I'm not a superstitious person. I'm not even a little "stitious." That said, it's hard not to believe in curses or bad juju or whatever otherworldly forces that might be out there after closely following the New Orleans Pelicans.
After a disastrous 21-61 campaign that saw their playoff hopes completely derailed by a litany of injuries, the Pelicans and their faithful put all their hope into the NBA Draft lottery. The season might not have gone the way they wanted — considering that they went 49-33 the year before, got a slimmed-down Zion Williamson over the summer, and traded for All-Star point guard Dejounte Murray — but coming away with a generational talent like Duke's Cooper Flagg would have made it all worth it.
The multitude of losses they endured throughout the 2024-25 regular season gave them the fourth-best odds in the lottery and an over 48 percent chance to nab a top-four pick. New Orleans pulled out all the stops to maximize their probability at securing a transformative draft pick, shutting down key veterans throughout the season and even sending former lottery prize Zion to represent them at the long-awaited drawing. Unfortunately, all of the Pelicans' efforts were in vain, as they came away with just about the worst possible result in the 2025 NBA Draft lottery.
New Orleans Pelicans drawing the seventh-overall pick is an unquestionable disaster
For those who are unfamiliar with the NBA Draft lottery, it doesn't exactly work the way it sounds. Not every pick in the top 14 is randomly assigned, like the name might suggest. Instead, starting with the 2019 draft, only the top-four selections are actually part of the lottery.
Any of the bottom 14 finishers from the regular season have a chance to jump into the top-four picks, with the three worst teams sharing equal odds and then each squad after that getting incrementally lower probabilities. Aside from the first four selections, though, the remaining teams simply slot into the rest of the picks in backwards order from how they performed in the regular season. That means that the Pelicans, who finished with the fourth-worst record in the league, could only fall to the eighth pick as a worst-case scenario if four of the teams who had better records than New Orleans all jumped ahead of them.
That was the absolute worst thing that could have happened. In reality, the Pelicans drew the seventh pick. Not only did they not jump into the top three in the lottery, but three teams ended up leapfrogging them: the Dallas Mavericks, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Philadelphia 76ers.
For whatever reason, the basketball gods have decided that New Orleans was less deserving of a generational talent than the Mavericks, who just backstabbed their previous franchise player, Luka Doncic, by offloading him without warning to the Los Angeles Lakers just a half-season after he led them to the Finals at 25 years old. At least Zion Williamson doesn't have to worry about being replaced as the face of the franchise. Maybe he put a hex on the Pelicans at the lottery.