Sports

N.B.A. lottery will settle a lot and little

interns Contributor
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The N.B.A. draft lottery — that quirky festival of Ping-Pong balls, lucky charms and oversize envelopes — comes attached with certain assumptions.

One, that it rewards the teams that are most in need of help.

Two, that the lottery “winner” does, in fact, win something of indisputable valuable.

Then fate intervenes, and the assumptions unravel. No. 1 picks fail spectacularly (Kwame Brown, 2001). Talent-poor teams fall in the draft order and talent-rich teams get the No. 1 pick (Portland, 2007). Logic and fairness are afterthoughts.

The 2010 lottery, on Tuesday night in Secaucus, N.J., could scramble the assumptions once more, starting with this one: that the consensus best player must be taken with the first pick.

John Wall, the Kentucky point guard, is widely viewed as the best prospect. But Evan Turner, the Ohio State swingman, is a close second.

Full story: N.B.A. Lottery Will Settle a Lot and Little – NYTimes.com