D DAY

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

well, the entire season, all the arguing over the tank, all the losses we endured, leads us up to this evening. I figured it only fitting that having started the tank thread I end the tank talk with the lotto thread.

#4 here we come . . .

 

[Folster]

well, the entire season, all the arguing over the tank, all the losses we endured, leads us up to this evening. I figured it only fitting that having started the tank thread I end the tank talk with the lotto thread.

#4 here we come . . .

I'm feeling #2, but I'll be so nervous when they are announcing 4 as well as 3 if we don't get 4.

#2 gives us a freebie to pick Doncic with no regrets of passing on Ayton.

I guess we should be rooting for no teams outside of the top 3 to jump into the top 3. If we get jumped we want to get jumped by the #2 or #3 team so our odds increase significantly for the #2 or #3.

 

[Folster]

1. Ecstatic
2. Okay
3. Disappointed
4. #!@&!

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

1. Ecstatic
2. Okay
3. Disappointed
4. #!@&!

I’ll say this, if we do drop to 4 I’ll try my best to remind myself:

1. Thankfully this is a really nice talented draft, so we have a shot at a difference maker at 4; and

2. We did our part. We lost the most games in league. We at least gave ourselves the best shot at higher selections and ensured a drop no further than 4th.













Oh, who the hell am i kidding, I’ll be pissed.

 

[Ronin]

I am fine with getting the #4 pick.

 

[Cheesebeef]

We’re getting 4 and we all know it.

 

[JCSunsfan]

If you have to tank to get a good pick. And you end up #4 anyway. This is a good draft for that to happen. Lots of value will be there at #4.

The absolute worst thing that can happen today is what I just rolled on tankathon.

1. Philly (Laker pick)
2. Grizz
3. Kings
4. Suns

Boston picking 2 or 3 would be a close 2nd worst. This is my exercise in reverse psychology. Sorry for that to all you believers in sending out good vibes.

 

[Folster]

I got my oldest rocking his Suns shirt for good luck!

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[elindholm]

I guess we should be rooting for no teams outside of the top 3 to jump into the top 3. If we get jumped we want to get jumped by the #2 or #3 team so our odds increase significantly for the #2 or #3.

I don't think that's correct.

If no one outside the top 3 jumps in, then (before the reveal of the top 3) we know that the Suns (250 chances) had to beat out only Memphis (199 chances) and Dallas (156). It also means that their chance of having fallen to #4 is zero.

If a low-odds team jumps in,

a) Now we have to sweat the Suns falling to #4, and

b) Before the reveal, it's (roughly) equally likely that the team that jumped did so by snagging the #1, #2, or #3 pick. It's a 33% chance they snagged #1, which would immediately take the Suns out of the running for that. If #4 is revealed and it's not Phoenix, it's true that the Suns are now relatively more likely to have won the #2 pick than if they had been up against the other big hitters, but only at the expense of having lost the chance at #1.

This could all be made rigorous, but it's more work than I can take on now. However...

* It is possible to calculate the Suns' exact odds of having won each pick if we get everything through #4 revealed and no one has jumped up. In that case we know that the three winners were PHO/MEM/DAL, with these possible scenarios:

1. PHO, 2. MEM, 3. DAL
(250/1000)*(199/750)*(156/551) = 0.01878 of all possible original scenarios

1. PHO, 2. DAL, 3. MEM
(250/1000)*(156/750)*(199/594) = 0.01742

1. MEM, 2. PHO, 3. DAL
(199/1000)*(250/801)*(156/551) = 0.01758

1. DAL, 2. PHO, 3. MEM
(156/1000)*(250/844)*(199/594) = 0.01548

1. MEM, 2. DAL, 3. PHO
(199/1000)*(156/801)*(250/645) = 0.01502

1. DAL, 2. MEM, 3. PHO
(156/1000)*(199/844)*(250/645) = 0.01426

If you add up the decimals on the right, you get 0.09854, which means that it's only about a 1 in 10 chance that no one from outside the top three moves up. But if that is the case, then the Suns' chances for each pick are

#1: (0.01878 + 0.01742)/(0.09854) = .367
#2: (0.01758 + 0.01548)/(0.09854) = .335
#3: (0.01502 + 0.01426)/(0.09854) = .297

(adds up to .999 due to rounding error)

So if we're all clear by the time they reveal #4, it's almost a 37% chance that the Suns are the winner.

EDIT: I forgot that Dallas has only 138 chances, not 156, because they finished tied with Atlanta. So all of those numbers are wrong, but the principle is still correct. Update coming.

 

[AzStevenCal]

We’re getting 4 and we all know it.

Not to worry. I have an inside source that guarantees we'll be trading it for 2 picks in the mid-teens even if Ayton is still on the board. I think we have our eyes on Bryant Johnson and Calvin Pace.

 

[ColdPickleNachos]

The top 4 picks each year the lottery started, with the best player of the 4 in bold. Some of these are subjective, but most are pretty clear.

TL;DR - In 33 years, the best player of the first 4 picks was:

The #1 Pick 16 Times
The #2 Pick 6 Times
The #3 Pick 4 Times
The #4 Pick 7 Times

So we DEFINITELY want the 1st pick, but falling to 4th isn't always the disaster it may seem.

Also...There's no shortage of sure things who don't turn out to be sure things after all, and in most cases one of the top 2 picks is a MUCH bigger success than the other.

1985:
1. Patrick Ewing
2. Wayman Tisdale
3. Benoit Benjamin
4. Xavier McDaniel

The best pick was #1.

1986:
1. Brad Daugherty
2. Len Bias
3. Chris Washburn
4. Chuck Person

The best pick was #1.

1987:
1. David Robinson
2. Armon Gilliam
3. Dennis Hopson
4. Reggie williams

The best pick was #1.

1988:
1. Danny Manning
2. Rik Smits
3. Charles Smith
4. Chris Morris

The best pick was #2. (Manning and Smits have very similar career stats, so you could easily make an argument for either. I'll go with the Dunking Dutchman, although Manning had 2 all star appearances to Smits' 1.)

1989:
1. Pervis Ellison
2. Danny Ferry
3. Sean Elliott
4. Glen Rice

The best pick was #4. (Apologies to Sean.)

1990:
1. Derrick Coleman
2. Gary Payton
3. Chris Jackson
4. Dennis Scott

The best pick was #2.

1991:
1. Larry Johnson
2. Kenny Anderson
3. Billy Owens
4. Dikembe Mutombo

The best pick was #4.

1992:
1. Shaquille O'Neal
2. Alonzo Mourning
3. Christian Laettner
4. Jimmy Jackson

The best pick was #1.

1993:
1. Chris Webber
2. Shawn Bradley
3. Penny Hardaway
4. Jamal Washburn

The best pick was #1. (I'm a huge Penny fan and even think he was better than Webber at his best, but his best was far too fleeting.)

1994:
1. Glenn Robinson
2. Jason Kidd
3. Grant Hill
4. Donnell Marshall

The best pick was #2. (Hill has the same issue as Penny.)

1995:
1. Joe Smith
2. Antonio McDyess
3. Jerry Stckhouse
4. Rasheed Wallace

The best pick was #4.

1996:
1. Allen Iverson
2. Marcus Camby
3. Sharif Abdur-Rahim
4. Stephon Marbury

The best pick was #1.

1997:
1. Tim Duncan
2. Keith Van Horn
3. Chauncey Billups
4. Antonio Daniels

The best pick was #1.

1998:
1. Michael Olowokandi
2. Mike Bibby
3. Raef LaFrentz
4. Antawn Jamison

The best pick was #4. (There's an argument to be made for Bibby.)

1999:
1. Elton Brand
2. Steve Francis
3. Baron Davis
4. Lamar Odom

The best pick was #4. (This one is up for debate. All four of these guys had their moments, and Brand was the most consistent, but I'm giving it to Odom for playing a key role on two championship teams.)

2000:
1. Kenyon Martin
2. Stromile Swift
3. Darius Miles
4. Marcus Fizer

The best pick was #1. (Probably the worst draft of the modern era.)

2001:
1. Kwame Brown
2. Tyson Chandler
3. Pau Gasol
4. Eddy Curry

The best pick was #3. (Sorry, Tyson!)

2002:
1. Yao Ming
2. Jay Williams
3. Mike Dunleavy
4. Drew Gooden

The best pick was #1.

2003:
1. LeBron James
2. Darko Milicic
3. Carmelo Anthony
4. Chris Bosh

The best pick was #1.

2004:
1. Dwight Howard
2. Emeka Okafor
3. Ben Gordon
4. Shaun Livingston

The best pick was #1.

2005:
1. Andrew Bogut
2. Marvin Williams
3. Deron Williams
4. Chris Paul

The best pick was #4.

2006:
1. Andrea Bargnani
2. LaMarcus Aldridge
3. Adam Morrison
4. Tyrus Thomas

The best pick was #2.

2007:
1. Greg Oden
2. Kevin Durant
3. Al Horford
4. Mike Conley

The best pick was #2.

2008:
1. Derrick Rose
2. Michael Beasley
3. O.J. Mayo
4. Russell Westbrook

The best pick was #4.

2009:
1. Blake Griffin
2. Hasheem Thabeet
3. James Harden
4. Tyreke Evans

The best pick was #3. (Thabeet went ahead of Harden, Curry, and DeRozan, among others!)

2010:
1. John Wall
2. Evan Turner
3. Derrick Favors
4. Wesley Johnson

The best pick was #1. (Although keep me away from that contract!)

2011:
1. Kyrie Irving
2. Derrick Williams
3. Enes Kanter
4. Tristan Thompson

The best pick was #1.

2012:
1. Anthony Davis
2. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
3. Bradley Beal
4. Dion Waiters

The best pick was #1.

2013:
1. Anthony Bennett
2. Victor Oladipo
3. Otto Porter
4. Cody Zeller

The best pick was #2.

2014:
1. Andrew Wiggins
2. Jabari Parker
3. Joel Embiid
4. Aaron Gordon

The best pick was #3.

2015:
1. Karl-Anthony Towns
2. D'Angelo Russell
3. Jahlil Okafor
4. Kristaps Porzingis

The best pick was #1. (Although Porzingis has a chance...)

2016:
1. Ben Simmons
2. Bandon Ingram
3. Jaylen Brown
4. Dragan Bender

The best pick was #1. (So far, this is not looking good for the Suns.)

2017:
1. Markelle Fultz
2. Lonzo Ball
3. Jayson Tatum
4. Josh Jackson

The best pick was #3 so far, but it's very, very early. (Jackson has a chance...)

 

[Cheesebeef]

Not to worry. I have an inside source that guarantees we'll be trading it for 2 picks in the mid-teens even if Ayton is still on the board. I think we have our eyes on Bryant Johnson and Calvin Pace.

Oh boy... what an awful day that was.

 

[JCSunsfan]

I don't think that's correct.

If no one outside the top 3 jumps in, then (before the reveal of the top 3) we know that the Suns (250 chances) had to beat out only Memphis (199 chances) and Dallas (156). It also means that their chance of having fallen to #4 is zero.

If a low-odds team jumps in,

a) Now we have to sweat the Suns falling to #4, and

b) Before the reveal, it's (roughly) equally likely that the team that jumped did so by snagging the #1, #2, or #3 pick. It's a 33% chance they snagged #1, which would immediately take the Suns out of the running for that. If #4 is revealed and it's not Phoenix, it's true that the Suns are now relatively more likely to have won the #2 pick than if they had been up against the other big hitters, but only at the expense of having lost the chance at #1.

This could all be made rigorous, but it's more work than I can take on now. However...

* It is possible to calculate the Suns' exact odds of having won each pick if we get everything through #4 revealed and no one has jumped up. In that case we know that the three winners were PHO/MEM/DAL, with these possible scenarios:

1. PHO, 2. MEM, 3. DAL
(250/1000)*(199/750)*(156/551) = 0.01878 of all possible original scenarios

1. PHO, 2. DAL, 3. MEM
(250/1000)*(156/750)*(199/594) = 0.01742

1. MEM, 2. PHO, 3. DAL
(199/1000)*(250/801)*(156/551) = 0.01758

1. DAL, 2. PHO, 3. MEM
(156/1000)*(250/844)*(199/594) = 0.01548

1. MEM, 2. DAL, 3. PHO
(199/1000)*(156/801)*(250/645) = 0.01502

1. DAL, 2. MEM, 3. PHO
(156/1000)*(199/844)*(250/645) = 0.01426

If you add up the decimals on the right, you get 0.09854, which means that it's only about a 1 in 10 chance that no one from outside the top three moves up. But if that is the case, then the Suns' chances for each pick are

#1: (0.01878 + 0.01742)/(0.09854) = .367
#2: (0.01758 + 0.01548)/(0.09854) = .335
#3: (0.01502 + 0.01426)/(0.09854) = .297

(adds up to .999 due to rounding error)

So if we're all clear by the time they reveal #4, it's almost a 37% chance that the Suns are the winner.

So Eric, in figuring the Suns chances for #2 or #3 on all the charts. Do they take all the "move up" scenarios considering the odds of moving up, figure how that changes the odds for the following picks (as in your 250 out of 801 odds in the Dal/Pho/Mem scenario) and then average them?

 

[Finito]

I will not be watching I just can't. To nerve racking

 

[elindholm]

So Eric, in figuring the Suns chances for #2 or #3 on all the charts. Do they take all the "move up" scenarios considering the odds of moving up, figure how that changes the odds for the following picks (as in your 250 out of 801 odds in the Dal/Pho/Mem scenario) and then average them?

The official charts? Yes. At least, I assume they do. It seems to me that the DAL/ATL tie should change things just a little bit for the Suns' odds of picking #3 vs. #4, but I'd need to be a programmer to pin that down.

 

[GatorAZ]

I don't think that's correct.

If no one outside the top 3 jumps in, then (before the reveal of the top 3) we know that the Suns (250 chances) had to beat out only Memphis (199 chances) and Dallas (156). It also means that their chance of having fallen to #4 is zero.

If a low-odds team jumps in,

a) Now we have to sweat the Suns falling to #4, and

b) Before the reveal, it's (roughly) equally likely that the team that jumped did so by snagging the #1, #2, or #3 pick. It's a 33% chance they snagged #1, which would immediately take the Suns out of the running for that. If #4 is revealed and it's not Phoenix, it's true that the Suns are now relatively more likely to have won the #2 pick than if they had been up against the other big hitters, but only at the expense of having lost the chance at #1.

This could all be made rigorous, but it's more work than I can take on now. However...

* It is possible to calculate the Suns' exact odds of having won each pick if we get everything through #4 revealed and no one has jumped up. In that case we know that the three winners were PHO/MEM/DAL, with these possible scenarios:

1. PHO, 2. MEM, 3. DAL
(250/1000)*(199/750)*(156/551) = 0.01878 of all possible original scenarios

1. PHO, 2. DAL, 3. MEM
(250/1000)*(156/750)*(199/594) = 0.01742

1. MEM, 2. PHO, 3. DAL
(199/1000)*(250/801)*(156/551) = 0.01758

1. DAL, 2. PHO, 3. MEM
(156/1000)*(250/844)*(199/594) = 0.01548

1. MEM, 2. DAL, 3. PHO
(199/1000)*(156/801)*(250/645) = 0.01502

1. DAL, 2. MEM, 3. PHO
(156/1000)*(199/844)*(250/645) = 0.01426

If you add up the decimals on the right, you get 0.09854, which means that it's only about a 1 in 10 chance that no one from outside the top three moves up. But if that is the case, then the Suns' chances for each pick are

#1: (0.01878 + 0.01742)/(0.09854) = .367
#2: (0.01758 + 0.01548)/(0.09854) = .335
#3: (0.01502 + 0.01426)/(0.09854) = .297

(adds up to .999 due to rounding error)

So if we're all clear by the time they reveal #4, it's almost a 37% chance that the Suns are the winner.

EDIT: I forgot that Dallas has only 138 chances, not 156, because they finished tied with Atlanta. So all of those numbers are wrong, but the principle is still correct. Update coming.

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[DevonCardsFan]

I don't think that's correct.

If no one outside the top 3 jumps in, then (before the reveal of the top 3) we know that the Suns (250 chances) had to beat out only Memphis (199 chances) and Dallas (156). It also means that their chance of having fallen to #4 is zero.


So if we're all clear by the time they reveal #4, it's almost a 37% chance that the Suns are the winner.

EDIT: I forgot that Dallas has only 138 chances, not 156, because they finished tied with Atlanta. So all of those numbers are wrong, but the principle is still correct. Update coming.

So if we see Atlanta @4 it's a lock the Suns are in the top 3 and have a party?

I was soooo pissed last year, my anxiety is soooo high today

 

[AzStevenCal]

Oh boy... what an awful day that was.

Yeah, it's the day I bring to mind whenever I watch us draft an Alex Len or Marquese Chriss. It helps me back away from the cliff.

 

[DevonCardsFan]

Oh boy... what an awful day that was.

Sugss wanted to be a card too, which makes it even more insane. Boldin came after, but imagine if it was Suggs and Boldin that draft!

 

[JCSunsfan]

Sugss wanted to be a card too, which makes it even more insane. Boldin came after, but imagine if it was Suggs and Boldin that draft!

Sometimes teams just get too cute during the draft rather than doing the obvious thing.

 

[elindholm]

So if we see Atlanta @4 it's a lock the Suns are in the top 3 and have a party?

Yes.

Update, based on the correct Dallas numbers:

If it is known after #4 is revealed that the top three are PHO/MEM/DAL (in some order), then the Suns' chances of each pick are

#1: .371
#2: .335
#3: .294

 

[Cheesebeef]

My advice for everyone today... wear a cup.

 

[elindholm]

I managed to set up a spreadsheet that calculates the top-3 odds for any group of three teams, once the three teams are known.

Example: Let's say ORL moves up and we see MEM revealed at #4. That means that the top three are PHO, DAL, ORL.

PHO .393 chance at #1
DAL .318 chance at #1
ORL .288 chance at #1

Note that this means that the Suns' chances at #1 are better if they are up against an underdog -- but only once we know that they didn't fall to #4.

I'd like to be able to figure, "What are the Suns' chances of falling to #4 once we know that Team X has moved up?", but I think that's too complicated for me.

Note that, the more teams move up, the better -- again IF the Suns avoid falling to #4. If the top three are PHO, CHI, NYK, we get

PHO .421 chance at #1
CHI .299
NYK .280

But, of course, more teams moving up means that the Suns' chances of falling to #4 get higher, i.e. worse (for Suns fans).

 

[Raindog]

Good analysis, Eric. That must have taken some time.

As I haven't watched the lottery drawing in some time, do they still announce the teams in reverse order, from 14 to 1? Or do they just reveal the whole thing at once since it isn't being drawn live?

 

[JCSunsfan]

All I want to see is Philly picking in its proper place.