WNBA’s “Griner Bowl” Details Announced

The WNBA calls it the 2013 Draft Lottery.

We’ll call it the “Griner Bowl.”

And the Chicago Sky, Phoenix Mercury, Tulsa Shock, and Washington Mystics have the chance Wednesday to secure the chance to take Baylor’s 6-8 senior center with first pick when the lottery for next April’s draft is held.

ESPN will televise the event, held for the first time at its Bristol, Ct., studios, live during the 6 p.m. ET edition of SportsCenter.  

Washington, 5-29, which needs a center badly, has the best opportunity (44.2 percent) to win the top pick.  A year ago, despite being 6-28, Washington could not participate in the lottery, having traded its top pick to the Minnesota Lynx in exchange for forward/center Nicky Anosike.

How did that work out?

The Mercury, 7-27, have the next best odds (27.6 percent).

The Shock, 9-25, and Sky, 14-20, have a 17.8 percent chance and 10.4 percent chance, respectively.  The lottery will establish the first four picks of the draft.  The order of selection for the remainder of the first round, as well as the second and third round is determined by inverse order of the teams’ respective regular-season records from 2012.

Fourteen balls numbered 1-14 will be placed in a lottery machine and mixed.  Four balls will then drawn to the top to determine a four-digit combination.  The team that has been assigned that four-ball combination will receive the No. 1 pick.

 The four balls will then be placed back into the machine and the process will be repeated to determine the second and third picks.  The team that does not win one of the top three picks will be slotted fourth.

There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection.  One thousand of those combinations will be assigned to the four non-playoff teams based on their order of finish in the 2012 regular season.

 The remaining combination will be unassigned.  If the one unassigned combination is drawn, the balls will be placed back into the machine and the process will be repeated until an assigned combination is drawn.

Only once in history as the WNBA Draft Lottery, instituted prior to the 2002 draft, gone exactly according to the odds. The Atlanta Dream, Washington and Chicago, respectively, entered the eight annual Lottery with the most chances to earn the top pick in the 2009 Draft, and came away with, in order, the first, second and third selections.

On two occasions the team with the fewest chances of earning the top pick has come out on top.  Phoenix was the first to do so, winning the Lottery for the 2007 Draft. The Los Angeles Sparks also overcame the longest odds and earned the No. 1 pick in the 2012 Draft.  


Following is the remaining order of the first round, as determined by 2012 regular season records:

5.        New York        15-19
6.        Seattle        16-18
7.      Atlanta        19-15
8.      San Antonio        21-13
9.           Indiana        22-12
10.        Los Angeles        24-10
11.   Connecticut         25-9
12.   Minnesota        27-7