Pacers, part of first NBA draft lottery, prepare for their most important

INDIANAPOLIS --The first NBA Draft Lottery ended with Pacers owner Herb Simon in a split screen on CBS with Dave DeBusschere, the Hall-of-Fame player with the Knicks who, at the time, was the Knicks' director of basketball operations. Cameras in a Waldorf Astoria conference room focused on them as commissioner David Stern opened envelopes to determine which of the two was going to get the opportunity to pick Patrick Ewing, who was coming off an overwhelmingly dominant career at Georgetown. Stern opened the envelope with the second pick first with the Pacers logo first, so Simon stood up, slapped his hands against the table and appeared to offer his congratulations to DeBusschere, who landed a player who turned out to be an 11-time All-Star, seven-time All-NBA pick and Hall-of-Famer.

The Pacers are approaching a lottery that could take on even more significance for their franchise than any lottery since that one. They are coming off the worst record in franchise history, and so on Sunday at 3 p. m.

in Chicago, they will enter the lottery as one of three teams with the best possible odds -- 14% for the No. 1 overall pick and 52. 1% for any of the top four picks -- and the best odds they've had in 37 years since the lottery switched from envelopes to ping-pong balls.

In between the 1985 lottery and this one, the Pacers haven't participated in the process very much because they've made the playoffs more in that time than they haven't. Even when they have missed the postseason, they haven't missed it by much and have generally entered it with low lottery odds. They've had entries in just 12 of 41 lotteries heading into this season.