The New Orleans Pelicans won the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery, defying the 6% odds that they had and stunned the basketball world including Zion Williamson himself. I mean, did you see his face when New Orleans won!? Talk about shocked.

This is exactly what the NBA wanted when Adam Silver revised the NBA Draft Lottery odds trying to break the 'tanking' mold that so many teams seem to be implementing in order to change the fortune of their franchise.

In my eyes, the Pelicans fans have one person to thank for winning the lottery and that person is Anthony Davis.

You may be thinking to yourself, "G, what in the world are you talking about?"

Allow me to explain, Anthony Davis, making it known that he wanted out of New Orleans in an attempt to force his way to the Los Angeles Lakers threw the entire Pels organization into a tizzy. That was on January 28th and for the remainder of the season, Davis wanting out yet still playing was a major distraction to the team. Also, not having their superstar playing major minutes and 100% committed definitely affected the outcome of games in which the Pelicans played down the stretch.

Here's the math that matters. The team played 32 games after January 28th and in those games, the team went 11-21. You can't tell me that if Davis hadn't done what he did and was 100% committed to the team without the distraction of trying to force his way out that the team wouldn't have won at least five more games.

The team finished 33-49 if they had won five more games they would have finished 38-44 and would have given them about a 1 or 2% chance to win the NBA Draft Lottery, could it have still happened? Of course, but the chances would have been all that much slimmer if not none at all if they had won more than that.

So, today we should all be thanking Anthony Davis for doing what he did last season, I guess karma came around in a positive way for the Pelicans after that garbage Davis tried to pull last season. Now, we'll see what moves Griffin can make to put a winner together whether it's with or without Zion...

 

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