Deseret News (Salt Lake City): For unfamiliar, a lottery primer

The lottery.

In ultraconservative Utah, it's an unlawful no-no, a game of chance as vile and corrupt as craps and blackjack.

For a certain NBA franchise from these parts, however, much focus this week will be on beating the odds.

The Jazz, in fact, are hopeful they will -- even if those odds of winning big are a miniscule 0.5 percent.

"People win lotteries," said Kevin O'Connor, the Jazz's senior vice president of basketball operations.

"People win $167 million, and $224 million," he added, "with numbers (odds) that are a lot more astronomical than ours."

No need to call the bingo police, though. The Jazz's vice is strictly on the up-and-up.

What they're hoping to win is the NBA Draft Lottery, a perfectly legal game played by teams hoping to move up into one of the top- three positions in the June 24 draft.

Wednesday night, representatives from 13 franchises that did not qualify for this season's NBA playoffs -- including O'Connor -- will gather at NBA studios in Secaucus, N.J., for the ESPN-televised lottery.

It's new ground for the Jazz, who after 20 straight postseason appearances failed to make it there this season -- and, thus, have never before owned a lottery pick.

So how does it all work? A primer, for Utah's many lottery illiterates:

The history

The NBA's lottery was born in 1985, a response to concerns that teams not making the playoffs might tank games in an effort to finish lower in the standings and select higher in the draft of player prospects.

Teams owning the so-called "lottery picks" -- just seven at the time -- all had an equal chance of landing the No. 1 overall choice in the draft, and the drawing determined order of selection for all seven teams.

The big prize in '85: a certain 7-foot center from Georgetown University named Patrick Ewing.

As it turned out, the New York Knicks won that top pick.

Then-Knicks general manager Dave DeBusschere rose with a pumped fist at the news, thrilled mega-market New York would be able to land Ewing, who quickly became the franchise's foundation.

But some cried foul -- "Conspiracy theorists have long suggested that the envelope containing the Knicks' logo had been placed in a freezer prior to the drawing, or doctored in some other way," according to one Associated Press account of lottery history -- and a year later the lottery format was amended.

The changes

In 1986, according to the NBA's own history of the draft, the lottery determined order of selection for only the draft's first three teams. Remaining non-playoff franchises would choose in inverse order of their regular-season records, meaning the team with the league's worst record was assured of picking no worse than fourth.

The lottery structure changed again in 1990, when -- with the number of non-playoff teams now totaling 11, thanks to expansion -- a weighted system was implemented. The team with the worst regular- season record received 11 (out of 66) chances at the top pick, the second-worst team received 10 chances and so-on down the line to one chance for the team with the best record among lottery clubs.

The Orlando Magic overcame the odds to win the lottery twice under that system, once when it turned the second-worst record in the league into top-pick Shaquille O'Neal in 1992 and again when it turned a 1-in-66 chance into top-selection Chris Webber (who was traded right away to Golden State as part of the swap that put Penny Hardaway in Orlando).

That in part prompted another modification in 1994, and again in '96 due to additional expansion, so the chances of teams with the league's worst records landing one of the top three picks were increased and chances of lottery teams with the best records were decreased.

The present

This year, the expansion-franchise Charlotte Bobcats will pick No. 4 overall. They, however, have no chance of moving either up or down in the draft's first round.

That leaves 13 teams with a chance at one of the top-three picks, including the Jazz, who at 42-40 had the best record among teams failing to make the playoffs.

The lottery team with this season's worst record, Orlando, has a 25 percent chance of winning the first pick.

Teams two through 13 have decreasingly fewer chances, all the way down to Utah's 0.5 percent.

None of the current top three teams (Orlando, Chicago and Washington) can drop more than more than four spots, and Utah will remain at No. 14 if it does not move up into one of the top three spots.

The process

There are some misconceptions about how the lottery itself works.

Many think team reps actually pull ping pong balls out of a hopper, and even O'Connor has joked he hopes he can "reach in there and find the right one."

In reality, according to the NBA, it goes like this:

"Fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1 through 14 are placed in a drum. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Prior to the lottery, 1,000 combinations are assigned to the lottery teams based on their order of finish during the regular season. Four balls are drawn to the top to determine a four-digit combination.

"If the one unassigned combination is drawn, the balls are drawn to the top again.

"The team that has been assigned that (winning) combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The four balls are placed back in the drum and the process is repeated to determine the Nos. 2 and 3 picks."

Orlando, in other words, will be assigned 250 different combinations. Chicago (with the league's second-worst record) gets 200, and the number of assigned combinations decreases all the way down to just five for the Jazz.

About an hour after the drawing itself, the reps -- many of whom come carrying lucky charms, and none of whom are not allowed contact with the outside world once the drawing begins -- will appear on ESPN.

One by one, they will open envelopes and hold up cards showing their order of selection.

If O'Connor holds up No. 14, none of the Jazz's five combinations came up, and they will not move up.

If some other team (Portland, Seattle or Golden State) pulls out No. 14, it means Utah has lucked into one the top three picks -- and maybe even the No. 1 overall selection in the draft, which is likely to be used on University of Connecticut power forward Emeka Okafor.

And if that happens, O'Connor will feel as if he's stumbled into, oh, $224 million.

Without breaking one Utah law.

E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com