They say optimists live longer than pessimists. But nowhere does anyone say optimists garner any kind of lopsided favor from the fates, from Lady Luck and from the basketball gods when it comes to winning the NBA draft lottery. That puissant group might give a little here to a smattering of souls, punishing everybody else over there. It’s a cluster made up of cruel, mean-spirited, heartless suckers.
Yeah, every once in a blue moon someone gets a few bits of fortuity, like, say, Utah Hockey Club in its recent lottery position in the NHL draft, moving up 10 spots to the fourth overall pick, leaning heavily on fractional odds. It can happen, but don’t get your hopes up. it usually doesn’t.
That’s the problem with Lady Luck — you can’t trust her, nor her friends, not with any reliance or regularity. They’ll smile at you, make you feel like there’s a chance, and then kick you in the teeth and laugh at your pain.
Prepare, then, to be disappointed.
Which is also to say, I’ve got a bad feeling about what might happen to the Jazz on May 12, when the order of selection in the lottery is tossed into the air like a shrimp over the grill at Benihana’s and set to toy with the fortunes of diners with gaping mouths.
A bad, bad feeling.
And a bad, bad attitude.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz forward Cody Williams (5) as the Utah Jazz host the Boston Celtics, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 21, 2025.
Something’s going to go wrong. I don’t wish it to go wrong. I, personally, don’t really care, one way or the other. It makes no difference to me. But it does matter to a whole lot of people in this community who have poured their emotion and time and money into supporting this team, into buying tickets and concessions and Jazz gear, cheering their guts out, riding the rollercoaster and exacting the toll out of themselves that their fandom requires.
Fans here have seen it all — the good, the bad and, especially of late, the ugly. They’ve come close a couple of times in the distant past to celebrating championships, have seen a lot of good basketball, have tolerated some mediocrity and been subjected in recent seasons to watching a team that wanted to win less than they wanted it to win. That’s the way it goes when management blows up a playoff team with three All-Stars, all of them forging success in the playoffs now with other teams, and the only way out and up for what remains is by putting the franchise in position to rely on unsteady fortune to gain talent through happy results in said draft.
When it gets to this sad juncture in the process, as one longtime NBA coach once told me, the factors to count on are double-barreled: 1) to be smart and, more importantly, 2) to be lucky.
Great balls afire. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?
Since the Jazz suffered through the worst season in club history this go-round and the worst record (17-65) in the league, dragging their players and coaches and fans through a tethered kind of misery, they have as good a shot as any other lousy team to land the No. 1 pick. They share with their tanking partners in crime — the Washington Wizards (18-64) and the Charlotte Hornets (19-63) a 14 percent chance each of getting the top spot and drafting Cooper Flagg.
Duke forward Cooper Flagg (2) reacts during the second half of an Elite Eight round NCAA college basketball tournament game against Alabama, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
The odds trickle away from there, with the Pelicans at 12.5 percent, the 76ers (could be conveyed to OKC) at 10.5 percent, Brooklyn at 9 percent, Toronto at 7.5 percent, the Spurs at 6 percent on down the line.
Check your grins and giggles at the door, though, because since the lottery started in 1985, in various forms, the worst record has reaped the first pick just six times. Six times in 40 years.
Moreover, luck hasn’t exactly smiled on the Jazz by way of lottery results in the past. It’s been vision and acumen that has boosted them in the years where positive things happened, taking John Stockton with the 16th pick in 1984, taking Karl Malone with the 13th pick in 1985, getting Donovan Mitchell at 13 and Rudy Gobert at 27 through the Nuggets in subsequent drafts.
Call me Debbie Downer — I don’t sound like a Debbie — if you will, but I got a feeling based on what’s already been discussed here that the Jazz aren’t going to get the top pick. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they’ll stumble into what they “earned,” but don’t bet on it.
The way I see it, my job here is to prepare all y’all for the disappointment that’s bound to come. What else do they say? It’s better to be surprised than disappointed. I don’t want innocent, vulnerable Jazz fans to get all sucked into it and then suffer the hurt of the optimist who, strapping on paper wings thinking he can fly, leaps off the Empire State building and after falling 50 floors says, “So far, so good.”
The best news is that the Jazz, on account of their awful record, can’t get shut out any further than the fifth pick. Dem’s da rules. So, I’d say, get ready for No. 3 or No. 4. Gather your emotions and fortify your resolve.
And one more thing: Count on the Jazz — if they don’t aggressively spend some of their future assets in trade for something better, quicker — to tank again next season, as they shout out the virtues of patience and development and pucker up for that cruel, heartless mistress, Lady Luck, and her mean-spirited friends, next time around.
