveland sucked, the east needed a boost, etc.); however, it was also easier to play the odds...with Cleveland sharing the worst record and with the history of the lottery.

If we land in the top 3, I think he'll run it...and I don't think anyone could argue with the odds. But if we land 5 or lower, I don't think he'll do it. We might be considered for the 2nd pick...but there ain't no way we'd win the top slot.

[AHF]

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Because with the odds of 13 teams all together you'd need 1000 balls in there at once, that's not easy to do. Typical lotteries have anywhere from 10 to 50 balls.

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If there are a total of 1000 outcomes you want to generate all you need are 30 balls and with 50 balls you could generate 100,000 unique outcomes:

1-10a = 10 outcomes

+ 1-10b = 100 outcomes

+ 1-10c = 1000 outcomes

+ 1-10d = 10,000 outcomes

+ 1-10e = 100,000 outcomes

[Lascar78]

I know that that's the current system (basically - i think they use less balls). They use balls with numbers so they have to use alot less balls. They combine for 1000 possible combinations.

But it doesn't have teams' logos on the balls, which is what his majesty diesel wants so people can watch live and forget conpsiracy theories.

I'm still waiting to hear the conspiracy folk tell me how this could be rigged when there are independent companies verifying it and journalists witnessing it. Anyone ? Anyone ? Didnt think so...

[AHF]

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I know that that's the current system (basically - i think they use less balls). They use balls with numbers so they have to use alot less balls. They combine for 1000 possible combinations.

But it doesn't have teams' logos on the balls, which is what his majesty diesel wants so people can watch live and forget conpsiracy theories.

I'm still waiting to hear the conspiracy folk tell me how this could be rigged when there are independent companies verifying it and journalists witnessing it. Anyone ? Anyone ? Didnt think so...

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I agree with you on this one. It isn't televised so that the presentation can be more dramatic.

[Diesel]

IF they wanted to....

They could make three of the world's biggest ping pong ball machines (it's cheaper than you realize).

They could go with the 1000 ball system... In fact, it would be great to see the 13 buckets... 1 containing 250 balls, 1 containing 200 balls and so on and so on...

Then they could do the drawings....Live... for 1st second and third.

This whole drama and suspense thing is not worth the problems with credibility that the league has over the lottery. I'm not a lone voice... Coaches/GMs and others have come forward with the belief that "It's rigged". Mainly because it's done behind closed doors.

Also, how much of America is watching anyway? The drawing takes place at Halftime of a playoff game. It's barely televised as it is. There's no real need for the suspense. It's overrated.

More suspense would be generated when people see the balls go in and they root for the probability.

I have seen many math equations... However, explain to me using Math:

How in 2000... Chicago

who had 250 balls (if you will).

Gets passed over first by NJ (64 Balls).

Then by Vancouver (200 balls).

and finally by LAC (86 balls).

Work those probabilities.

When you do, you will find that the teams with 6%, 20%, and 8 % by passed Chicago... While Chicago's percentage of winning kept ballooning.

Theres' a fix...