NEW YORK, November 6 – The WNBA announced today that the Draft Lottery to determine the top three picks in the 2004 WNBA Draft will be held on Wednesday, December 3. Results of the Draft Lottery will be announced live on NBA TV in a high-definition telecast at 8 p.m. ET during the pre-game show prior to the Los Angeles Lakers at San Antonio Spurs game. NBA TV will also air live interviews with representatives of the winning team during the Lakers-Spurs halftime show. The Draft will be held in April.

The Cleveland Rockers won the 2003 Draft Lottery and selected LaToya Thomas with the top pick in the 2003 Draft. Jennifer Pottheiser WNBAE/Getty Images

The Draft Lottery will be conducted by WNBA officials and representatives from the accounting firm of Ernst & Young at the NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, N.J. and will include the six teams that did not qualify for the 2003 WNBA Playoffs. The lottery is modeled after the lottery used in the NBA and is weighted to favor the teams with the poorer records. The lottery will establish the order of selection for the first round of the draft, with the order of selection for the second and third rounds based on teams’ regular-season finishes in 2003.

The Phoenix Mercury will have the best opportunity to gain one of the top three picks in the draft, since they finished the regular season with an 8-26 record. The Washington Mystics, who finished the season with a 9-25 record, and the San Antonio Silver Stars, who finished its year with a 12-22 mark, have the second and third best chances, respectively, of landing one of the top three picks.

The lottery will be conducted using 14 numbered ping-pong balls. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. One thousand of those combinations will be assigned to the six non-playoff teams based on their order of finish in the 2003 regular season. The remaining combination will be unassigned.

The 14 ping-pong balls will be placed into a lottery machine and mixed. Four balls will then be drawn to the top. The team that has been assigned that four-ball combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The four balls will then be placed back in the machine, and the process will be repeated to determine the number two and three picks. If the one unassigned combination is drawn, the balls will be placed back in the machine and the process will be repeated until an assigned combination is drawn.

The first-round order of selection for the teams that do not win one of the top three picks will be determined by inverse order of their respective regular-season records.

Following are the chances, out of 1,000, for teams in the WNBA Draft Lottery:

2004 WNBA LOTTERY TEAMS
Team	Record	Lottery Chances (out of 1,000)
1. Phoenix	8-26	410
2. Washington	9-25	256
3. San Antonio	12-22	163
4. New York	16-18	73
5. Indiana	16-18	73
6. Seattle	18-16	25