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The 14 ping pong balls behind the no. 1 pick

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The Houston Rockets are already guaranteed a top five win in the 2022 NBA lottery, but their exact fate and that of the other 13 lottery teams rests with the 14 ping pong balls being drawn from a cast acrylic mixing chamber on Tuesday night.

NBA executives don’t waltz into a sports store to buy ping-pong balls for the raffle, which will take place at 7 p.m. in Chicago. In fact, you can’t find these balls anywhere else because they are specially made by Smartplay International, the company that has been renting lottery equipment to the NBA since 1997.

In high-stakes draws, there is a huge responsibility in overseeing the process that determines which NBA team will make the coveted No. 1 pick, said Tom Markert, president of Smartplay International.

You think about everything NBA related and you’re not just talking about people’s passion, but there’s a lot of money involved, Markert said. So people want to make sure it’s a very fair process.

Smartplay offers lottery machines and draw balls for most of the lotteries in the world, including Powerball, Mega Millions, the UK National Lottery and the Hong Kong Jockey Club. The WNBA and NHL are also customers.

So what we’re bringing to the table is the credibility that we’re going to provide the drawing balls that are definitely the closest tolerance balls, Markert said. Literally, we weigh them to the 1000th of a gram and we measure them. In addition, the NBA uses a company called Gaming Labs to verify by third parties that the balls are within spec, and that spec is more or less the industry standard in the lottery industry for machines that can sometimes determine if the balls are within spec. billions of dollars in prize money.

The demanding operation begins long before NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum announces the lottery results on the podium in Chicago. Smartplay has a supplier that manufactures the drawing balls, in company-owned moulds, to specifications of three-star balls considered match quality by the International Table Tennis Association.

Each ball has a diameter of approximately 38 millimeters and weighs 2.5 grams. The maximum variation between the heaviest and lightest ball is 0.15 grams, about the same weight as an inch of hair.

After the balls are sorted and weighed to ensure uniformity, they are covered with paint and clear coating and then numbered 1-14. At the lottery, they are placed in a completely see-through standard daily mixing chamber that is 55 inches long and 11.5 inches in diameter. Before being selected, the balls are blown around by a centrifugal fan that moves the air at a speed of 90 mph.

Every detail has been tested countless times by third parties to optimize randomness, which, it turns out, is a bit of an exact science.

NBA DESIGN LOTTERY

WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday

TRUE: Chicago

TV: ESPN

CHANCES

Team

No. 1 choice

No. 2 choice

No. 3 choice

No. 4 choice

No. 5 choice

No. 6 choice

1. Houston

14.0%

13.4%

12.7%

12.0%

47.9%

N/A

2. Orlando

14.0%

13.4%

12.7%

11.9%

27.8%

20.1%

3. Detroit

14.0%

13.4%

12.7%

11.9%

14.8%

26.0%

4. Oklahoma City

11.5%

11.4%

11.2%

11.0%

7.4%

27.1%

5. Indianapolis

11.5%

11.4%

11.2%

11.0%

2.2%

18.2%

6. Portland

9.0%

9.2%

9.4%

9.6%

N/A

8.6%

7. Sacramento

7.5%

7.8%

8.1%

8.5%

N/A

N/A

8. LA Lakers

4.5%

4.8%

5.2%

5.7%

N/A

N/A

9. Saint Anthony

4.5%

4.8%

5.2%

5.7%

N/A

N/A

10. Washington

4.5%

4.8%

5.2%

5.7%

N/A

N/A

11. New York

1.8%

2.0%

2.2%

2.5%

N/A

N/A

12. LA Clippers

1.7%

1.9%

2.1%

2.4%

N/A

N/A

13. Charlotte

1.0%

1.1%

1.2%

1.4%

N/A

N/A

14. Cleveland

0.5%

0.6%

0.6%

0.7%

N/A

N/A


At the end of the day, we take balls that are essentially the same size and essentially the same weight, and we apply the same physical forces distributed across the matrix so that the result is random, Markert said.

There are 1001 possible combinations when four of the 14 balls are drawn, regardless of their selection order. Before the NBA lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations are assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams based on records (the only unassigned combination is skipped if it is drawn).

The three teams with the worst records, the Rockets, the Magic and the Pistons, each have a 14 percent chance of making the No. 1 overall pick and a 52.1 percent chance of making a top four selection.

Smartplay, headquartered in New Jersey, supplies the mixing room to the NBA along with a backup machine in the event of a breakdown. The drawing balls take a more circuitous route, following a chain of evidence where they are weighed, measured and sealed once by Smartplay and once by Gaming Laboratories International. On the day of the lottery, the balls are checked again in the presence of witnesses.

The process may seem old-fashioned or unnecessarily veiled, but Markert said it was all in the name of transparency.

I originally went to school for theater and mechanical engineering, Markert said. And, you know, if you think about it, there’s a little bit of theater involved in what I do. And there’s a lot of mechanical engineering.

The 14 balls are mixed for 20 seconds before the first ball is drawn and the three following balls are drawn at 10-second intervals to determine the four-digit combination for the first pick. The process repeats for the second through fourth choice.

Tatum announces the results in reverse order. The team whose logo is in the last open envelope will receive the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, which will be held on Thursday, June 23 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

A Philadelphia 76ers fan, Markert enjoys the spectacle of the lottery and its ability to change franchises for years to come.

I love the NBA for a number of reasons, and now of course there will always be strong teams, but there is the opportunity for teams to suddenly get good, he said. It can turn around, and it wasn’t that long ago that the 76ers were actually in the basement. And now they are confused again.

For fans of NBA teams involved in the lottery, Markert urges them to trust the process in more ways than one.

[email protected]

twitter.com/danielle_lerner

Sources

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