NBA draft lottery: Inside secret room where picks are decided - ESPN

«Can you imagine if this happened last year?»

That was a common sentiment in the private lottery drawing room, where about three dozen people give up their laptops and cell phones and sequester themselves to watch the real lottery about an hour before the televised version.

A year ago in Chicago, with Victor Wembanyama atop every draft board, you could feel the tension among the 14 team officials — one for each lottery team — in that drawing room. Everyone knew the stakes. Everyone was on edge. The usual small talk before the drawing was stilted and fidgety. Even the media members and NBA staffers in attendance were nervous.

This year, it was borderline casual. There is no consensus No. 1 pick, though several team officials and agents gathered in Chicago for the draft combine told ESPN that center Alex Sarr is the one player most likely to fall in the top two or three of almost every team's draft board. Beyond that, it's chaos. Team officials expect several teams might investigate the return for trading down a few slots — only to have trouble finding a trade partner eager to deal meaningful assets to move up.

In the weeks leading to Sunday, even officials from teams who stood to potentially lose their first-round picks depending on the luck of the draw — the Toronto Raptors, Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors among them — seemed indifferent to the results.

But the lottery has a way of delivering anxiety, and you could feel it ripple around the room after an NBA staffer pressed a button to suck the first three numbered pingpong balls from the classic air-powered lottery machine the NBA uses for this theater of the bizarre. The machine holds 14 balls, numbered 1-14. The league draws four in sequence, creating a