By John Denton May 17, 2016
NEW YORK – In years past, the NBA Draft Lottery played a monumental role in the fate and direction of the Orlando Magic, awarding them with the three No. 1 picks used to stock the roster with superstars Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway and Dwight Howard.
However, recent lotto luck has been virtually nonexistent for the Magic as they have been unsuccessful in defying the odds and spring-boarding back to the top of the NBA Draft.
Armed with minimal odds in a fickle event where ping pong balls replace basketballs, the Magic failed once again on Tuesday night to move up in the NBA Draft Lottery and will pick 11th in the June 23rd NBA Draft.
The lottery held entirely to form with none of the teams rising above the slot in which that they came in according to the odds.
Philadelphia, which entered with a 25 percent shot at winning the Draft Lottery, captured the No. 1 pick on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Lakers snagged the No. 2 selection, while Boston won the No. 3 pick. The remaining 11 teams in the lottery were slotted in inverse order based on their regular-season records.
Orlando went 36-47 this past season – a 10-win improvement, but that success hurt the Magic’s odds in Tuesday night’s lottery. The Magic entered the night with the 11th best odds, coming in with just a 0.8 percent shot at the No. 1 pick. Similarly, they had just a 0.95 percent chance at No. 2 and a 1.15 percent probability at the No. 3 selection.
That left the Magic with a 90.74 percent chance at ending up with the No. 11 pick. They could have fallen as low at No. 14, but they avoided such a fate.
Orlando was represented at the NBA Draft Lottery by Senior Vice President Pat Williams and GM Rob Hennigan. Williams was on the podium for the televised version in 1992, ’93 and 2004, but Hennigan was seated there on Tuesday night. Williams represented the Magic in the room where the actual lottery was held hours before it was later revealed to the public on television.
This is the Magic’s fourth consecutive year in the NBA Draft Lottery instead of the playoffs. The past three years they have used picks No. 2, 4 and 5 to select Victor Oladipo (2013), Aaron Gordon (2014) and Mario Hezonja (2015) – the foundation of a promising young team going forward.
LSU forward Ben Simmons, a graduate of Monteverde Academy in suburban Orlando, is expected to be the top pick of the June 23rd NBA Draft. Duke’s Brandon Ingram is also in contention to be the first pick and will almost certainly be a top-three selection.
Orlando came into Tuesday hoping to get some clarity on a draft pick owed to them by the Los Angeles Lakers, but that selection is still up in the air because of what took place. With the Lakers landing in the top three of this June’s draft, the Magic will have to wait until next May to determine the pick that it will receive from the Lakers as compensation for the 2012 of Howard to Los Angeles. If the Lakers pick outside of the top four next June, the Magic will get L.A.’s first-round pick in 2019. If the Lakers are in the top four of next June’s draft, Orlando will get the Lakers’ second-round selections in 2017 and ’18.
The Magic are in the process of looking for a new head coach after Scott Skiles abruptly resigned late last week following just one season on the bench in Orlando. The Magic have had three coaches in the past four years, and have preliminarily started interviewing candidates for the head coaching position.
Orlando is one of four NBA teams currently without a head coach, joining Memphis, New York and Houston. Since the beginning of this past regular season, 11 teams have fired or have been forced to replace their head coaches.
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