The NBA Draft Lottery, Where Amazing Happens.

If your team is one of the lucky teams still playing, congratulations. Your dreams of an NBA world championship for your team are still alive and well.

If your team actually made the playoffs and have been knocked out already, I’m sorry for the loss, but there are few things more fun than the playoffs and being able to extend your season even a little bit is a good thing.

If your team missed the playoffs entirely (and still own your first round pick) tonight is for you. Tonight is the night that everything can change for the better.

Tonight, the NBA holds it’s annual draft lottery for all of it’s non-playoff teams from this past season and even if you aren’t likely to draw that first pick, there’s still that chance that you will. When there’s a franchise player at stake like Anthony Davis, you have to like those odds.

Take the 2008 Chicago Bulls. Please! (Has that joke ever been funny?)

The Bulls were coming off of their finest season since Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen left town after winning the title in 1998. In the 2007 season, they won 49 games, swept the defending champions from Miami and took the presumed championship favorite Detroit Pistons to six games in the second round. Everyone was viewing the Bulls as the league’s next great team.

Then Kobe Bryant ruined everything.

An entire summer’s worth of trade rumors spilled into the beginning of the 2007-2008 regular season and with the Bulls being labeled as a contender for the championship, that also meant that they were the team most likely to appeal to Bryant, as he owned one of only two no-trade options at that time. Basically, he got to control where he played, and with the Bulls so loaded with young pieces, and fresh off of a second round appearance in the weak eastern conference, the Bulls were in the driver’s seat.

Until Bryant waffled and decided to try and work it out. Then the Bulls were stuck holding the bag, the man left on the outside of a bizarre, twisted love triangle.

Bryant re-committed, the Lakers traded for Pau Gasol and won three straight western conference championships and two rings.

The Bulls won 32 games, unable to put the trade rumors behind them, and missed the playoffs for the first time in three seasons.

Entering the draft, the Bulls had 1.7% odds to win the first pick, 9th overall.

Those odds were good enough. Chicago nabbed the top spot, selected home-grown stud Derrick Rose and has never looked back. As frustrating as that 2008 team was to watch, if you get a future MVP out of the deal, was it really that bad? It almost becomes a necessary evil, or the greatest silver lining of all-time.

Or maybe you prefer the story of the 2011 Cleveland Cavaliers. We all know what happened to them in the summer of 2010 and the Cavs found out quickly that LeBron was probably more important to their team than they ever believed as the team that led the league in wins in 2010 finished with the second least amount of wins in 2011, a drastic turnaround regardless of any circumstances.

Making matters worse, the Cavs’ envelope appeared at #4, the next-to-lowest spot possible for their odds.

However, thanks to a trade deadline deal with the Clippers, the Cavs had acquired their lottery pick as well, and the Clippers’ envelope hadn’t yet come up.

It wouldn’t until it came time to reveal the first overall pick. The Cavs had went from what seemed to be a totally hopeless situation to having two of the top four picks in a single NBA draft, as well as the first one.

The Cavs took Kyrie Irving, who looks every bit like a future all-star and franchise savior.

The prize in this draft is of course Kentucky freshman Anthony Davis who just led his team to the national championship in his only season in Lexington and is as good a prospect today as any of the past three or four first overall picks have been, and as we’ve discussed, they were pretty decent prospects to say the least.

The Charlotte Bobcats, on the strength of their worst winning percentage in league history own the best chance at nabbing the top spot, followed by the Washington Wizards and then the Cleveland Cavaliers.

If you don’t know how the NBA draft lottery works, then you’ve come to the right place.

The league puts 14 numbered ping pong balls into a hopper, making for a total of 1,001 possible combinations. The league pulls four balls out, and whichever team owns that specific combination wins the first pick. This is repeated for the second and third picks as well, and the rest of the draft is slotted according to record.

If you’re a fan of a team with those top three picks, you want everything to go according to plan before your pick.

If you’re a Washington fan and the lottery holds true to form until the second pick, that’s obviously good for you.

However, if you’re watching and something drastic happens, say the Hornets end up in the 5th envelope, that means that the Kings have jumped into the top 3 and potentially puts the Wizards’ top three pick in danger.

Good luck to every team that’s taking part in the lottery tonight, because nothing feels as good as moving into the top three and nabbing a potential franchise player.