A History of Hornets' Draft Lottery Performances

[Reposting this slightly-updated story originally from 2010 looking at the Hornets in the lottery. The 2012 lottery is tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6:30 PM CST. Link to the original story is here. -R]

With the draft lottery only three days away now, I thought it'd be interesting to look back at each of the previous times the Hornets have been in the lottery.

Graphically:

The draft slot essentially refers to the Hornets' place in the standings, in reverse order. Some points of note:

• The odds for the top 3 in 1990, 1991, and 1992 have to be wrong, I'm assuming. I got the data from DraftExpress; if the only way the Hornets could land in the top 3 in any of those years was to get the #1 overall pick, how did they get the #2 pick in 1992?
• New Orleans nabbed Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning at #1 and #2, at long odds for each. As bad as the franchise was in its inaugural years, it actually took them some luck to land those two guys.
• Check out 1999! The Hornets had 1.8% odds of getting a top 3 pick (more than a percentage point lower than our 2010 odds) and they nailed it. That was the year they took Baron Davis at 3, out of UCLA, behind Elton Brand and Steve Francis.
• The top 3 selection of 1999 was the last the Hornets had for the next five seasons. In between, they fired a couple coaches, switched GM's, came within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals, and oh, switched cities.
• The Hornets' average draft slot when in the lottery is 9.2, and their average pick is 7.1.
• 2005 came together rather oddly. The Hornets actually finished in a tie for the league's second worst record, with the Charlotte Bobcats. The teams had a coin flip at an owner's meeting, before the draft lottery. In case neither team picked up a top 3 draft selection, the coin flip determined which team would select ahead of the other. At the time, I don't recall it being that big of a deal; both the Bobcats and the Hornets had higher than 50% odds they'd get at least a top 3 pick. Of course, as luck would have it, the Bucks, Hawks, and Blazers nailed down the top three picks. The Hornets selected 4th, Charlotte selected 5th, and the rest is history.