IF THE SEASON ENDED TODAY, WHICH PICK WOULD THE CELTICS GET?

Tonight the Celtics play the final game of their west coast road trip.  Having gone 0-3 during the trip, the Celtics currently have a record of 19-38.  If the season were to end today, the Celtics would have the fourth worst record in the NBA.  With the fourth

worst record comes an 11.9% chance of getting the number one pick in the draft.  It would also bring with it a guarantee of no worse than the 7th pick in the draft. 

If you don't already know how the process works, it goes like this:

• The14 teams with the worst records are involved in the lottery
  

• 14 ping pong balls numbered 1-14 are placed into a container

• 4 balls are pulled out to create a 4 digit combination where order doesn't matter (ie. 4-8-11-2 is the same as 11-4-8-2)
• The team who has that combination gets the first pick
• The balls are returned to the container and 4 more numbers are selected to determine who gets the 2nd pick
• Once again the balls are returned and the third combination is selected
• Once the top three picks are determined the remaining 11 teams pick in order of worst record to best
• The number of 4 digit combinations each team gets is determined by their final record.  The team with the worst record gets 250 and the team with the best record gets 5. 
  
• In all, 1,000 of the 1,001 possible combinations are given out
  

Possibly the future way to determine picks in the NBA. (Grantland)

If you think the system needs to change, then you might be interested in a proposal which was shared by Grantland this past December.  Instead of determining picks based on records thereby encouraging teams to tank, the proposed system would put each team on a rotation based on the diagram above.  If you had the #1 pick this year you would get the number 30 pick next year.  Every 5th year you would be guaranteed one of the top 7 picks (in red).