From the days when conspiracy theorists alleged that a bent envelope corner brought Patrick Ewing to the Knicks in 1985 to today, the NBA draft lottery has undergone many changes. Here's how it works:

One set of 13 representatives from each lottery team will be sequestered in a room at the NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, N.J. All cell phones will be confiscated.

A league official will place 14 Ping-Pong balls into a hopper. The balls are numbered 1 through 14. There are 1,001 possible number combinations when four balls are drawn, and 1,000 of them are assigned to teams in inverse order of their records.

Denver and Cleveland, which each went 17-65 this season, own 225 number combinations, giving them a 22.5 percent at the top pick. The Bulls will be assigned 44 combinations, or a 4.4 percent chance. The other teams' chances break down this way: Toronto 15.7 percent, Miami 12, Los Angeles Clippers 8.9, Detroit 6.4, Milwaukee 2.9, New York 1.5, Washington 1.4, Golden State 0.7, Seattle 0.6 and Memphis 0.5.