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Breaking down the luck of the lottery

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I couldn't cram everything into this week's 1,200-word magazine column about the NBA Lottery, so let's follow up with some hardcore data to fully illustrate the futility of the current system. The basic premise of my magazine column was twofold: First, the LOTTERY system encourages the same thing it was originally created to prevent (tanking); and second, since weighted Ping-Pong balls effectively guarantee that elite rookies will start their careers on terrible teams, the overall quality of t ...

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