The odds of getting a good player decrease once a team selects outside the lottery, but Detroit has historically done very well when selecting 18th in the NBA Draft.
Curtis Borchardt. Oleksiy Pecherov. Mirsad Turckan. None of those names are very familiar to most NBA fans. But all three were picked 18th in the NBA Draft, providing both them and their respective teams only brief moments of promise.
Joe Dumars. Ricky Pierce. Theo Ratliff. Those names are still recognizable to many, even though two were drafted in the 1980s and the most recent (Ratliff) was chosen in 1995.