Orlando Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman said playing the NBA Draft Lottery was not a calculated risk, it was simply a risk. And his team, despite the best odds to win the first pick, were relying wholly on luck.

Luck helped the Magic early in the Draft Lottery. It hurt the team where it really mattered.

Orlando, which finished with the third-worst record in the league, fell to the fifth spot with its own pick, down two spots.

However, the Chicago Bulls — to whom they traded two-time All-Star Nikola Vucevic for Wendell Carter Jr., this year’s first-round draft pick that was top-four protected and a protected first-round pick in 2023 at the trade deadline in March — did not move up to obtain one of the first four picks so the Magic also will receive the Bulls’ pick at No. 8. That means Orlando will have the No. 5 and No. 8 picks in the July 29 draft.

The Magic had hoped to finish with one of the top three picks in this year’s draft, which is considered to have exceptionally strong prospects and to be deep. They traded away their three best players, including Vucevic, at the trade deadline and hope to secure a future All-Star and franchise cornerstone in this year’s draft.

This is a draft class that many consider to be loaded with talent, with four or five players draft experts say could become all-stars. With the Magic selecting fifth, that puts them at the edge of that group.

“You obviously want to win the lottery and come away with the No. 1 pick, but I do think there were two shots for us to get lucky and we did get lucky on the other one, which is we walked away with two top-eight picks,” Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman said after the Draft Lottery on a video conference call. “So, honestly I look at it now as we have a lot of work to do and we get to put a finer point on the work. So, we’ve kind of been looking to put this day behind us and really drill down on the two picks we have now, knowing that we have two top-10 picks. So, that part of it is very exciting.

“And the other part is it’s the draft, and it very seldom works out the way in the way that you prognosticate it. You look back on pretty much any draft, and it doesn’t go that way (in terms of how successful the players become in the NBA). So, it’s our job to find the players in the draft and now that we know where we’re picking and how many picks we’ll have, we’ll look to get to the next layer of that.”

Weltman said he hoped he still would be able to find an elite player with the No, 5 pick. He said the team would explore all options -  including making both picks, packaging them to move up in the draft or seeking to make a deal to make the team better.

He did not rule out trading the picks but said the first job is to evaluate the players. He said he would look at the roster balance and consider players returning from injury when deciding how to proceed now that they know what draft position they have.

Weltman said that process would give him a better idea about whether he will need to draft the best player available or to target a player at a particular position.

“There’s one part of that question that we control, which is do you pick the best player or do you pick positions,” Weltman explained. “And obviously, you go into any draft with the idea that you’re going to pick the best player, but it depends how your team is lining up and in relation to the differences you project in the outcome of the players.

“That’s stuff we’re going to have to get to know as we bring players in and have a better understanding of who they are. All the rest of that stuff is dependent upon other teams as well.”

 Now that we’re all kind of locked into these spots, I’m sure the league will start to get busy.”

The Magic want to “grow the team in the right way,” and Weltman said he is not sure the timing is right for pushing all the chips in now to land a big-name player because of where they are in the rebuilding process. He said free agency would be part of the Magic’s summer but that he is not sure the time is right to target a “home-run” player.

Most, if not all, of the league’s executives are at the NBA predraft camp in Chicago this week so they could discuss players and possible moves while there.

“Now that we’re all kind of locked into these (draft) spots, I’m sure the league will start to get busy,” Weltman said.

At the same time as Orlando is working through the draft process, the team is looking to hire a head coach to replace Steve Clifford, with whom it mutually parted ways after the season.

Weltman said the team has met with some very strong candidates but would not say whether they have talked with anyone more than once. He said they expect to have more meetings before hiring a coach.

Pistons take the prize in the lottery

The Detroit Pistons won the NBA draft lottery on Tuesday night, meaning they’ll have the No. 1 pick on July 29 — and, presumably, the chance to take Oklahoma State guard Cade Cunningham.

“We get to add another young player to the restoration process,” Pistons general manager Troy Weaver said. “We’re excited to be in this position. But it means that we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re going to be diligent about it, but it always helps to be able to add a No. 1 pick from a talented group of players to choose from.”

Houston — which basically had 50-50 odds of picking in the top four — got the No. 2 pick. Cleveland will pick No. 3 and Toronto will pick No. 4, after both of those franchises got some lottery luck to move up in the order.

But the big winners were the Pistons, with Weaver saying the team will take a look at five players before deciding on the No. 1 selection. Unless Detroit moves the pick, it will be picking No. 1 overall for the first time since taking Bob Lanier in 1970.

And, as if there was any doubt, Weaver said Cunningham — just the fourth player to win Big 12 Player and Freshman of the Year honors in the same season, after averaging 20.2 points per game in his lone collegiate season — is at the “top of the list.”

“It’s going to mean a lot. It’s going to mean a lot for this team,” Wallace said on the ESPN telecast of the lottery, after he served as the team’s virtual representative for the event that took place in Secaucus, New Jersey. “I think the team is headed in the right direction.”

Oklahoma City will pick No. 6, and Golden State also will have two lottery slots — No. 7, as part of a trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Warriors’ own pick at No. 14.

The rest of the lottery results: Sacramento picks No. 9, New Orleans No. 10, Charlotte No. 11, San Antonio at No. 12, and Indiana at No. 13.

The lottery — 14 ping-pong balls, all numbered 1 through 14, placed into a hopper — technically only determines the first four picks. The rest then default to a preestablished order of finish; Golden State, for example, had only a 2.4% chance of its own pick being anything other than the No. 14 selection.

The first significant buck-the-odds move happened, when Toronto’s 31.9% chance of cashing into a top-four slot delivered.

The Thunder will have three first-round picks, but none higher than No. 6. That’s good news for them, and really good news for Houston.

The Rockets had a 52% chance of winning a top-four pick. The worst Houston could do was the No. 5 selection, and that truly was a worst-case scenario because if the Rockets were outside of the top four, the pick would have conveyed to Oklahoma City as part of the compensation for the Russell Westbrook-Chris Paul trade between those teams in 2019. In that scenario, if Houston had gotten the No. 5 pick, it would have gone to the Thunder in exchange for the No. 18 pick.

But the Rockets held on, getting the No. 2 pick as one of the building blocks they can use to reload after finishing with the NBA’s worst record this season. Viewers might have found out the order before Rockets general manager Rafael Stone, who decided not to watch the stressful countdown.

“I decided that probably would be unpleasant,” Stone said.

Oklahoma State's Cade Cunningham projected to be 1st pick

The consensus opinion has been that the No. 1 pick will be either a one-and-done college player — Cunningham, Southern California center Evan Mosley or Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs — or someone from the G-League development program like guard Jalen Green or forward Jonathan Kuminga. Cunningham has widely been projected to be the No. 1 pick by NBA analysts prior to the Draft Lottery.

And, as always, it’ll be a guessing game: Most of the players expected to be lottery picks are teenagers, mostly 19, some 18.

Sitting at No. 3 gives the Cavs a chance to add another young player to their “core four” — Darius Garland, Collin Sexton, Isaac Okoro and Jared Allen — and maybe find a player capable of pushing Cleveland back to relevance.

Cavs General Manager Koby Altman said he feels this draft has more quality at the top than previous years.

“Even beyond the top five, there could be potential All-Stars,” he said.

The rest of the first round, for now, is slotted this way — Washington will pick 15th, followed by Oklahoma City, Memphis, Oklahoma City, New York, Atlanta, New York, the Los Angeles Lakers, then Houston at both No. 23 and No. 24, followed by the Los Angeles Clippers, Denver, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Utah.