I doubt it's an actual coin flip. They probably just put the team names into their fancy bowl shaped like a cut off basketball and draw them out one at a time.
As for the lottery, it's not a system that looks exciting on TV. They draw out 4 ping pong balls from a hopper with 14 balls numbered 1 -14. They then have a sheet with all the possible combinations divided among the teams in the lottery. You can see the number of combination chances for each team in Kennadog's post above. So in the 8,9,10 tie, it goes 28 + 17 + 11 = 56 then 56 / 3 = 18.6. So round that off and each tied team will receive 18 number combinations. I'm guessing the extra 2 combinations are marked as NO TEAM. So they would just redraw in the unlikely chance that combination gets drawn. Riveting, eh?
As for the lottery, it's not a system that looks exciting on TV. They draw out 4 ping pong balls from a hopper with 14 balls numbered 1 -14. They then have a sheet with all the possible combinations divided among the teams in the lottery. You can see the number of combination chances for each team in Kennadog's post above. So in the 8,9,10 tie, it goes 28 + 17 + 11 = 56 then 56 / 3 = 18.6. So round that off and each tied team will receive 18 number combinations. I'm guessing the extra 2 combinations are marked as NO TEAM. So they would just redraw in the unlikely chance that combination gets drawn. Riveting, eh?
I'm thinking the same thing JB is about drawing teams from a lopped basketball for the 3way tie. I was trying to look for what they actually do for it but couldn't come up with anything, but I did come across this interesting behind the scenes article: http://www.nba.com/features/inside_lottery_050524.html