Tag: Draft Lottery

Celtics Have a 2 Percent Chance of Getting the Number 2 or 3 Overall Pick at the NBA Draft Lottery Tonight

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Lost in all the excitement of this unexpectedly deep playoff run for the Celtics is the fact that they are still sitting on yet another potential goldmine. The Celtics have an outside shot at having a Top 3 pick fall into their laps this year.

The NBA Draft Lottery is tonight before Game 2 and the C’s will be watching with great interest as they could walk away with Philly’s first round pick (via Los Angeles) tonight. Boston is basically riding a heater after landing the No. 1 overall pick for the first time in franchise history last summer. Tonight will be a heat check from Danny.

To recap last year’s draft day trade that got us here, Danny Ainge traded the No. 1 overall pick to Philadelphia (who drafted Markelle Fultz) in exchange for the No. 3 overall pick (C’s drafted Jayson Tatum) and a future first round pick, which could be Philly’s pick this year that the Sixers had previously acquired from the Lakers. There were some protections on that pick though. The Celtics will get the Sixers/Lakers first round pick this year if it falls at No. 2 or No. 3 overall, which has a 2.87% chance of occuring at the Draft Lottery tonight.

Those aren’t great odds, but imagine the chaos we’d see on NBA Twitter if the Celtics, who are already pushing the Cavs to the limit and are expecting both Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward back next season, get a Top 3 pick? People would be screaming about frozen envelopes and crafting conspiracy theories about Danny Ainge having naked pics of Adam Silver to explain this great run of luck in Boston.

However, the Sixers (via the Lakers) are currently projected to get the No. 10 pick based on the Draft Lottery odds. We’ve seen teams make crazy jumps before (i.e. Cleveland jumping from 8th to 1st in 2011 to draft Kyrie Irving) so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. If the Cavs somehow jump from their current spot at No. 8 to No. 1 with the Brooklyn pick the Celtics sent them in the Kyrie trade I’m gonna snap though. Cleveland has had the No. 1 overall pick 3 times in the last 7 years. So who’s rigging the league for who? It would be hilarious though to watch Trader Danny hoard those Brooklyn picks for YEARS and then jump off the bandwagon at the last second to flip his last Nets pick, only to see it fall all the way to No. 8. Seriously though, Danny should be a stock broker.

If the Philly/Lakers pick ends up being anything other than No. 2 or No. 3 then the Celtics’ return for the Fultz/Tatum trade gets kicked to next summer when the C’s will receive a first rounder from the Sixers. The Sixers have their own pick next year as well as the Sacramento Kings’ first rounder so the Celtics would get the higher of the two next year unless either lands on No. 1 overall then they’d get the other pick instead.

In case you were wondering, the Kings finished 27-55 this year, which was tied for the 6th worst record in the NBA, with no signs of improvement next year. So either way the Celtics could be nabbing another Top 5 pick if not this year then very likely next year.

In an Effort to End Tanking, NBA Changing Draft Lottery in 2019, Which is Perfect Timing to Not Affect the Celtics!

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ESPN – The NBA’s board of governors voted to pass legislation on draft lottery reform and guidelines for the resting of healthy players in the regular season, league sources told ESPN…The lottery reform changes will be instituted for the 2019 NBA draft..The NBA needed a three-fourths majority to pass draft lottery reform, which is designed to discourage teams from tanking to pursue the best possible odds to select highest in the draft order.

This is great news for Celtics fans in the sense that we won’t be getting fisted out of the last of our coveted (hopefully) lottery picks. Not so much for small market teams that rely on tanking. Christ, Sam Hinkie wrote the book on tanking. Dude got canned by the Sixers, but they wouldn’t be where they are today without him. Trust the Process indeed.

Thankfully the Celtics have already pocketed all those Nets picks:

2018: No. ? – Traded to CLE as part of Kyrie Irving deal
2017: No. 3 – Jayson Tatum (Right to swap with Nets and BOS traded down from No. 1)
2016: No. 3 – Jaylen Brown
2014: No. 17 – James Young

Now the C’s will bank on the 2018 Lakers pick being a Top-2 pick next summer. Looking back, the Celtics “only” got two top-five picks from the Brooklyn trade. Imagine if they’d gotten none because of changes to the Draft Lottery?

Starting in 2019, when the Celtics no longer have top, unprotected, golden lottery picks, the rules change. Perfect. If this shit happened four years ago those Nets picks are DRASTICALLY less valuable and maybe Billy King still has a job.

Long story short, having the worst record in the league is no longer a one way ticket to a top pick. Things are a lot murkier now.

“The three teams with the worst records will share a 14 percent chance of getting the No. 1 overall pick, a change from the descending percentages of 25, 19.9, and 15.6 in the current system.”

So while it was always a nail biter for the team with the worst record because you still only had a 1/4 chance of getting the No. 1 pick; now thats down to a 14 percent chance for 3 teams. In theory that should deter a team from saying fuck it and just tanking down the stretch if the bottom three teams all have the same chance of getting the No. 1 pick. Teams will still tank to get down to the bottom 3, but I guess its a step in the right direction if the NBA truly wants to eradicate tanking (good luck).

“Four teams — increased from three — will become part of the lottery draw, which means the No. 1 lottery seed could drop no further than fifth, No. 2 could drop no further than sixth, No. 3 no further than seventh, and No. 4 no further than eighth.”

Imagine having the worst record and somehow dropping to the No. 5 overall pick? If I’m a fan of that team I’m drinking a bottle of whiskey on Draft Lottery night.

Gotta love the NBA though, they’re always pivoting, always changing shit. Remember back in 2006 when they tried to introduce a new basketball and reversed course like 2 weeks later?

Well virtually every player in the NBA bitched about the new ball. Why change the only piece of equipment that actually matters? Who the hell knows. But hey they tried it. It bombed. And rather than just forcing it down everyones throats because it was the league’s decision they said yup you’re right, fixed it, and moved on. Thats what keeps leagues relevant, adapting to the times, trying new things, and if it doesn’t working cutting your losses and moving along. Not burying your head in the sand (NFL vs CTE) or staunchly opposing evolution (MLB vs everything).

So good luck to all the Lottery teams in 2019, I’m just glad the Celtics will have no part of it because I can’t handle that kind of stress in my life.

Celtics Can Now Achieve the Rare Feat of Claiming the No. 1 Seed AND the No. 1 Overall Pick in the NBA Draft

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The Celtics have the opportunity to earn one of the more rare accolades in all of sports this week. They could lock up the No. 1 seed in the East with a win on Wednesday (thanks to another Cavs loss Monday night) to go along with the potential No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft.

Now the Celtics are still at the mercy of some goddamn ping pong balls, but thanks to the Nets being an abysmal basketball team, they’ve already locked up the best odds at the No. 1 overall pick of any team this year. So it would be pretty wild to see one of the best teams in the league (at least by record) with the No. 1 overall pick. That never happens. The last time I can remember anything close to that would probably be the Celtics winning the 1985-86 title and then drafting Len Bias No. 2 overall. Hopefully it works out a little better this time around.

Normally you need to hit rock bottom before you can start getting better in the NBA. Or just be the Cavaliers: get three No. 1 overall picks in 4 years and then have the best player in the world come back to town. That also works. But usually you have to absolutely bottom out so you can get a lottery pick and start building around that top talent from the draft. You don’t do yourself any good consistently being a No. 6 seed and then getting a draft pick in the 20’s. Thats how you become the Atlanta Hawks.

Sometimes you’ll see a rare case with a good team having one real down year, luck out with a top pick after a terrible season, then get back on track. Case and point the 1996-97 Spurs who had Tim Duncan fall into their lap. They went 59-23 in the 1995-96 season then fell to 20-62 the next year before taking Duncan No. 1 overall and then jumping back up to 56-26 and starting the run of success they’re STILL on.

But you never see a top team with a top draft pick while they’re CURRENTLY a top team. So for all the shit Trader Danny takes, the fact that he’s been able to maneuver the Celtics into this situation by trading two aging superstars in their late 30’s for multiple Lottery Picks is amazing by itself.

If the Celtics can turn just ONE of those Nets draft picks into a home run, then this is the Herschel Walker trade of the NBA that will be talked about forever. I cannot wait to watch that 30 for 30.

What if I told you a General Manager took an aging roster and turned them into a Lottery ticket? This is the story of how Danny Ainge swindled the suddenly cash happy and attention starved Brooklyn Nets out of a bushel of NBA Lottery picks and got the Celtics back to the promise land with the quickest rebuild in league history. Trader Danny. Directed by Bill Simmons. 

Or they’ll continue to butcher draft picks with players that aren’t good enough to make the roster so they have to stash them in Europe and the Celtics fade back into mediocrity. That is a frighteningly real possibility. But you gotta figure Danny is due to hit on a stud. Maybe that superstar is already here in Jaylen Brown, but it sure as shit won’t hurt for Danny to get 2 more cracks at it. Since the Nets ain’t getting better any time soon and we’ve got their picks both this year and next. Or maybe Danny swings the draft pick for a guy like Paul George. Either way the Celtics are gonna need another superstar to make a real run at another Larry O’Brien trophy.

We’ll see, but as loud as that clock is ticking on this window of opportunity to make something big happen, name one GM in the entire freaking league who wouldn’t sell his soul to be in Ainge’s position right now. Just don’t blow it, Danny.