Tonight is the NBA Draft Lottery and for the fifth straight season, the Nuggets are not a part of it.  Before we see who will receive the top three picks tonight I just have one quick question.

Would the Nuggets be better off having switched places with the Golden State Warriors?

Sure it would have been a disaster for Denver to miss the playoffs, but how much fun was it to watch them get steamrolled by the Los Angeles Lakers?  How much of a chance did the Nuggets really have to win that series?  I estimated it at about 0% before the series started and that appeared to be pretty accurate. 

Had Denver missed the playoffs they would be sitting where Golden State is tonight.  The Warriors have a 0.5% chance at the top pick and a slightly better shot at landing the second pick.  As dismal as that sounds it is over a one percent chance that they will get to draft either Derrick Rose of Michael Beasley. 

Looking at how things went down if Denver was in the lottery instead of the Warriors the Nuggets would have had a better shot at having a top two pick in the lottery than they did beating the Lakers.  Plus we would have only had to deal with the disappointment of missing the playoffs for a couple of days instead of watching a systematic beat down over the course of a week.

In the end the Nuggets swapped a 1% chance of acquiring a star player and a 98% chance at the 14^th pick in the draft for a 100% chance of being embarrassed in the playoffs and the 20^th pick.

Am I crazy for thinking the Nuggets would be better off with a stake in the lottery tonight as opposed to having received a stake in the heart courtesy of the Lakers?