What's at Stake in the Draft Lottery

For the Trail Blazers and 13 other teams, it's "hurry up and wait" time.

When people ask me — either in mailbag questions or my day-to-day life — what the Trail Blazers are going to do this summer, I've had the same answer for the past month: Nothing will be known until we see how the lottery lands.

This is the "hurry up and wait" part of the NBA calendar for teams not in the playoffs. Two weeks from today, with every team's front-office staffs in Chicago for the predraft combine, Portland and the other 13 lottery teams will learn their fate.

This is the time of year when it's OK for teams, as well as fans, to just hope irrationally that things go their way. That's all there is to do. The lottery has nothing to do with existing roster construction, or an executive's negotiating ability, or a market's attractiveness to free agents. You have a number of ping-pong balls assigned to your name based on your record last season that, in all cases, is not zero. The odds probably won't hit, but maybe they will.