2023 NBA Draft: 3 big Winners and 3 losers after the draft lottery
By Ryan McCrary
The 2023 NBA Draft lottery was a disaster for the Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets
Now that we’ve looked at three teams who came away from the lottery as massive winners let’s look at three teams who didn’t have such a great night and came away incredibly disappointed.
1. Detroit Pistons – loser
The lottery was brutal for the Detroit Pistons, who had the worst record in the league but walked away with just the fifth pick in the draft. Since they had such a poor record this season, the Pistons were one of three teams with the best odds to land the No. 1 pick. However, the unthinkable happened, as their pick slipped outside the top four.
This is insane because the Pistons had a 52.1% chance of getting a top-four pick. The fact that they didn’t get at least a top-four pick is gut-wrenching. Now instead of getting Victor Wembanyama, they’ll have to settle for a lower-tier prospect like Ausar Thompson, Jarace Walker, Cam Whitmore, etc. These are good players, of course, but they aren’t quite Wemby, who is clearly the prize everyone desperately wanted.
Pistons fans, I am so sorry. You might want to go to therapy to deal with this trauma.