Well, here we are folks. Time to see if the "Lottery Gods" are finally on our side.
NOTE: They are not, so prepare to be disappointed...
What pick will we end up with?
I am sorry, but I am pretty tired of this take that we have no lottery luck. We have had about the same type of lottery luck you would expect for a team in the lottery every year. We can't draft worth a damn, (last two years notwithstanding) but our recent lottery luck has been pretty average. In fact, the last time we moved down in the lottery was
2014, when we fell from 7 to 8, and drafted Stauskas.
2014- fell from 7 to 8, drafted Stauskas
2015- stayed at 6- drafted Willie
2016- stayed at 8 - traded down to 13 to draft Papa G
2017- moved up from 8 to 3 (and ultimately down to 5 because of the trade with Philly) - drafted Fox
2018- moved up from 7 to 2- drafted Bagley
2019- stayed at 14- no pick
2020- stayed at 12- drafted Tyrese
20210 stayed at 9- drafted Davion
So in the past 8 years we have moved up 25% of the time (2/8), moved down 12.5% of the time (1/8) and stayed put 62.5% of the time (5/8). That is actually pretty consistent with the actual odds, especially when you consider that we have never been positioned higher than 6th going into the lottery and routinely have pretty low odds of moving up (especially before they flattened the odds).
Our luck over the past 5 has been even better- moved up 2 times and stayed put 3 times. No move downs. So we've had better than average luck, especially for having the 7th, 8th, 9th, 12th, and 14th worst records those years.
So don't cry about luck; cry about what we've done with our relatively favorable or (at worst) neutral luck.