CHICAGO — Dear Readers …
I just witnessed history.
Allow me to relive it with you now that I have retrieved my cell phone from a large manila envelope that was in the NBA’s possession for nearly 90 minutes once I was granted admittance to the sealed-off room where the league’s annual draft lottery actually takes place.
Here is the ripped-open envelope I was handed back from league officials after the lottery drawing when I was allowed to reclaim my phone.
I used the word history because the Washington Wizards on Sunday became the first team under the NBA’s current lottery system — last significantly tweaked going into the 2019 draft — to win the rights to the No. 1 overall pick after posting the league’s worst record.
The previous three teams with the worst record in the NBA (Utah and Detroit twice) fell as far as they could in the lottery to No. 5 overall.
I write history, too, because the league’s most recent move to flatten lottery odds — affording an even 14.0% shot at No. 1 to the teams with the three worst records — is going out of business. We’re less than three weeks away now from a specially convened Board of Governors session at which teams are expected to vote in a new system that will give the NBA’s bottom three teams — Washington, Indiana and Brooklyn this season — only a 5.4% shot at the No. 1 overall pick … while teams with the fourth-though-10th-worst records get an 8.1% shot at ultimate lottery glory.
Let’s get into it all here. Lottery reform, Sunday’s standout developments, draft and trade rumbles already in circulation … everything I picked up from the sequestered room where it all goes down.