This is how the NBA destiny of the prodigy Víctor Wembanyama will be known today

This morning the NBA draft lottery will be held and it’s not just anyone. It is in which it will be decided which franchise Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old French center and 2.19 meters will go to that, if there are no setbacks, will be number 1 and seems called to change the established order. This system was approved in June 1984 by the Board of Governors of the League and was launched for the first time in the 1985 edition. With it the order of the first 14 elections is determined, corresponding to the teams that have been left out of the playoffs.

Each of them is given a percentage chance of winning the lottery and taking the number 1 draft depending on their record in the regular season of the previous year. The last three, which this time are the Pistons, the Spurs and the Rockets, have 14%. Until 2019, the worst team had 25%; the second worst, 19.9%; and the third, 15.6%. The current format ensures that the team with the worst record will never pick lower than fifth.

They will be done first draws to determine the top four picks, and then positions five through 14 will go in reverse order of their records in the last regular season. The process is remarkably complex and extremely meticulous. In the room where it takes place there can only be a small group of media, NBA officials, representatives of the franchises and an auditor from the firm Ernst & Young, who will attest to the cleanliness of the procedure.

First 14 rigorously heavy ping-pong balls, measured and numbered from 1 to 14, will be placed in a drum. Four must be drawn, which returns 1,001 different combinations. Of those, 1,000 will be assigned to the 14 participating franchises. The balls will be mixed for 20 seconds before the first one is drawn. Timing will be kept by a timekeeper who faces the opposite side of the machine and tells the operator when to stop the machine.

Results that are discarded

Before extracting the second, third and fourth balls, they must be mixed for another 10 seconds. The team that has been assigned the combination with the four balls drawn will be the winner of the lottery and will receive the first choice.. The same process will be repeated to find out which franchises they choose in second, third and fourth place. If the same wins more than once or the combination is the only one of the 1,001 that has not been assigned, the result is discarded and another four balls are drawn.

Mark Tatum, deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the NBA, will be in charge of announcing the results of the lottery. and the name of the franchise you will choose first. If every year the process is important for the future of the League, this time it is even more so. The fate of a player, Wembanyama, who many see marking an era in the best basketball league in the world, will be decided. On June 22, at the draft ceremony, it will be official.