Who gets LeBron James?

[Full Surface]

The Nuggets ended out the season with a 17-65 record and so did the Cavaliers. So who's going to end up with LeBron in the next draft pick?

[Steve04]

Wizards...
Kwame & Lebron

[Venom]

i think he meant who's got better lottery chances...

i don't know...and i'm also interested to know

[Andrew]

I believe that a tiebreaker will be used, using the same criteria used to determine playoff seedings for teams that have qualified with the same record.

[Colin]

I believe that a tiebreaker will be used, using the same criteria used to determine playoff seedings for teams that have qualified with the same record.

but will it be the team that for example, lost the season series against one another as opposed to won the season series in the playoffs?

[Andrew]

I'm not sure which it is. It would seem logical to be the opposite (team who lost the head to head matchup, team with worse percentage), but I can't say for sure.

[RedTorro]

Hmm I'm just wondering if MJ is willing to trade Stack for a top pick since Stack punked out the second half of the season. I wouldn't be surprised to see Kwame go for a top pick either. Now that MJ knows what type of competitors these guys are I would like to see both go.

[Rens]

I wouldn't trade a top three pick for Stackhouse if I had one.. if I needed front court beef for the future, Kwame and filler for a top pick might be considered.

[T-Mac2004]

No, a tiebreaker isn't used. They both have a 22.5% chance of landing first pick.

[VCFAN]

how do u calculate the percentage of getting Lebron?

[Andrew]

It's based on the amount of ping pong balls the team will have in the lottery. The team with most has the best odds of winning.

No, a tiebreaker isn't used. They both have a 22.5% chance of landing first pick.

Are you sure? That would mean they'd account for 45% of the ping pong balls, which would decrease the odds for the rest of the lottery teams, which doesn't seem fair.

[Andrew]

I was reading some old NBA Dailys over at Patricia Bender's site, when I came across this:

The draft order between teams with identical records was decided
at the owner's meeting the other day. Washington and Minnesota
had the same record and Washington won the draw to be ranked 2nd
in the lottery draft. Washington will get 183 chances and
Minnesota will get 182 chances in the lottery. If neither team
wins the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd draft pick, Washington will select
ahead of Minnesota.

So either Denver or Cleveland will have a slight advantage in the number of chances in the lottery (if I understand correctly, slightly less than the usual number of chances the team with the worst record has).

[T-Mac2004]

So either Denver or Cleveland will have a slight advantage in the number of chances in the lottery (if I understand correctly, slightly less than the usual number of chances the team with the worst record has).

Doesn't make sense to me...1st and 2nd draft picks have 450 ping pong balls altogether (1st = 250, 2nd = 200), right? That divided by 2 is 225 . How did they end up with 183 and 182?

Btw, I'm pretty sure that it is a 22.5% split for Denver and Cleveland, according to ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/lebron/lebronLottery

[Andrew]

183 and 182 were the numbers for Washington and Minnesota, who were both tied for the 2nd worst record (and therefore the second best odds of getting the first pick). The number of chances will be different for Denver and Cleveland (both over 200) but I doubt they'll have the same amount of chances, as they tend to have a tiebreaker to determine who will have the greater amount of chances.

So the numbers won't be 183 and 182 (as I said, that was a tiebreaker to determine 2nd and 3rd most chances), but they'll be a difference between first and second (say, 226 and 224 for example).

By the way some useless trivia: in that draft with the 183/182 tiebreaker, neither Washington nor Minnesota won the first, second or third picks, so Washington got the fourth and Minnesota the fifth. Washington selected Rasheed Wallace, and Minnesota selected Kevin Garnett.