Wolves' luck is the worst: A lesson in NBA lottery history

We took every year of the lottery and calculated each team's draft-position movement relative to their pre-lottery ranking.

May 19, 2015 at 8:58PM

How bad is the Wolves' luck in the NBA draft lottery? The worst. We took every year of the lottery and calculated each team's draft-position movement relative to their pre-lottery ranking, and the Wolves ranked last: a minus-15 score, for the 15 total positions they have dropped in their 18 lottery appearances. New Orleans – which bounced up to nab Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson in its Charlotte days, and Anthony Davis in the Pelicans era – is the league-leader, moving up 19 positions in 14 all-time appearances. A look at the luck of all 30 teams:

You can read more about each franchise's lottery history in Kent Youngblood's Tuesday Star Tribune story here. And startribune.com will have more coverage of the lottery (7:30 tonight, ESPN) before, during and after the lottery show that will include an instant top-5 mock draft.

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