Honestly, does anyone think this is going to go well?

I got a text this morning from the President of the Denver branch of Loserville Alumni, Brent Okerson, comparing the Minnesota Timberwolves success in the NBA lottery to that of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship game.  Sadly, and I can't believe I'm saying this, it's even worse than that.

For one thing, although it's hard to believe if you're under the age of 40, the Vikings have actually had some success in NFC Championship games.  I can logic that one out just by looking at their 4 Super Bowl losses.  On the other hand, the NBA Draft Lottery has never aided the Wolves in their history, and it certainly isn't for lack of opportunities.  This isn't to say they've never picked an impact player with a lottery selection, just that the lottery has never improved the team's draft position over what they're record dictated, even moving them down several times.  Let me repeat that, in 14 previous trips to the draft lottery, the Wolves...have...never...moved...up.  Not once.

So why should we expect this time around to be different?  You got me.  There should be no easier time to sell hope than lotto time, and some people may claim optimism, but can anyone honestly say they expect to land one of the top two picks, which is where the consensus impact players will be taken?  If you said yes, I will politely retort by saying bullshit.

Why is this such a big deal?  Two reasons:

1. In basketball, more than any other sport, one elite player can completely reverse a team's fortunes.

The most famous example in Wolves history is of course the 1992 lottery, where the team came in with the worst record and best chance at drafting Shaquille O'Neal, would've been happy to settle for the Alonzo Mourning consolation prize, but instead slipped back to third and ushered in the Christian Laettner Era.  I'm going ton go out on a limb here and say that the course of both Timberwolves and NBA history would've been dramatically different had the percentages borne out in the draft order; surprisingly, I'm not the first to come to that revelation.

And while the Shaq/Mourning debacle may be the best known case of GTL (Grand Theft Lotto), a laundry list of other impact talents have been missed over the years due to the bounce of the ping-pong balls, including Mutumbo, Iverson, Webber, Kidd, Hill, Durant and Rose; just to name a few.  Now I know this team has had it's share of self-inflicted carnage when it's come to draft day (can't ignore it if you try) but that doesn't changed the fact that anyone of these players could have changed the path of Wolves history, even if everything else had goen down the same way.  Now would we have traded Allen Iverson for Stephon Marbury and the rights to a 7-foot Eastern European goatherder with a nice hook shot?  Totally possible, but at least it wouldn't feel like a cosmic conspiracy.  Lotta practice with abject stupidity in these parts, dumb luck just seems...well, dumb.

2. Luck happens!

What I'm suggesting here isn't some far-fetched, once-in-a-lifetime scenario, it happens with alarming frequency.  In the 20 lotteries conducted so far, a team with a less than 10% chance has landed the #1 pick 8 times (40%); in fact, it's happened 4 out of the past 5 years.  Twice in lottery history a team with a less than 2% chance has landed the #1 overall, with Orlando doing it in 1993 as part of unfathomable back-to-back #1s and Chicago pulling it off to grab Derrick Rose two years ago.  Both of those teams were young and on the rise, had barely missed the playoffs, and are the textbook cases for why this idiotic system needs to be reworked.  A team that misses the playoffs by one game, as Orlando did in 1992, should just not have a shot at a #1 pick, period.  Although Chicago may have been in a slightly tougher position, they were still only the 9th-worst team and in no way deserved the opportunity to draft the most highly regarded point guard to enter the league in some time.  (Honorable mention to San Antonio winning the right to draft Tim Duncan 1997, following a season-long injury to David Robinson, keying a dynasty that lasted a decade.  At least they'd sucked the year before...albeit when down an MVP candidate).

So while other teams stumble bass ackwards into lottery riches, my favorite NBA squad chokes down it's turd sandwich, while trying to make us believe it tastes delicious.  The Wolves have approximately a 20% chance of landing the #1 pick this evening and a 37% chance of landing in the top 2.  Given the two can't-miss players in the draft, and their position with the league's 2nd-worst record, anything else would be an abject failure.  But failure is expected, hell it's a lock, the only shocking thing would be if something good actually happened, as the Annual Death of Hope (as I like to refer to it) has almost become comforting in it's dependability.  As the saying goes, you seen the sun rise every day of your life, it gets to the point you sort of depend on it; death, taxes, and picking one spot after the last impact player is off the board, that's the Minnesota way.

But hey, since I'm on a roll with the reverse-jinx these days, we'll give it another shot here: I guarantee the Minnesota Twimberwolves do not move up in tonight's lottery.  They will pick 4th and end up with a stiff, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, bank on it.