Pistons', Red Wings' Lack of Draft Lottery Luck Shows Flaws in System

Just a few days into 2024, a $842 million Powerball ticket was sold in the Flint suburb of Grand Blanc. It stands as the 10th largest lottery jackpot ever sold in the U.S., and one of two top-10 lottery wins in the state of Michigan.

Well, the Detroit Red Wings and Pistons can only wish they had that kind of lottery luck. Combined, the two organizations have been a part of 26 draft lotteries. Only the Pistons have moved up once — in 2021 when they took Cade Cunningham first overall. Meanwhile, he teams have moved down a combined 13 times. Sunday at the 2024 NBA Draft Lottery, the Pistons moved down from being the last place team in the regular season to drafting fifth overall — the second straight season they suffered a four-spot fall. The Red Wings’ worst lottery miss happened in 2020, when they had the highest odds to draft first overall but ended up falling to fourth. The bitter taste of lottery disappointment is a taste that Detroit sports fans have come to expect this time of year, like some sort of sports communion.

Fans shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of lottery success. Mathematically, this is almost exactly how the lottery is supposed to work. As much as the Pistons and Red Wings have had high odds to draft first overall, they’ve also had more than an 80 percent chance in those years to not pick first. Those odds are higher, and the lottery balls have fallen that way nearly every year.

As much as this lottery system might be functioning how it’s built to, the Pistons’ and Red Wings’ lack of lottery luck shows how flawed the draft lottery system really is. Instead of helping the team with the greatest need of high-end reinforcements, the lottery system only makes those players harder to acquire.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction to blame lottery luck for losses is a tricky one, and be clear that I’m not here to make excuses for either team. The Pistons have still drafted high enough to take impact players the past few years. It’s on their scouts to find who can help them most. No one made them draft Killian Hayes. Likewise, the Red Wings have used free agent pickups to field a competitive team while their top draft picks mature. There’s a way to win without picking first overall, as the 29-plus teams that pick later always seem to figure out. There is more than one good player in every draft.

Yet, there’s something so deflatingly unfair about the way that Detroit’s teams — especially the Pistons — continuously lose out in the draft lottery. At points in their rebuilds, no other team lost more games than either Detroit franchise. In the past three seasons, the Pistons have racked up 192 losses — 24 more than the second-place San Antonio Spurs. And in the darkest days of the Red Wings’ rebuild from 2018-19 to 2020-21, 128 losses made them the NHL’s beautiful loser. The Ottawa Senators (124) and Buffalo Sabres (115) were right on their heels.

Those are the kinds of teams that need a jump start, who a top-tier player could help out. Those are the teams that should be picking first overall, and for the most part the draft lottery gives them — multiple of them — a way to do that. But, when a team like the Pistons routinely slips through the cracks, how does this jell with the benefits of a lottery system?

Such losing ways year in and year out shows how much these teams needed an upgrade, yet the No. 1 pick has more often eluded them. The Pistons’ 2021 lottery win was a big step for their organization, enabling them to draft Cade Cunningham. But his talent alone can’t carry the franchise, and instead they’ve continued to struggle. The Red Wings missed out on Alexis Lafreniere in 2020, instead landing star winger Lucas Raymond at fourth overall. As much as all’s well that ends well with Raymond being their leading points scorer, they still lack the kind of center depth that Lafreniere’s services would bring. He could have sped up the rebuild to some degree, as other picks might have helped the Pistons finish their own rebuild. Even so, GM Steve Yzerman recognized why a slip happened. Back in 2020, he almost expected it given the probability of another team landing first overall.

“They have to do what they have to do,” Yzerman said after the 2020 lottery. “Anything I say is going to be self-serving. They have to do what they have to do.”

But the leagues should also be serving their teams, especially ones that really need some help. They can do that with a straight-up draft system where the worst team gets first dibs.

Why did the lottery system start in the first place? The lottery began in 1984 for the NBA and 1995 for the NHL as a way to discourage teams from tanking during the regular season. Neither league wanted down-on-their-luck teams to roll over and give up on a bad season. It hasn’t worked. This season, the NBA watched the Pistons and Washington Wizards couldn’t scrape 20 wins together, while the 21-win Portland Trail Blazers and Charlotte Hornets just barely cleared the .250. In the NHL, the Macklin Celebrini sweepstakes saw tanking efforts from the San Jose Sharks, Chicago Blackhawks and Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets.

As much as teams might not have an absolute claim to first overall if they tank, teams are still tanking for the chance to draft a franchise player. Expanding the number of teams with a claim to first overall only invites more teams to bail on seasons that aren’t going their way. Even the Philadelphia Flyers, who were in a playoff spot for most of the season, threw in the towel at the trade deadline by selling off some talented pieces of the lineup. Now, they weren’t going for first overall, but they were effectively giving up on a playoff spot to do it over again some other year. Tanking is still in style, no matter how much a lottery system tries to stop it.

What’s worse, though: teams tanking, or teams continuing to lose? Star players are stars for a reason. The talent they inject into a roster is immeasurable. Look at what the Minnesota Timberwolves got from Anthony Edwards, or what the Edmonton Oilers got in Connor McDavid. Those teams moved up in their respective draft lotteries, getting an MVP-caliber player that has led to so much success to date.

Meanwhile, the most hapless team in the NBA — the Pistons — are stuck in a nosedive they want to get out of but which the draft lottery has made harder to escape. If they were able to draft a player like Victor Wembanyama or Paolo Banchero, they might have a supporting cast for Cunningham that could solve their losing problem. Likewise for the Red Wings, they might be more competitive if they had better luck in the depths of their rebuild, especially with a star like Lafreniere.

Of course, the draft isn’t the only way for a team to get better, and the fourth or fifth pick in a draft still gives a team a quality player if their scouting department does its job well enough. Good coaching and player development can maximize a team’s assets beyond the talent that draft picks come in with. Teams can also seek upgrades through trades and free agency, like the Red Wings did the past couple seasons that got them within a win of the playoffs this season. If the draft lottery is so unreliable, GMs shouldn’t rely on it to begin with.

However, that doesn’t change the way that the system hurts teams that need the most help. The draft should help a league’s have-nots, not put them at the whims of some plastic lotto balls that might all too often betray them.

You can argue that a weak draft class like this year’s makes the Pistons lottery luck a non-issue — in such a wide-open draft class, is there really that much difference between the first and fifth picks? You can also argue that the Red Wings’ 2020 draft fall wasn’t a big deal because they got Raymond. But this doesn’t mean that the draft lottery isn’t fundamentally unsound. Only calling out the flaws when there’s a big star on the line makes a pertinent issue seem like sour grapes.

It’s impossible to build a system that will satisfy everyone. The draft lottery is a system built to appease those that don’t want to see tanking, who want to see million and billion dollar organizations try to win every night. As an unintended consequence, the team that’s losing the most is disadvantaged to get the kind of talent it needs to level the playing field.

Maybe the Pistons can use their Little Caesars Arena roommates as an example of how to get out of their rut without picking first overall. Free agent signings, improved coaching and player development could help them build a more competitive roster.

At the very least, they can commiserate about how much the draft lottery has failed them.

Also from THN Detroit

Alex Lyon Injured in Men’s Worlds Game, Trey Augustine Wins in Relief for Team USA

Unlucky Number 15: Why NHL Teams Struggle to Pick at 15th Overall

Would a Tyler Bertuzzi Reunion Make Sense for the Red Wings?

When is an NHL Rebuild Truly Over?

Second Round Stanley Cup Playoff Jamboree: The Silky Mitten State Episode 25

Yzerman Celebrates Birthday with Busy Summer to Come

DeBrincat: "I Think Consistency is What Makes Great Players, and I Want to Be a Great Player"

Tkachuk? Lafreniere? What the Red Wings’ Roster Could Be Like with a Little More Draft Lottery Luck