It’s one of the oldest truisms in the National Basketball Associations: when you’re drafting in the lottery, you draft the best player available.
The logic is sound. If you find yourself in the lottery, chances are, you don’t have the luxury to think about fit. You don’t have a surefire superstar at any one position on your team. If you did, you probably wouldn’t be drafting in the lottery.
As sound as that logic is, there are exceptions to every rule. NBA general managers are not clairvoyant. They cannot identify the best player available as some matter of empirical fact.