But before the lottery was instituted in 1985, settling ties came down to a coin flip.
It nearly came to that in 1984 when, had either a contested play gone the other way or another franchise helped out, Michael Jordan’s NBA future could have been decided by whether the Dallas Mavericks called heads or tails.
The year was 1980, and the brand-new Mavs had yet to play a single game in the NBA. Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Don Delaney and owner Ted Stepien were trade-happy, and that might even be an understatement. On Sept. 16, the Cavs traded their 1984 first-round pick to the Mavericks in exchange for point guard Mike Bratz, whom the Mavs had acquired via the expansion draft just four months earlier.