Cavs have slim chance to win draft lottery May 17, but there's always hope

May 16—"So you're tellin' me there's a chance." — Jim Carrey, "Dumb and Dumber"

The odds of the Cavaliers winning the NBA draft lottery this year are beyond slim. But as one of 14 teams in the lottery because they did not make the playoffs, the possibility does exist.

The draft lottery will be staged in Chicago and televised on ESPN beginning at 8 p.m. May 17. Anderson Varejao will represent the Cavaliers.

Here is how the lottery works in the 30 — team NBA:

All 14 teams that did not make the playoffs participate in the lottery, but only four of those teams will win a lottery pick. The 10 teams that don't get lucky in the lottery will pick in the inverse order of their finish in the standings.

The Cavaliers were 44-38 in 2021-22. They finished with the best record among all the teams that missed the playoffs. Therefore, they have the lowest chance of winning the lottery — a scant 0.5 percent chance, which works out to a chance of one in 2,000. They have a 2.4 percent chance of getting one of the top four lottery picks, according to Tanakthon.com. That means the Cavaliers will most likely end up with the 14th pick in the draft June 23, assuming they don't make any trades that would change their position.

Ping pong balls are used to determine the lottery winners. The worse a team finished, the more combinations of ping pong balls drawn are allotted to that team.

The draft lottery has been around since 1985. Prior to that, the first pick was decided by a coin flip between the two teams that finished with the worst records in the league.

From 1985-89, all teams that missed the playoffs had an equal chance of winning the lottery.

A weighted lottery was introduced in 1990. Sixteen teams made the playoffs then, as now, but only 11 teams did not make the playoffs because the NBA was a 27-team league. The Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies were expansion teams in 1995. The New Orleans Pelicans were an expansion team in 2002.

From 1990-93, a total of 66 lottery tickets were allocated to the teams that did not make the playoffs. The team with the worst record had 11 tickets, the team with the second-worst 10, and so on until the team that just missed the playoffs by one slot got just one ticket.

In 1993, the Orlando Magic had the worst odds of getting the No. 1 pick. But they beat the odds, won the lottery and used the pick on Chris Webber. They traded Webber to Golden State for No. 3 pick Penny Hardaway and future first-round picks. That's a subject for a different view of NBA history, but it shows odds don't always work out the way they are expected to.

The Cavaliers beat the odds twice, though neither time as steep as they face this time. They had the third-best odds in 2013, but won the lottery and used the first pick on Anthony Bennett. The Cavs had a 1.7 percent chance to get the first pick in 2014, but they won the lottery again and used the pick on Andrew Wiggins. They then traded Wiggins to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love.

The most recent change occurred in 2019 the league decided the three teams with the worst records should have an equal chance of winning the first lottery pick. The change was made to discourage tanking.

The Houston Rockets (20-62) had the worst record in the NBA in 2021-22. The Magic were 22-60 and the Detroit Pistons 23-59. All three teams have an equal 52.1 percent chance to earn one of the top three picks and a 14 percent chance of getting the top pick.