"After canceling the 2004-05 season, the NHL was faced with a choice: slot teams in the order they finished the '03-04 season, or improvise a weighted lottery system that gives each team a shot at landing the No. 1 pick. The NHL elected to use a lottery and cooked up a creative solution. The amount of lottery balls a team had was based on two criteria: the number of times a team made the playoffs the last three seasons and the number of times a team had drafted No. 1 in the previous three drafts. Using that model, four teams each had three of the 48 balls in the bin. Ten teams had two balls and 16 had one. Should the NBA adopt a similar system, it would be weighted like this: Three balls: Minnesota, Golden State, New Jersey, Toronto, Sacramento."