The WNBA draft lottery will be changed to consider records over two years and the team with the worst record will be guaranteed at least the third pick, the league announced Wednesday.
The changes -- approved by the Board of Governors -- will be in effect for the upcoming lottery, which follows the 2015 season.
Previously, the team with the worst record could get a pick as low as No. 4.
The lottery will still involve the four teams that do not make the playoffs. Once the order is determined, the actual odds for each place in the order remain unchanged.
Thus, the team with the worst cumulative two-year record has 442 chances out of 1,000 to get the No. 1 pick. The team with the second-worst cumulative record has 276 chances, the third-worst has 178 chances and the fourth-worst 104 chances.
If there is a tie in cumulative record, the tie-breaker will be based on the most recent season's records.
The call for alterations to the draft lottery became particularly loud in 2012. The WNBA was criticized that year when Phoenix won the No. 1 pick and the chance to select Brittney Griner after going 7-27 in a season where some observers questioned whether the injury-plagued Mercury were tanking.
That 2012 season, the Mercury had the second-most chances to get the No. 1 pick, with Washington having the most chances after a league-worst 5-29 record. As it turned out, though, Washington ended up with the No. 4 pick and selected Tayler Hill. Chicago received the No. 2 pick and chose Elena Delle Donne, while Tulsa selected Skylar Diggins with the third pick.
The lottery order that year was Washington, Phoenix, Tulsa and Chicago. Had this new format been in place for that 2012 lottery, it would have been altered a bit: Washington, Tulsa, Phoenix and Chicago.
The WNBA teams have not all played the same amount of games at this point in the season. However, if the standings as of Wednesday morning were used, the lottery teams under the new system would be in this order: Seattle, San Antonio, Connecticut and Atlanta. The only change from the old system (just this season's records, instead of cumulative of two seasons) is that Atlanta would be third and Connecticut fourth in the lottery order.