History of the WNBA Draft Lottery

On November 2nd, 2010, the Tulsa Shock will have a 44.2 percent change of obtaining the number one pick in the 2011 WNBA Draft - the highest chance of all teams in the lottery. Below is a a brief history of the draft lottery process and the outcomes that resulted the following year after a team obtained the number one pick.

The draft lottery process began in 2002. Since then, here are the number one overall picks in the WNBA:

2002 � Sue Bird � Seattle Storm

2003 � LaToya Thomas � Cleveland Rockers

2004 � Diana Taurasi � Phoenix Mercury

2005 � Janel McCarville � Charlotte Sting

2006 � Seimone Augustus � Minnesota Lynx

2007 � Lindesey Harding � Phoenix Mercury

2008 � Candace Parker � Los Angeles Sparks

2009 � Angel McCoughtry � Atlanta Dream

2010 � Tina Charles � Connecticut Sun

Since the lottery process began, four of the nine teams (44 percent) that were statistically most likely to get the number one pick, did get that pick (2002, 2004, 2008, 2009). In all other years, the first overall pick went to a team that did not have the best odds to get the pick.

In 2007, the Phoenix Mercury had the worst chance (2.5 percent) of winning the draft lottery and they did. The San Antonio Silver Stars had the second worst chance of winning the draft lottery that year and they ended up getting the second overall pick. The Chicago Sky who had a 41 percent chance of winning the lottery ended up picking third.

Here are the records of teams before and after they got the number one pick since the draft lottery process started:

2002 � Seattle improved from 10-22 to 17-15 with Sue Bird

2003 � Charlotte improved from 10-22 to 18-16 with LaToya Thomas

2004 � Phoenix Mercury went from 8-26 to 17-17 with Diana Taurasi

2007 � Phoenix improved from 18-16 to 23-11 after with Lindsey Harding

2008 � LA improved from 10-24 to 20-14 with Candace Parker

2009 � Atlanta improved from 4-30 to 18-16 with Angel McCoughtry

2010 � Connecticut improved from 16-18 to 17-17 with Tina Charles

The Tulsa Shock finished 6-28 in 2010. Should they be awarded the number one pick in the lottery and make that selection in the spring, by how much would their record improve in 2011?

This year's WNBA Draft Lottery takes place on Tuesday November 2nd. Check back for the results and hope for an early off-season win for the Shock!

Join the Shock family celebrate this exciting process at the Shock Draft Lottery Open House. Click here for more information.