playoffs is in full swing, and a batch of fresh blood is getting closer and closer to the league. On May 15, Beijing time, the 2019 NBA lottery draw conference will be officially held, which is also the first time that the new lottery draw system has been implemented. No. 1 pick Zion Williamson has announced his participation in the draft. Who can draw the No. 1 pick as he wishes? According to the earliest rules, Zion is already a member of the Hornets, so what's going on? Today, let’s take a one-time science popularization of the past and present of the lottery draw.
First talk about the new system this year. In fact, the reform proposal was approved in 2017 and this year is the first implementation. In general, under the new lottery system, the impact of poor performance on the competitive top pick is smaller. According to the original rules, the probability of the three teams with the worst record winning the No. 1 pick is 25%, 19.9% and 15.6% respectively. In the new regulations, the probability of these three teams winning the No. 1 pick is 14%.
At the same time, before the restructuring and after the top three rankings are determined, the remaining teams will allocate the No. 4-14 draft picks in reverse order according to the record. Under the new system, the number of teams drawn is increased to four, and the remaining teams are assigned 5-14 picks in reverse order of the record. In this way, the ranking of the team with the worst record in the league has changed from not falling out of the top four before to being able to guarantee the top five. Other results and so on, the "guarantee" of the ranking has decreased.
The comparison of the old and new lottery probability of teams (the probability before restructuring is in brackets):
Currently, the teams with the highest probability of winning the No. 1 pick are the Knicks, Cavaliers and Suns (14%), followed by Bulls (12.5%) and (10.5%). As expected, No. 1 pick Zion Williamson will join one of the above teams.
To talk about this system from scratch, one person has to be mentioned - former NBA league president David Stern (David Stern).
"I like NBA draft night very much. This is my personal favorite NBA event, and my attitude has never changed. Of course, if I have to make a choice, I would say that I prefer the current draft night." Stern said this before the last draft conference of 30 years term (2013).
Stern has no reason not to like it. The lottery draw is an NBA player selection system that he designed and implemented to gradually improve.
History: Territory signs and coin toss
NBA draft signs are a new player introduction system that was born almost at the same time as the league. Teams that do not enter the playoffs every year determine the order of selection based on the record and signing rules. The teams that get the first choice will get the No. 1 pick, and the others are second, Tanhua, fourth place... and so on.
NBA's draft pick system has mainly gone through three major development periods. The initial draft pick rankings of
are determined entirely based on the team's regular season record. Teams that have not entered the playoffs will automatically win the No. 1 pick and the second worst win the No. 1 pick, so there was no draft draw at that time. Basically, after the last game of the regular season, the draft pick will be automatically born. When a team with the same poor record, they will decide who will first and who will come back by tossing a coin. The original motivation for BAA (the predecessor of the NBA) to introduce this system was to help weak teams introduce new players and strong aids during the offseason to fight against strong teams, so as to achieve the goal of balancing the strength of each team and enhancing the suspense of the game.
This system has been passed down for 20 years until the new policy was introduced in 1966. What is worth introducing during this period is a special draft pick called Territorial Pick, which was launched by the BAA in the 1949 draft. Territory signing allows teams (regardless of entering the playoffs or not) to have a priority player choice every season, as long as the player’s university is located in a circular area with a radius of 50 miles (about 80 kilometers) in the team’s home stadium. The implementation of this regulation was closely related to the league's marketing promotion at that time. The league wanted to attract more local fans to watch the game on site, and local basketball stars were undoubtedly a golden sign. This strategy did play an important role in early game promotion.
"The NBA had no fan base in the early days, and the attendance rate of the arena was not high. Using local basketball heroes for marketing is very smart," said Gary Washburn, a Celtics reporter at the Boston Globe. "In 1956, the Celtics signed Tom Heinthorne in Worcester next to Boston with a territory sign. Heinsohn, who helped the team win 8 NBA championships in nine seasons of his career. Through these championships, the Celtics became the basketball city with the deepest NBA heritage. "
Territory Signing has been implemented in the NBA for 17 years (1949~65), and a total of 22 Territory Signing players were born, 11 of which later entered the Basketball Hall of Fame, including Heinthorne, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas (Jerry Lucas) all won the best rookies that year. The "Basketball Emperor" Chamberlain also won the regular season MVP in the rookie season, and later continued to win three times. "Big O" also won the MVP in the 1963-64 season.
The 22 territorial signing players have one thing in common, that is, there is no draft ranking in their official information, and only one "territorial signing" is the other bet. The league stipulated at the time that teams using territory signings before the draft were equivalent to automatically giving up the first round draft pick of the season, and territory signing players would not join the ranking of draft players. This is also why Chamberlain was not the No. 1 NBA pick in 1959, but his fame far surpassed No. 1 pick Bob Boozer. There are two highlights worth mentioning in
Territory visa. Chamberlain spent University in Kansas, and there were no NBA teams around it. Philadelphia Warriors (predecessor of the 76ers) applied to the NBA to obtain a territory sign for him on the grounds that Chamberlain was a Philadelphia native and was studying in the local high school. If there were no such story, there might not be 100 points in a single game for the "Basketball Emperor", and the 76ers would not retire his No. 13 jersey at home; there was also a 1960 territory signing, the Cincinnati Royals (predecessor of the Kings) chose the "Big O" who graduated from the University of Cincinnati. The Royals originally had the No. 1 pick. They signed in advance so early, and gave their No. 1 pick to Jerry West, the prototype of the Lakers legend and NBA logo, but the "Big O" himself was not in the No. 1 pick. The draft mechanism above
can be seen at once by NBA fans today. In order to automatically get a good draft pick, the situation of teams rushing to to play is getting worse. There is no worst, only worse. In the year of the draft, the intensity of each team's competition for the last is even more "exciting" than the competition for the first place. Therefore, the NBA decided to make adjustments in 1966. The team with the worst record no longer automatically won the No. 1 pick, but the two worst teams in the East and West decided to determine the No. 1 pick by tossing coins, and at the same time abolished the Territory pick. This is the prototype of the NBA lottery draw. To some extent, it can reduce the interest of bad teams in the last place (the chances of getting the last one are only 50% chance of winning the No. 1 pick), but this move is still unreasonable in reducing the team's bad index.
According to the new regulations in 1966, the team that guessed the coin won the No. 1 pick, the other team won the No. 1 pick, the second-worst record in this movie won the No. 1 pick, the second-worst record in this movie won the Tanhua, the other team won the No. 4, and so on. In this way, the team with the second worst record in the East and West will suffer the most. Not only will it not be able to get the No. 1 pick, but the best sign they can get is also Tanhua. The most worth mentioning "coin toss" happened in 1979. The two teams with the worst record that year were the Jazz (although in New Orleans at the time and belonged to the East) and the Bulls (then belonged to the West), and the Lakers got the Jazz's first round pick through a trade. The Chicagoans got the right to choose both sides of the coin. They also made a fan vote and finally chose the front, and the coin was thrown out, but the opposite side. The Lakers won the No. 1 pick and used it to choose the "Magic". After learning the results, the Bulls boss Jonathan Kovler said helplessly: "This is a coin worth $25 million!" The
rule was used until the year Stern became president.
Change: The conspiracy theory of
1984 draft picks were determined, and a lot of controversy has also been controversial.The two worst teams in the East and West are the Pacers (their first-round draft pick was obtained through trade by the Trail Blazers) and the Rockets , and the Rockets finally won in a coin toss. The Rockets have long been interested in the local Houston graduate Olajuwon . In order to get the potential center of Nigeria, they did not hesitate to play the whole season. Even though they had just signed with the future Hall of Fame center Ralph Sampson (Ralph Sampson) the previous season, they would give up the whole season. The Rockets are just a typical representative of the season's release of money. There are several teams with the same mentality as the Rockets. The title of a report on Sports Illustrated was very vivid, called: "NBA Lotto, released 1984!"
It is worth mentioning that they have to envy the Rockets' luck. They won the toss of coin with the Pacers in 1983, and in 1984, the coins helped them choose Olajuwon. The Rockets officially opened the "two tower era" with the luck given by the coins for two consecutive years.
Stern realized as soon as he entered the league that the draft pick system must be completely reformed. He spent a total of five years to create the NBA lottery draft lottery system. The word lottery comes from the English Lottery, and its original meaning is "lottery". Stern uses this word to make the draft lottery into a lottery draw ceremony. The winning team is expected to "get rich overnight" and turn the bad guys over.
In 1985, when the reform began, Stern treated teams that did not enter the playoffs equally. These teams were called lotto teams, and the team's names and team logos were printed on paper and put into envelopes. After the lottery ceremony began, he drew pre-prepared envelopes from the transparent round ball in turn, thereby determining the lottery draw one by one. Teams entering the playoffs will determine the ranking of the first round draft picks based entirely on their respective records. The better the record, the lower the ranking. The
rule avoids the situation of bad performance to a greater extent, but the disadvantages are also obvious. The advantage of the bottom teams in the end to get high picks is not obvious, so they cannot improve the team's competitiveness in a short time. At the same time, the league faces a more difficult problem - how Stern himself ensures fairness and justice when drawing envelopes manually. Conspiracy theories followed.
The video of the 1985 NBA lottery draw can be easily found on the Internet. If you observe carefully, you will find that when Stern draws the envelope, his eyes are always staring at the glass ball. He is obviously staring at the full picture of the envelope. Before the moment he draws the envelope, Stern has a breath of pressure relief action... This information provides a lot of room for conspiracy theories.
"Observe Stern carefully. He kept staring at the envelope inside when he opened the glass ball's wicket. There was also that weird breathing. This can illustrate many problems. He has a ghost in his heart." Richard Kaufman, a famous American psychological magician, analyzed in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
There are also many on-site reporters' analysis articles pointing out that the Knicks' envelope has obvious creases in one corner, just to facilitate Stern to easily select and draw it out. It is worth noting that this statement has always been at the verbal level, and no one has produced conclusive evidence of corner breakage so far.
In addition to the "envelope folding corner theory", there is another type called "The Frozen Envelope Theory" circulating in the market. As the name suggests, it means that before the NBA puts the envelope into the glass box, it will freeze the envelopes selected in advance, which can help Stern deliberately abandon those more "warm" teams when choosing the No. 1 pick.
Why did Stern sign the No. 1 pick to the Knicks? He is a local New Yorker and a hardcore Knicks fan. New York is the market that the NBA relies on the most, and the number one hottest in the draft that year was enough to change a team by one person. Patrick Ewing .
"I'm not supporting this argument, nor am I sure that it's happening," Ewing's agent David Falk (also known as Jordan's agent) said in an interview with ESPN magazine in 2014. "But, this statement is feasible." "Factory," these three words are enough to illustrate the problem.
The above suspected behaviors, coupled with the background above, have caused the rumors of Stern manipulating the draft to spread wildly and became the topic of discussion for his subsequent 30 years of service. And new materials will appear every few years, triggering a new round of discussion and doubt among fans.
2003, when Cleveland local LeBron James became the hottest in the draft, why did the Cavaliers get the No. 1 pick? When Chicago's Derek Ross announced his candidacy in 2008, why did the Bulls win the number one pick happen to be the Bulls? In 2010, when the Wizards got the No. 1 pick, why did the widow of their newly-dead boss Abby Polyn happen to be on the scene? In 2011, Cavaliers boss Dan Gilbert took his 14-year-old son Nick to the draft. As soon as everyone learned through TV, Nick suffered from multiple neurofibroma, why did the Cavaliers win the favor of the goddess of luck (who won the No. 1 pick and No. 4 pick)? In 2012, how could the New Orleans Hornets (the predecessor of the Pelicans) who had just been entrusted with the league so coincidentally win the No. 1 pick?
This series of coincidences constantly stimulates the reporters' enthusiasm for investigation. A column article published by Sports Illustrated in 2012, the author firmly determined that the draft lottery in 1985 was a secret operation!
New regulations: 14 table tennis balls transferred out of the top scorer
back to the lottery rules. Two years after the implementation of the new regulations in 1985, the bottom team protested a lot because they had not won good signs for two consecutive years. Stern decided to fine-tune the rules in 1987. The lottery draw only took three rounds, and the subsequent lottery draws were ranked according to the record, so that the team with the worst record could at least get the No. 4 draw of that year, and the second-worst team could also get the No. 5 draw in the worst case, and so on.
However, Stern knew that the most critical step in reform might be to remove the interference of human factors as much as possible. In 1990, he made another reform and introduced the game of random table tennis. Teams that did not enter the playoffs gave different amounts of table tennis according to their record, with one with the best record and two with the second best... In this way, the 11 teams that did not enter the playoffs that year produced a total of 66 table tennis. These table tennis balls were placed in a machine-selected container at the same time, and the No. 1 pick, second-place and Tanhua lottery were randomly drawn from it. The remaining 8 teams ranked in order according to their record.
After this reform, the NBA lottery draw mechanism was basically established. Since then and now, the league has maintained this basic framework, and subsequent rules adjustments have been fine-tuned.
1993, the Magic had the best record among the 11 lottery teams, so they only had a 1/66 (1.52%) chance to get the No. 1 pick, but they won the lottery. However, what makes Orlando people regret is that the Magic traded the No. 1 pick to Golden State Warriors in advance, and the latter finally got Chris Webb in the draft that year.
This case made Stern decide to adjust the chances of winning the lottery team again. There are only 14 table tennis balls in the lottery container, each ball is marked with Arabic numerals of 1 to 14. Each lottery draw is then drawn to form a numeric sequence. The team corresponding to the serial number is considered to be the winning lottery. Before the draw, the NBA will allocate 1,000 sets of numbers to lottery teams in proportion. The team with the worst record has more groups (see the table on the left). If you encounter a team with the same record, the rankings of their records should be averaged.
In this way, the probability of the team with the worst record in the lottery area quickly rose from the original 16.7% (11/66) to 25%, while the probability of the team's best dropped from 1.5% to 0.5%. These data are directly reflected in the draw in 1994. The Mavericks, who had the highest chance of winning, finally got the second pick and signed in Jason Kidd. The Bucks, Pistons and Timberwolves, who tied for the second worst in the game, divided the remaining three in the top four picks.
needs to be explained by these 1000 sets of numeric sequences. In theory, 4 randomly extracted from 1 to 14, and there are 14×13×12×11 according to the probability calculation method, which means 24024 possibilities. However, if you do not care about the order, you will only regard the arrangements containing the same numbers of 1-2-3-4 and 4-2-3-1 as one group. Considering that there are 24 ways to arrange any 4 numbers, then there are only 24024/24=1001 types of sequence combinations that can be matched by 1 to 14.
lottery draws 1,000 of them were selected, and there was only one way to choose. This combination is four numbers 11-12-13-14. In the 20 table tennis lottery draws from 1994 to 2013, this number combination has not appeared. According to regulations, once it appears, the NBA will invalidate the lottery draw and draw it again. It is particularly worth noting that the draw starts with the first draw first, then the second draw and Tanhua. If the second draw is drawn, the number sequence of the winning top draw team will automatically be invalidated when the number sequence of the winning top draw appears again until a new team name appears.
Having written this, we must mention a conspiracy theory that was once quite popular in China - 2002 Yao Ming 's No. 1 pick in the Rockets was behind the scenes. After the regular season of the 2001-02 season, the Chicago Bulls and Golden State Warriors tied for the bottom of the league in the record. Their chances of winning the No. 1 pick were about 22.5% (the NBA had only 29 teams at the time), while the Rockets, who ranked fifth from the bottom in the league, had a chance of winning the lottery of only 8.9%. As a result, Steve Francis (Steve Francis) was lucky to get the No. 1 pick for the Houstonian (this is also one of the reasons why many Chinese fans affectionately call him "Boss Francis").
Why can the Rockets finally get the No. 1 pick and sign Yao Ming? This is a confusion of many people. At that time, Chicago, which had the third largest football market in the league, was particularly eager to get Yao Ming. They were also confident that they could help the Chinese giants create more market value, but in the end they failed to do so.
At that time, some American media once again raised the theory of draft manipulation. Some reporters even speculated that the reason why the Rockets were able to draw the No. 1 pick with such a low probability was that the Chinese government was putting pressure behind the scenes. There is a conspiracy theory that China hopes that Yao Ming can play in Houston where Asians gather, so Stern follows the situation and gives the No. 1 pick to the Rockets.
Some Chinese media added fuel to the fire and took the opportunity to come up with the "freezing envelope" to talk about the matter. Regardless of whether this conspiracy theory is correct or not, the alliance abandoned the "old" approach of drawing envelopes more than ten years ago. This analysis is equivalent to making common sense mistakes.
"Skeptics should try to freeze the envelope and put it in a container to see if they can pick out that envelope," NBA vice president Russ Granik responded before the 2002 draft. "Many people are willing to believe these conspiracy theories, but they never wanted to test them in person, and they didn't pay attention to the rules and details of the lottery draw."
In order to monitor the lottery draw, the league has invited some media representatives to attend every year since 2002. "Sometimes, reporters carefully observe the entire lottery process with their own eyes. They will come to the judgment that the league has not made a fraud and tell others the truth about the matter. However, some people still think that there are still hidden operations in this, but they have never produced convincing evidence." Glannick said.
Fortunately, the league at least has the trust of the team boss. "The lottery draw has proven it works," said Jeff Nix, assistant general manager of the Knicks.
This is the lottery draw created by Stern, which has been used since the 1990s.
Future: Are there any problems with small markets and big ball clubs? Of course, because it essentially does not change the situation where weak teams deliberately play badly for high-quality players, the releasing army at the end of each season will become a headache.
Rockets general manager Daryl Morey is an open opponent of the lottery draw. He believes that the current draw rules in the NBA need to be completely overturned and redesigned.
"We must use the lottery draw to remove the fundamental motivations that have caused some teams to deliberately lose," Morey said in an interview with ESPN in early 2014. "The situation in the league is too bad now. At the end of last season (2012-13), about two-thirds of the teams in the league are not striving to win."
The league has never stopped talking about lottery draw reform in recent years, and some experts have also put forward various opinions and suggestions, but most of the plans have almost been hit as soon as they were released. In 2014, a "coordinate rotation method" designed by Celtics assistant general manager Michael Zarren was quite popular. In Zaren's proposal, regardless of the team's record, they have an equal chance of winning the No. 1 pick. Each team will receive draft picks from 1 to 30 picks once in a 30-year cycle, and it can also ensure that each team will have a top six pick pick every five years and at least one top 12 pick pick every four years.
However, this rotation method also has great flaws. Since rookies have the right to decide to participate in the draft in any one of the three years after graduation from freshman to senior year, they can choose to participate in the draft after the team they like have a high pick. This will undoubtedly make big market teams and top teams profit, thereby further widening the gap in strength, making it more difficult for a bottom team to turn around.
In addition to the rotation method of pick-ups, there are other plans in the league under discussion. Some even suggest that the NBA draft system be completely abolished and that rookies can enter the league as free agents, which may bring greater problems. Imagine whether there are still young players willing to go to Toronto to play in the future?
"Good evening everyone, thank you for giving me this enthusiastic courtesy of Brooklyn." The Nets' home court at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, at the 2013 NBA Draft, Stern greeted the boo he had long been accustomed to. This was his 30th NBA Draft, and it was also the last time, smiling more proud than ever.
