Your Draft Lottery Viewers Guide

Here's what to root for as the envelopes are revealed at 5pm on ESPN.

For Sonics Fans:
Rank: #2
Probability of getting #1 pick: 1 in 5 (19.9%)
Most likely pick: #4 (31.9% chance)

You're gonna want to be seeing the early envelopes match exactly with the order of how teams finished. So you'll want to see Golden State 14th, Portland 13th, Sacramento 12th, etc (here's the full order, with probabilities).

Why? Because so-called lottery is really just to select the first three picks--after that, the teams are slotted from 4-14 based on their regular season records. So if, for instance, 13th-ranked Portland is given the 14th pick, that means 14th-ranked Golden State is among the top three--and that one of the teams most likely to end up in the top three isn't. Of course, that team that gets bounced could be Minnesota or Miami, but ideally things just proceed according to plan.

For this reason, the least-likely pick for the Sonics is #5 (12.3% chance). That would mean that three non top-three teams leaped into the top three. This is pretty unlikely--but if you see the picks from #4-#14 all jumbled up, that may be what's happened.

For Blazers Fans:
Rank: #13
Probability of getting #1 pick: 1 in 167 (0.6)%
Most likely pick: #13 (96% chance)

There's not likely to be much drama for Blazers fans. If they ran this lottery 100 times, in 98 of them the Blazers would know after the first two envelopes are revealed where they'll be picking. If the Blazers are the first envelope revealed (so, the 14th pick), that's good news for Golden State, which has improbably gotten a top three pick. More likely, Golden State will be 14th, and the Blazers will come up with the 13th pick. If the Blazers don't, that means that they, once again, have gotten a top three pick.

The always fantastic Blazers Edge (whose editor, Dave Deckard, begins a regular gig with Sports NW mag in the June issue) has a much more comprehensive look at the view from the banks of the Willamette.