![[OC] Happy Draft Lottery Day. These are the NBA's luckiest teams.](https://preview.redd.it/ecrizxjtub0h1.png?width=140&height=140&crop=1:1,smart&auto=webp&s=0e5fc9a73634b529d3a599a29ffb1434938360cb)
[OC] Happy Draft Lottery Day. These are the NBA's luckiest teams.
Reposting from a series of graphics I did in r/NBA_Draft about a month ago here.
TL;DR if you don't want to go into the full methodology, I looked at the full history of the lottery (including changes in how the odds were determined, and who ultimately ended up making a pick) and used this expected value of draft picks based off of estimated plus-minus over replacement. 1st pick has a ARC value of 142.2, 2nd is 117.6, etc.
Then I wrote a regression to figure out where teams statistically would pick (eg. this year the last-place Wizards predicted pick is 2.73) and compared to it where they actually picked. By calculating the difference between the ARC value of the expected pick and the team's actual pick slot, we can really get a sense for who are actually the luckiest teams in the lotto.
In short:
- the Sixers, Cavs, and Spurs are the luckiest teams.
- Charlotte is also historically lucky but their luck is super concentrated in the 90s.
- The Spurs are rarely in the lottery, which makes their high score even more of an outlier.
- The Nets and Clips would be much higher, but they gave away most of their high value picks.
- Wiz and Kings may seem cursed, but they are just mediocre
- Mavs still overall "unlucky" even after getting Flagg last year.