Will Charlotte Hornets land No. 1 overall pick, Flagg? Check their history
In the aftermath of an unfulfilled campaign leading into another typical offseason for the Charlotte Hornets, Miles Bridges didn’t discount the importance of what’s to come.
“This is a great draft class,” Bridges said. “They have a talented draft class. It would be really big if we could get No. 1 or even No. 2. But it will be big for us.”
For myriad reasons, too.
In part because of the star power of the presumed and consensus No. 1 overall pick in June’s NBA Draft in Brooklyn, New York, Duke product Cooper Flagg.
After finishing with a 19-63 record, representing the second-worst in the Eastern Conference behind Washington, the Hornets are tied with the Wizards and Utah Jazz with a 14% chance to win the NBA Draft Lottery in Chicago on Monday.
However, the franchise’s history provides little optimism for a nervous fan base.
Since the Hornets’ inaugural season in 1988-89, Charlotte has won the lottery only once, grabbing the top selection in 1991 to pluck Larry Johnson off the board. That was the year the Hornets entered the lottery holding the fifth-best odds at collecting the first overall selection, watching them rise four spots.
Charlotte’s lottery luck struck again in 1992 when it leapfrogged six spots to No. 2 overall, marking the second-largest increase in team history, and drafted Alonzo Mourning. The franchise also moved up 10 spots to third in 1999 and selected Baron Davis, tying for the largest jump in NBA history, and also rose five places in 2020 NBA Draft Lottery to nab LaMelo Ball third overall.
It also happened again in 2023, when they moved up two positions and settled the Brandon Miller-Scoot Henderson debate by taking the smooth shooting swingman out of Alabama with the second overall pick.
But when most think of the Hornets, they point to the lottery misfortunes and that chapter can be amended in significant fashion should commissioner Adam Silver pull their logo out of the last remaining envelope, placing it in the No. 1 overall spot on the dais inside a ballroom at McCormick Place West.
Here’s a refresher about the draft lottery process and what to expect:
NBA Draft Lottery odds/format
Remember when the Philadelphia 76ers essentially invented the term ‘The Process?’
There was little doubt the organization was doing its best to purposefully lose games to secure a better opportunity to land the top pick. So to discourage tanking, the NBA revamped the format in 2019 to level the playing field.
By tweaking the format, the three teams featuring the worst regular-season record are automatically handed a 14% chance to win the lottery. Prior to the significant alteration, the team with the fewest wins had a 25% of grabbing the top selection, and the second-worst (19.9%) and third-worst (15.6%) teams also held better odds than the three teams with the highest odds under the current system.
But the new format also guarantees the team with the worst record will select no worse than fifth overall. Before the league’s change, the team with the worst record would select no lower than fourth.
How the process works
Conspiracy theorists believe the NBA should air the drawing live on television, it’s not a made for television event because it’s not akin to picking Mega Millions balls, as The Observer witnessed firsthand in 2024.
While the NBA utilizes a machine manufactured by the same company that produces state lottery equipment throughout the nation, the way the drawing works overall isn’t the same.
Prior to the actual process, the league assigns 1,000 of the combinations to the 14 teams. Ping-pong balls numbered one through 14 are dropped into the hopper and there are a total of 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of the 14, regardless of their order of selection.
Once the hopper is turned on, balls mix together for 20 seconds before the first ball is selected. Balls remaining are mixed in the machine for another 10 seconds prior to another ball being drawn. The process is repeated two more times and the team with the four-ball combinations is awarded the top selection.
Balls are returned to the machine and they repeat the process again to determine which teams pick second, third and fourth. Should the same team combination appear more than once — or if the one unassigned combination is drawn — the result is thrown out, leading to another four-ball combination being selected.
It’s a process the Hornets are extremely familiar with and one they hope to finally avoid a year from now for the first time in more than a decade should they finally end the NBA’s longest playoff drought in 2025-26.
How to watch: NBA Draft Lottery
▪ Where: McCormick Place West, Chicago
▪ Date: Monday, May 12
▪ Time: 7 p.m. ET
▪ TV: ESPN
