It’s coin flip day: Knicks vs. Timberwolves for (possibly) higher draft position

Happy Coin Flip Day, y’all! The Knicks and their longtime draft nemeses, the Minnesota Timberwolves, will face off some time Tuesday in a league-sanctioned drawing that will decide who gets the higher pick in the 2017 NBA Draft if neither team jumps into the lottery, according to Marc Berman.

The drawing will not affect lottery odds—both the Knicks and Wolves have an 18.2% chance at landing in the top 3 and 5.3.% chance of grabbing the top overall spot. If the Knicks win the coin flip, there is still a 18.2% chance the Wolves can jump them in the lottery, and vice-versa.

Let’s just get this out of the way before the drawing—this whole coin flip situation is horse shit. And I don’t even mean the fact that this race ended in a tie because the Wolves blew every close game for a month, while Maurice Ndour of all people nailed a game-winner for New York in Game 82. The draft is supposed to reward the worse team with the better pick, yes? By almost every statistical measure, the Knicks were the worse team. Minnesota finished 20th in margin of victory (-1.11 points per game); New York finished 24th (-3.67 points per game). Adjusted net rating favors Minnesota even more (-0.71 points per 100 possessions for Minny, -3.98 for New York, adjusted for strength of opponent).

Nobody can look at these two rosters and tell me with a straight face that Minnesota is in more need of talent. This whole thing reeks of karmic payback from the basketball gods, which...yeah, I get it. The Knicks are jerk-ass team run by jerks. Still, it’d be nice if the whims of fate could favor our jerk-ass team just once. The Ewing drawing was 32 years ago; a little draft luck thrown the Knicks’ way won’t exactly knock the universe out of the balance.

Update:

It’s at 3 PM EST. Adjust your schedules accordingly.