Season 6 Draft Lottery

 After being quite late on the Season 5 Draft Order, the goal of this post is two fold: first, to establish the Draft Order for Season 6 and also to explain the logistics of the MWR using our first two examples. After consulting the committee, we have come to the conclusion that the penalty for missing the MWR will be dropping the lottery results of the missing team(s) by 10 spots. In other words, if the team that misses the MWR wins the lottery, they would pick 11th. 

All of this brings us to Step 1: assigning lottery odds. This is done entirely by end-of-season record regardless of whether or not the MWR was achieved. Based on the S5 win totals, we get the following:

Next is Step 2: conducting the actual lottery.  After consulting with minihouston about the lottery mechanisms and rules to make sure I had it right, he explained it in the following manner: "the top six picks are the true lottery, and then 7-16 go in the order like it usually does. The results of this year's ping-pong ball frenzy are below: 

Now comes the tricky part...making sure all of the rules put in place are followed an enforced. With a non-lottery team taking the #1 ping-pong ball, I have arranged the lottery teams in the order their ping pong balls appeared to get the following order: 

1. LOTTERY SLOT  (Boise 2)
2. LOTTERY SLOT (Louisville 4)
3. LOTTERY SLOT (Vancouver 5)
4. LOTTERY SLOT (Charlotte 6)
5. LOTTERY SLOT (Nashville 7)
6. LOTTERY SLOT (Arizona 8)
7. Texas
8. Tacoma
9. Philadelphia
10. Helena
11. Colorado Springs
12. Chicago
13. Durham
14. Portland
15. Baltimore
16. Los Angeles

However, as noted above Boise (#1 pick via lottery system) and Louisville (#2 pick via lottery system) will have their picks moved down 10 slots as MWR penalties. The adjusted draft order, therefore, is the following: 

1. Vancouver (#5 ping pong ball)
2. Charlotte (#6 ping pong ball)
3. Nashville (#7 ping pong ball)
4. Arizona (#8 ping pong ball) 
5. Tacoma (#1 ping pong ball)
6. Texas
7. Philadelphia 
8. Helena
9. Colorado Springs
10. Chicago
11. Boise (#1 ping pong ball with MWR penalty)
12. Louisville (#2 ping pong ball with MWR penalty) 
13. Durham
14. Portland
15. Baltimore
16. Los Angeles

This feels like a fair result as it rewards the non-lottery team who won the ping-pong ball draw (Tacoma) by moving up their pick up to the first spot after the lottery teams and penalizes the two teams who missed the MWR while still providing them a chance to draft a player who will be a useful piece of a rebuild without being an instant-MVP type (for reference Dan Romero and Macbeth Carpenter went 11th and 12th in the Season 1 Hardball Stitches draft.)