Woeful Bobcats hope for NBA lottery remedy

30 May 2012, 12:42 pm   -   Source: AAP

The Charlotte Bobcats are hoping some luck in the NBA draft lottery will help ease the pain of the worst season in NBA history.

After the worst season in NBA history, the Charlotte Bobcats could use a player such as Anthony Davis.

Unfortunately for Michael Jordan's team, it's been a long time since lottery luck shined on the team needing it most.

The Bobcats hope that trend ends on Wednesday (Thursday AEST), when they have the best odds of earning the No.1 pick in next month's draft.

Charlotte have a 25 per cent chance of victory, the reward for their 7-59 record that was the lowest winning percentage (.106) in league history.

Davis is the college player of the year after leading Kentucky to the national championship. He is considered the top prize available.

Not since 2004, when the Orlando Magic drafted Dwight Howard, has the team with the worst record won the lottery.

Minnesota dropped a spot to second last year, when the Cleveland Cavaliers moved up with a pick owed to them by the Los Angeles Clippers and took Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving.

The Bobcats, who dropped their final 23 games, appear in much more dire straits than some teams that were able to recover from their lottery letdowns.

"You could make the case that they don't have, at any position, a top-15 player at their position. So they're not in the top half of starters at any place on their roster....and that's why a guy like Anthony Davis, if they do draft him, he's going to be expected to turn it around. But there are no quick fixes," former NBA coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy said on Tuesday.

The Washington Wizards have a 19.9 percent chance of picking first, while Cleveland (13.8 percent) and New Orleans (13.7) have the next-best chances.

Though there are occasional complaints about the lottery format, NBA Commissioner David Stern has said there's been little call to change it.

Donnie Nelson, the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks, believes that's a good thing.

"I think the system works pretty well," Nelson said. "The problem you run into if you do away with it is there's the potential for teams tanking games at the end of the season and that can get kind of ugly. That's not a path you want to go down."

Van Gundy, like many, thinks the lottery is a way to police teams from trying to lose in hopes of securing the No.1 pick and even argued for dropping the weighted system that gives the Bobcats 250 out of 1000 chances, taking away even more incentive to lose.

Though he said the team played hard, he used the word "tanking" on Tuesday, essentially accusing Jordan's organisation of not trying to win this season.

"They have, I think, a very poor roster by design," he said. "I think they are trying to do what most people in the front office would agree with how they're doing it. Get bad to try to get good.

"People have done it before. San Antonio Spurs, I think it was 18 wins when David Robinson was hurt and they got Tim Duncan (in 1997) and for 15 years they've been just phenomenal. So what they're doing I think goes to what most people in the NBA would do, but it's by design."

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