At tonight's NBA Draft Lottery, one lucky team will win the honor of selecting a franchise altering pospect in French pehnom Victor Wembanyama, who according to every basketball mover and shaker and basically anybody who is anybody, the best prospect to hit the league in some time.
So why can't that lucky team be the Washington Wizards? They don't have a general manager, they haven't won 50 games since 1978-79 and have only made five trips to the second round of the playoffs in the last 44 years. So why can't Washington, with a 6.7 percent chance, land the No. 1 overall pick to draft the 7-foot-3 power 19-year-old power forward with guard skills and an eight-foot wingspan? Why not?
"The Wizards, they haven't had much luck over the years," Kevin Sheehan said Tuesday. "Going back to 1989, they've been in the draft lottery many times... [22] times... and the overall results of them being in the lottery [22] times: on [11] different occasions they didn't move places. They essentially stayed in the same place they were predicted to end up in. In [8] different spots they ended up in a worse and in three different spots they ended up in a better position, including in 2010 when they moved up four spots and selected John Wall... and they moved up from eighth to third in 2013 and selected Otto Porter. So their draft lottery luck has sucked over the years... they've got a 29 percent chance of ending up in a top-four spot, which would be good because this is a draft that... so-called draft experts believe will be game-changers in the upcoming draft."
The Wizards have a 32.9 percent chance of drafting at No. 8, this would be another year of not moving up. They do have a 31.1 percent chance of falling to No. 9, a 6.6 percent chance for No. 10, and a 0.4 percent chance for No. 11. Washington can't receive picks No. 5 - 7 but has roughly a 7 percent chance for each spot between No. 1 and 4.
The Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs are all the most likely teams to pick No. 1 at 14 percent.
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