Draft Lottery

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With the Cavaliers winning their third NBA Draft Lottery in four years, cavs.com prepped this pop quiz to make sure you’ve been paying attention to the Wine and Gold's history in relation to the Draft.

CLICK HERE to take quiz on your mobile device.

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test-your-knowledge

Test Your Knowledge

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David Griffin, Cleveland Cavaliers General Manager

Griffin: "It was incredible. When Cleveland didn’t’ pop up at nine, I knew obviously we had moved up and I had to gather myself for a second. Just a remarkable feeling."

Q: Is there a clear cut number one in this draft?

Griffin: "I don’t think there’s a clear cut number one pick in most drafts. I think when people say that they have a really strong feeling for one player over another but there’s not necessarily a consensus in most drafts."

Q: In your case it will be about who you feel fits best with the current roster?

Griffin: "Yeah and I think we’re very open-minded. We will try to get radically better, much quicker. We really feel like there’s a sense of urgency in improving our team as a whole and we’re going to look for the right fit and we’re very open-minded to what that really means."

Q: Will this help steer you in your head coaching search?

Griffin: "No, I don’t think so. I think if anything it certainly makes it a more attractive destination, but that’s a process that’s sort of in its infancy right now. I don’t really think of them as being correlated."

Q: This is your first year in your current role, in your first draft. What do you think will happen differently this year compared to last year?

Griffin: "Obviously the pick pool, you have no control over what that’s going to be at any given time. I feel really blessed that we’re in this position and we will do all of the due diligence that we’ve always done and try to make the right decision. I don’t think that anything will be inherently different, other than the fact that I’m here. I’m unique, I guess. That will be the only difference."

2014-draft-lottery-quotes

2014 Draft Lottery Quotes

Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert and the team’s new general manager, David Griffin, made no bones about not wanting to be back in the Lottery this year. Tuesday night’s results should soften the blow ….

When the Wine and Gold beat the odds in 2011 – jumping up from the No. 8 spot with the Clipper’s pick and a 2.8 percent chance to win the Lottery – it was a great stroke of luck. When the Basketball Gods smiled again in 2013, defying their 15.6 percent chance, it was pretty amazing. But winning it again on Tuesday night – coming up from the No. 9 slot with a 1.7 percent chance – things just seem downright crazy.

There’s probably a more scientific, statistically-appropriate word for it. But when your odds of doing something are as astronomical as Cleveland’s four-year run, you’re talking Carl Sagan-sized numbers. And they add up to the Cavaliers winning the right to the Draft’s top pick for the third time in the past four years – and the sixth time in franchise history.

Nick Gilbert had famously represented the Cavaliers when they won it in 2011 and ’13. On Tuesday night in New York, it was Griffin, with Nick’s signature bowtie in his pocket for good luck. On the lapel of his coat, the new GM wore the angel pin of his grandmother, who passed away this past February.

It was an incredible start for the man who was officially hired to be at the helm of the front office just eight days ago. In one month, he’ll hold the No. 1 and No. 33 overall picks in the 2014 Draft.

“When Cleveland didn’t’ pop up at nine, I knew obviously we had moved up and I had to gather myself for a second,” said Griffin. “It’s just a remarkable feeling.”

From Phoenix through Philadelphia, the first five picks of the drawing went according to script. But when Detroit fell to the No. 9 (a pick owed to Charlotte) the Cavaliers knew it would be a top three selection. At that point, it was between Milwaukee – which had a 1-in-4 shot to win the No. 1, and Philadelphia, which had a 1-in-5 shot.

The Cavaliers – who tabbed Kyrie Irving and Anthony Bennett with their two most recent top selections – will go down in Lottery history for their run of good luck, joining the Magic, who won it in back-to-back seasons in 1992 and ’93 and the 2008 Bulls, the only other team to make the climb from No. 9.

But the Wine and Gold weren’t looking to make history on Tuesday. They were hoping for the best outcome to improve a young-and-improving roster (and another visit from Lady Luck) – and got both.

“We will try to get radically better, much quicker,” explained Griffin. “We really feel like there’s a sense of urgency in improving our team as a whole and we’re going to look for the right fit and we’re very open-minded to what that really means.”

Cleveland has had six first-rounders in the previous three Drafts, including Irving and Bennett. Tristan Thompson joined Kyrie in 2011 and Cleveland selected Dion Waiters and Tyler Zeller the following year. Last season, Sergey Karasev was drafted 18 picks after Bennett.

Three of the biggest names to emerge from this year’s pool include Kansas’ seven-footer, Joel Embiid, Duke forward Jabari Parker and Jayhawks forward, Andrew Wiggins. All three declared after their freshman season.

The Cavaliers are more than happy to have the top pick in this June’s draft, whether they choose from the projected top three players or go in a different direction. Griffin certainly didn’t tip his hand on Tuesday.

“I think it’s beyond the No. 1 pick,” said Griffin. “We’ve talked a lot about improving our floor spacing and our basketball IQ, we need to improve our toughness, we’re a team with several needs quite frankly, and we need to address our fit as much as anything else.

”Big-picture-wise is where our focus is, and the first pick is just a piece of that puzzle. It doesn’t answer anything for us, there’s no savior here. It’s all just about putting the pieces together in one puzzle.”

The top pick in the 2014 Draft is just one piece of the Wine and Gold’s puzzle. But it’s nice to have the piece of their choosing in 38 days to try and solve it.

The Cavaliers have been pretty good at winning this Lottery thing. But they really don’t want to try it again next year.

lottery-luck-continues-for-cavaliers

Lottery Luck Continues for Cavaliers

NEW YORK, May 20, 2014 – Following are the results from the 2014 NBA Draft Lottery conducted this evening at the Disney/ABC Times Square Studio. The Cleveland Cavaliers, who had a 1.7 percent chance of obtaining the first selection, will have the first overall pick in NBA Draft 2014 presented by State Farm, which will be held in Brooklyn at Barclays Center on Thursday, June 26, 2014.

NBA fans will be able to purchase tickets for NBA Draft 2014 presented by State Farm in Brooklyn beginning tomorrow. Tickets will be available through Ticketmaster by visiting www.barclayscenter.com or www.ticketmaster.com, or by calling 800-745-3000. Tickets will also be available at the American Express Box Office at Barclays Center.

1. Cleveland
2. Milwaukee
3. Philadelphia
4. Orlando
5. Utah
6. Boston
7. LA Lakers
8. Sacramento
9. Charlotte - From Detroit
10. Philadelphia - From New Orleans
11. Denver
12. Orlando - From New York via Denver
13. Minnesota
14. Phoenix

Following is the order for the remainder of the 2014 NBA Draft:

15.  Atlanta
16.  Chicago - From Charlotte
17.  Boston - From Brooklyn
18.  Phoenix - From Washington
19.  Chicago
20.  Toronto
21.  Oklahoma City - From Dallas via Houston and LA Lakers
22.  Memphis
23.  Utah - From Golden State
24.  Charlotte - From Portland
25.  Houston
26.  Miami
27.  Phoenix - From Indiana
28.  LA Clippers
29.  Oklahoma City
30.  San Antonio

31.  Milwaukee
32.  Philadelphia
33.  Cleveland - From Orlando
34.  Dallas - From Boston
35.  Utah
36.  Milwaukee - From LA Lakers via Minnesota and Phoenix
37.  Toronto - From Sacramento
38.  Detroit
39.  Philadelphia - From Cleveland
40.  Minnesota - From New Orleans
41.  Denver
42.  Houston - From New York
43.  Atlanta
44.  Minnesota
45.  Charlotte
46.  Washington
47.  Philadelphia - From Brooklyn via Dallas and Boston
48.  Milwaukee - From Toronto via Phoenix
49.  Chicago
50.  Phoenix
51.  Dallas
52.  Philadelphia - From Memphis via Cleveland
53.  Minnesota - From Golden State
54.  Philadelphia - From Houston via Milwaukee
55.  Miami
56.  Denver - From Portland
57.  Indiana
58.  San Antonio - From LA Clippers via New Orleans
59.  Toronto - From Oklahoma City via New York
60.  San Antonio

cleveland-captures-number-one-pick-after-results-of-2014-nba-draft-lottery

Cleveland Captures Number One Pick After Results of 2014 NBA Draft Lottery

One refreshing quality about new Cavaliers GM David Griffin is that he doesn’t mince words. So last week, when he was asked about the Wine and Gold’s return to the NBA Lottery, his candor was completely expected.

“Nobody wants to be a Lottery team,” Griff responded to a question about Cleveland’s return to said event this Tuesday night. “We'll know we're succeeding when we're winning and playing this time of year, and that's our attention.”

Griff will be behind the moves – including the selection of a new head coach – that will hopefully have the Cavaliers in the postseason one year from now. In the meantime, he’ll be in New York, representing the franchise as it tries to defy the odds again.

The Bucks finished this past season with the league’s worst record (15-67), so they’ll be assigned the first 250 combinations. The Suns were the best among all Lottery teams at 48-34, and they’ll have only five combinations out of 1,000.

The Cavaliers are slotted in the ninth position and they have a 1.7 percent chance of winning the Lottery for the second season in a row. The odds are against them, but – as they say – crazier things have happened.

Cleveland’s odds were only slightly better when they won the rights to the top pick in 2011, with the Clippers’ pick coming all the way up from No. 8. The Bulls were in the 9th slot when they won the Lottery in 2008 (eventually selecting Derek Rose with the pick). After landing Shaquille O’Neal with the top pick in 1992, the Magic – with just one chance out of 66, a 1.5 percent chance – secured the top pick for the second straight year in '93.

The Cavs went from the third spot to win it last May and New Orleans went from fourth to first the previous year. In fact, since the NBA went to the Lottery system in 1985, the team with the worst record has won it exactly three times (Orlando in 2004, Cleveland in 2003, and New Jersey, 1990).

Of course, like most franchises, Lady Luck has both smiled and scowled at the Cavaliers.

In 2011 and 2013, the Wine and Gold beat the odds, winning the rights to top picks, who turned out to be Kyrie Irving and Anthony Bennett, respectively. And Cleveland legitimately “leap-frogged” Denver to land LeBron James in 2003. Back in 1986, as part of a deal that sent Joe “Jellybean” Bryant to San Diego seven years earlier, the Sixers won the Lottery but traded the pick to Cleveland for Roy Hinson and cash considerations. That pick would eventually become five-time All-Star, Brad Daugherty.

The following season, however, Cleveland finished with the worst record in the league but wound up picking seventh (the final Lottery spot back in 1987). That year’s seventh-slotted team – San Antonio – wound up winning the Lottery and tabbed Hall of Famer David Robinson one month later. (The Cavs didn’t do too bad, landing the future Mayor of Sacramento in the Draft. But can you imagine what a frontline of Brad Daugherty and the Admiral would've looked like?)

The number of Lottery squads has doubled since then, and on Tuesday night, fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a drum. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Prior to the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.

Four balls will be drawn to determine a four-digit combination and the team that has been assigned that combination will receive the number one pick. The four balls are placed back in the drum and the process is repeated to determine the number two and three picks.

The order of selection for the teams that do not win one of the top three picks will be determined by inverse order of their regular season record. Milwaukee can pick no lower than fourth, Philadelphia (19-63) no lower than fifth and Orlando (23-59) no lower than sixth.

The Lottery process has come a long way since it was initiated in 1985.

In the early days, teams would simply draft until they ran out of prospects. The 1961 Draft, for example, went 21 rounds. It was shortened to ten rounds from 1974-84, to seven rounds from 1985-89 and two rounds from that point forward.

In the pre-Lottery days, the order of selection was determined with a coin toss between the worst team in each division determining who’d draft first. The team that lost the toss was awarded second pick and all other teams selected by inverse order according to record. The last team to win No. 1 pick via the coin toss was the Houston Rockets, who took future Hall of Famer, Hakeem Olajuwon. (Portland, which lost by calling “heads” on the coin toss, got Kentucky’s Sam Bowie as a consolation prize. The Bulls’ consolation prize that June was a kid named Michael Jordan.)

Winning the top pick on Tuesday is the goal, but the Cavaliers have also added to the team’s core with other Lottery picks.

After winning the rights to Kyrie with the Clippers’ pick, the Cavaliers finished fourth with their own entry. That was still good enough to eventually land forward Tristan Thompson, who was selected to the All-Rookie Second Team after his first campaign, emerged as one of the top rebounders as a sophomore and finished his third season with a team-leading 36 double-doubles. Thompson hasn’t missed a single start in two seasons.

In 2012, the Wine and Gold went into the Lottery with a 13.8 percent chance of winning and again came out with the No. 4 overall pick. That player turned out to be Dion Waiters, who went on to be the top-scoring rookie in the East in his first season and the Conference’s top-scoring reserve as a sophomore.

Since the “weighted” system began, 16 of the NBA’s 30 teams have won the Lottery. Only three teams with the worst record have gone on to win the top pick, while the team with the second-worst record has won it four times and the team with the third-worst mark racking up six wins since 1985 – including the Cavaliers taking it last year.

The Clippers have won the Lottery five times – although they conceded that pick twice (both, eventually, to the Cavs). Orlando and the Cavaliers are second with three wins apiece and the Bucks and Bulls have won twice each.

The Cavaliers have beaten the Lottery odds several times over the years and there’s no reason to think the Basketball Gods won’t be smiling on them again on this season. But no matter how well things turn out on Tuesday night in New York, David Griffin hopes that his first time representing the Wine and Gold is also his last.

follow-the-bouncing-ball

Follow the Bouncing Ball

clelmatz

The following are the 14 teams in 2014 NBA Draft Lottery who did not qualify for the 2014 NBA Playoffs. Each team will be assigned a certain number of combinations out of 1,000. The third column below lists the number of combinations each team will have in the NBA Draft Lottery. The three columns on the right list the percentage chances that each team will have of getting the 1st, 2nd or 3rd pick.

2014-nba-draft-lottery-chances

2014 NBA Draft Lottery Chances

As the Cavaliers capture the No. 1 overall pick for the third time in four years, below is a look back at the Wine and Gold's previous lottery experiences, including their pre-lottery draft position (based on the previous season's record), eventual draft position and draft selection:

* (from Los Angeles Clippers via Philadelphia 76ers) ** (from Washington Bullets)*** (from Boston Celtics)# (traded to Chicago Bulls for Chris Mihm)## (Los Angeles Clippers pick acquired via a February 2011 trade that sent guard Mo Williams and forward Jamario Moon to Los Angeles in exchange for guard Baron Davis and the Clippers first round pick)

cavaliers-draft-lottery-history

Cavaliers Draft Lottery History

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