The 2002 NBA Draft Lottery
In 2002, the overall feeling in the league was that you needed to get bigger in order to survive in the West. At the time, Shaquille O’Neal was bulldozing through “defensive specialists” such as Rik Smits and Dikembe Mutombo on the way to multiple titles for the Los Angeles Lakers. Teams needed a center in order to survive and even push the Lakers to more than five games in a playoff series.
Luckily, in the NBA draft, that year a 7’6” center named Yao Ming from Shanghai, China was available. Ming was thought of as raw but had the potential to be a very successful center in the league. The Houston Rockets ended up winning the lottery with an 8.9% chance of landing the top pick. This gave them the chance to pair Steve Francis (who they traded for on draft day in 1999 with Vancouver) with a legit big man who could run the floor, shoot and play defense.
Overall, I get a fishy feeling from this because it gave the big market Rockets another piece to get them to the postseason. But, I will let it slide because Yao was not the consensus number one pick at the time. In 2002, Jay Williams and Yao were talked about as the number one, but the Rockets went with Yao because they already had a point guard.
This draft lottery also did not screw over the Suns. The Suns had the 9th best odds of receiving the first pick and ended up drafting Amare Stoudemire at the 9th spot.