The ping pong balls didn’t fall the Phoenix Suns’ way on Tuesday night.

But while the team landed at No. 6 in the newly formatted 2019 NBA Draft Lottery, missing out on the likes of Zion Williamson and Ja Morant, the Suns were a lot closer than it appeared to taking the No. 1 pick for a second straight year.

“It wasn’t meant to be last night,” Suns CFO Jim Pitman told Doug & Wolf on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station on Wednesday. “The way it worked out was actually eerily similar to last year with the three first balls coming up being useful to us and the fourth ball needing to be a certain number.

“If it had come up with the number two, we would have had the first pick. … This year we needed the number two, and unfortunately instead of two, it was 13 and then Alvin Gentry was jumping for joy in that room and the rest of us were not.”

Pitman, who said he was not superstitious, even wore the same suit from last year’s draft to try to turn the tide in the team’s favor but to no avail. The New Orleans Pelicans ended up with the top spot.

To make matters worse, the Suns were leapfrogged by the Pelicans, the Memphis Grizzlies and the Los Angeles Lakers, three teams not projected to get into the top four at the start of the evening.

The Lakers can thank Memphis for their better spot in the sweepstakes.

“Memphis already won the fourth pick after they had already won the second, so they had to put the balls in for a fifth go and that’s when the Lakers’ numbers came up,” Pitman said. “It was a little surreal to see the lower probability teams seemed to jump up and like I said the New Orleans folks were clearly ecstatic all night.”

This season, the three teams atop the lottery had the same odds to earn the first through fourth picks in an effort to limit potential tanking. Of those teams, the Suns had the worst overall odds as they had the possibility of dropping to seventh. Under the new system, the 14 lottery teams all had more balanced odds compared to the old method.

Pitman issued his thoughts on the change.

“I think the consensus was that it did work for the league,” Pitman said of the new draft format. “Everyone in the room was talking about that even though the probabilities for those who did end up winning weren’t that much greater than they would have been otherwise. It did just flatten out everybody else and I think that is good for the league.

“Tanking, so to speak, is not a great thing. Sometimes you have don’t have the talent to win and sometimes you have the talent and the talent doesn’t play. There is a difference.”

But even with missing out on the top five picks this season, Pitman is confident the team can claw its way out of the lottery.

“We’re not going to be in [the lottery] again, this is it,” Pitman said.

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PHOENIX – The Arizona Diamondbacks struggled to get runners home last week. And that’s putting it nicely. They left 22 guys on base in a three-game series against the Rays, then stranded another 40 against the Braves for good measure.

That wasn’t an issue on Tuesday night though. Because they only managed four hits.

Josh Bell homered twice, Mountain Pointe product Cole Tucker added another and Joe Musgrove tossed seven scoreless innings as the Pittsburgh Pirates knocked off Arizona 6-2 in front of 21,047 fans at Chase Field.

“We couldn’t get anything going offensively,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo acknowledged. “Their starting pitcher was effective with some early count pitches, and just kind of beating us to the spot. It wasn’t what I was expecting after a really offensive day yesterday.”

That offensive day that Lovullo was referencing was a 13-hit effort by the D-backs on Monday that produced a 9-3 victory and extended their winning streak over the Pirates to nine games. That streak’s over now, though.

Luke Weaver (3-2) suffered just his second loss since coming to the desert, but he still delivered a quality start, despite not having his best stuff.

“I thought Luke was very good today,” Lovullo explained. “He threw the ball extremely well. I know he got clipped for the two-run home run that kind of changed his line score, but more than efficient. Six innings, three runs, kept us in the ballgame, gave us a chance to play a little bit of catch-up and was pounding the zone. He might have been a little more erratic with the secondary stuff but, overall, I thought he made some quality adjustments.”

The 25-year old righty cruised through the first and got out of a bases-loaded jam in the second, before allowing a run on a fielder’s choice from Bell in the third.

He retired the side in order in the fourth before Bell launched a 446-foot homer to center in the fifth to open things up.

“An absolute terrible pitch to Bell,” Weaver conceded. “A guy swinging a bat that hot, you just can’t make a mistake like that. Especially when you’re in such an advantage count. I think it was 0-2. Not at all trying to throw it there. Just got on top of it a little too much and it just drifted on the plate.”

From there, the D-backs just couldn’t get to Musgrove. They managed only two walks and a single – courtesy of Eduardo Escobar in the fourth – in the seven innings he was on the mound, and never moved a runner past first.

In fact, all their production came against the Pittsburgh bullpen. Carson Kelly took Richard Rodriguez deep in the eighth, then David Peralta singled and came around to score on an Adam Jones single off of Michael Feliz in the ninth.

Problem is, Bell wasn’t done. With his 14-game hitting streak already intact, he led off the eighth with a 460-foot blast to right. Tucker followed that up four batters later by pushing a two-run shot just over the wall.

Making matters worse, those two eighth-inning homers came off Zack Godley, who Lovullo suggested before the game might be able to work his way back into another start this Saturday.

The fact that Godley had to pitch on Tuesday might not hinder that plan. But his 7.88 ERA so far in May isn’t helping. The switch to the bullpen was supposed to get him back on track, but it hasn’t yielded results in the box score yet.

Despite the loss, the Diamondbacks are three games above .500 with a respectable 23-20 record. And they’ll have Zack Greinke on the mound for a potential pitching duel with Chris Archer on Wednesday afternoon.

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Our power trip is over. We’ve controlled and commanded the previous two major professional drafts. We’ve been the center of everything, walking away with Deandre Ayton and Kyler Murray. It’s been fun while it lasted.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled torment.

The 2019 NBA draft lottery was exactly what you suspected – another sucker-punch to Planet Orange.

After a 19-63 season, they fell all the way to No. 6. Twice in the past three years, the Lakers have leapfrogged the Suns in draft order, shaking your faith in ping pong balls and fair competition.

It’s hard not to feel bruised. The Lakers are like salt in the wound and stepping on Legos. Their arrogance is exceeded only by their delusion. They act like they deserve the ridiculous parade of superstars who have come to them because of Hollywood, the climate, the ocean and all the entertainment moguls sitting courtside.

Just a few days ago, Suns fans relished in the normalcy and temporary advantage they had gained over the Lakers. Monty Williams chose to coach our NBA team, which appropriately rewarded him with a five-year contract. The Lakers hired Frank Vogel, gave him only three years and made him hire his successor (Jason Kidd) as top assistant.

It almost seemed like these two rivals had traded places on the dysfunction scale. It felt like poetic justice. And then the draft lottery happened, where the Suns ended up with a draft pick that is virtually untradeable and without any real promise. When Zion Williamson would’ve been like drafting a young Charles Barkley out of college, the battering ram that came out of Auburn.

Even worse, Suns were forced to endure those moments of bile and anger, when the Suns were locked in at No. 6 and the Lakers were still in play for the No. 1 overall pick.

That would’ve been tragic. And we were left with the bitter consolation prize of the Lakers locked out of the top three, where the elite players reside.

So this is partially about our Los Angeles complex and a franchise that always get what they don’t deserve. It’s also the realization that the Suns will not fill one of their two greatest needs in the upcoming draft (starting point guard, starting power forward). They will instead join the mad scramble for free agents in what promises to be a wild offseason of player movement.

Denver and Portland are obviously ascending. The Clippers are expected to make a serious splash in free agency. The Western Conference is only getting deeper, and Wednesday’s draft-lottery demotion will surely cool any interest Kevin Durant might’ve had in in playing for one of his favorite NBA cities, one of his favorite NBA coaches (Williams) and one of his newer friends (Devin Booker).

In short, and in the end, the NBA draft lottery proved that nothing comes easy in Phoenix.

Unlike that team in L.A.

After all, the Suns won last year’s draft lottery. They responded with 19 wins. But only after firing their general manager right before the season. And that was before firing another rookie head coach. After the player they selected following their previous draft-lottery debacle in 2017 (Josh Jackson) blew off a fan appearance and was arrested at a music festival.

We are coming off a season of unprecedented embarrassments. That should be worth more than the No. 6 pick in the draft.

There are powerful lessons here. Never trust hope when you’re dealing with the NBA. The art of tanking might’ve just been demolished by a lottery system that doesn’t favor the weak. And if the Suns want avoid future heartbreak and humiliation at the NBA draft lottery, here’s the greatest solution of all:

Stay out of it altogether.

Reach Bickley at dbickley@bonneville.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.

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