The New Orleans Pelicans have the lowest odds of winning the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery, possessing only a 0.5% chance of landing the first overall draft pick and thus having the privilege of selecting Victor Wembanyama, easily the most hyped prospect since LeBron James, in June.
Moving inside the top four is nearly as unlikely, with the Pelicans having 2.4% odds of opening the door to names like Scoot Henderson, Brandon Miller and the Thompson brothers.
The Pelicans need something akin to a miracle of happening on Tuesday evening. No team has ever moved up from a pre-lottery position of No. 14 since the Charlotte Bobcats expansion increased the number of teams in the league from 29 to 30 in 2004.
Interestingly though, the Charlotte franchise pulled off the near impossible right before the turn of the millennium. The Hornets, which had a 0.5% chance of grabbing the overall top pick and 1.83% odds of moving inside the top 3, jumped up from No. 13 to No. 3 in 1999.
Those Hornets went on to select Baron Davis out of UCLA, and as a fun side note, Duke’s Trajan Langdon, the current general manager of the Pelicans, was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers at No. 11.
The New Orleans franchise has enjoyed good fortune in the past, winning two NBA draft lotteries over the last 11 years. They moved up three spots in 2012 to choose Anthony Davis out of Kentucky and climbed six rungs to select Duke’s Zion Williamson in 2019.
David Griffin, the executive vice president of basketball operations, will represent the Pelicans on stage during the televised portion of the drawing and Bryson Graham, the assistant general manager, will be in the backroom where the actual lottery takes place, per Christian Clark.
What: 2023 NBA Draft Lottery
When: May 16, 7:00 PM CDT
Where to Watch: ESPN
For more Pelicans talk, subscribe to The Bird Calls podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @OlehKosel.
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Poor Detroit..that franchise lives under a perpetual black cloud
Great, our division just got a whole lot more difficult.. Victor W to the Spurs
For the sake of carving out the best career possible, I wanted VW to land in San Antonio. Now all I can think about is how are the Pelicans going to defend him four times a year!
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Whatever happens, I have so much respect for Miami Heat under Spoelstra. He and Pops are my two favorite coaches. Their teams invariably play smart, disciplined and tenacious basketball
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Weird that the comments aren’t showing up
Sometimes they don’t show up until the next day
I know what you mean SS. Having hard time and every time I comment makes me put in email, name and web address even though I have checked off save
I posted on this thread on Thursday and the post still isn’t up. Hopefully this can eventually get as close to the previous comment section or it won’t be worth it anymore. But at least the LAF are down 3-0 so there’s dat!!
We’re working on these things as quickly as possible. We apologize for the delays, but there have been unforeseen complications related to the changeover from SB Nation. They didn’t make this an easy process.
Great, our division just got a whole lot more difficult.
Thank you for providing useful information. You’re doing a great job Man,Keep it up.
Thanks for the feedback. Please let us know what else we can do to improve the site. We’re going to be doing upgrades throughout the offseason.
geat content. thanks for sharing