Last week, the 2008 NBA Lottery took place, and for the fifth time in as many years, the worst team in the NBA did not get the number one draft pick. As odd as it sounds, it is by design. To me, that means there is a problem.

Once upon a time, the teams in the NBA Draft were ranked in inverse order of their place. This means that the team with the worst record received the first pick, the second-worst record the second pick, and so on. However, in an effort to prevent teams with no playoff chances from losing games to gain a higher draft position, the NBA instituted the lottery.

The lottery has gone through some changes since its inception - in the 1985 draft, each of the non-playoff teams had an equal chance of being the top pick - but this is how it stands now: The worst team in the NBA has a 25% chance of getting the top pick, the second-worst team has about a 20% chance, all the way down to the fourteenth worst team, i.e. the team that was closest to the playoffs, which has a .5% chance. Also, the lottery only selects the top three teams, with the rest falling in the order mentioned above, meaning a team cannot get a pick more than three lower than their rank.

The NBA has clearly put a lot of thought into this system, as it has evolved over the years to what we have now. However, I think that there is a flaw in the system. Based on the probabilities, there is a 75% chance that the team with the worst record does not get the first pick. I know that the odds of the second-worst team missing out on the first pick is higher, and I know that the point of the lottery is to keep the worst team from being guaranteed the top pick. However, it seems to me that there should be a reassessment of the probabilities.

So, what should be done? I am not sure. One possible solution is to correlate the probability of winning the top pick with the team’s record more directly. That is, a last place team with a record of 5-77 should have a higher probability of getting the top pick than a last place team who went 20-62. Or, perhaps only let the bottom five teams compete for the number one pick, which at least prevents the better teams from getting such a large advantage. I do not know the solution. But, the worst teams are not getting the best players, and that means that there is a problem.