Cavaliers get little help from Ping Pong balls-Pick 5th in draft

The NBA placed new guidelines for their draft lottery that they hoped would avoid having teams "tank" seasons in order to have a better chance in the lottery.
If that was their hope, then their plan succeeded wildly.
If their hope was to get Zion Williamson, the consensus top player in the draft, to New York or Los Angeles, then their plan failed miserably as despite a Laker leap from the bottom of the lottery to 4th overall, the Knicks, Cavaliers and Suns, the three teams with the best chance of grabbing the top pick, didn't wind up with that pick and in a draft that is considered to have a huge dropoff after Williamson, Ja Morant and R.J. Barrett, only the Knicks will have the chance to pick one of them and they won't have their pick of the three in the third slot.

The big winners were New Orleans (first), Memphis (second) and the Lakers (fourth) with the Knicks (third), Cavaliers (fifth) and Suns (sixth) as the losers from the draw each dropped two (Knicks) or three (Cavaliers and Suns) spots from their positions entering the lottery.
Depending on your personal team preference might decide your opinion on the new lottery setup. but the league likely has mixed feelings.
The new lottery did exactly what the league had hoped and penalized the worst teams, which in theory would work as a deterrent from attempting to accumulate losses in order to pick higher, but even though the league would never admit this, they have to be quietly disappointed with Zion Williamson not playing in New York or even Chicago instead of New Orleans, one of the leagues smallest markets.

The effect on the Cavaliers appears simple to explain.
In a draft that appears to look as follows- Zion Williamson of Duke, drop to Ja Morant of Murray State, drop to Duke's R.J. Barrett and steep drop to everyone, the Cavaliers look at adding a good player at 5, not a franchise-changing one had the team been able to stay in the top three.

Those three off the board and one player was taken by the Lakers at four, the Cavaliers will have their choice of players that are either most talented available, best fit for the John Beilein system or even most experienced/NBA ready.
If I had my choice of the "field", I'd rate my choice in this manner.
If the Cavaliers want the steadiest and player that with the highest floor, I'd take Jarrett Culver of Texas Tech.
Culver can play small forward and shooting guard and I've really liked his ability to create his own shot, which is the most important skill for a young player in the league to have.

If the Cavaliers want to gamble on upside and roll the dice on the player that could burst out into stardom, I'd think the most talented player in Cam Reddish of Duke, a player with the talent to be among the top three that hasn't always come to play every night.
Reddish is an enigma, but should a team be able to get the best out of Reddish, the Cavaliers have a player capable of being an elite level player.

Should Cleveland decide to take a player outside the tier of expected players that would fit with John Beilein's system, I wouldn't be surprised if the Cavaliers gave some consideration to Gonzaga's Brandon Clarke, who is the type of multi-dimensional player with defenses skills, that might fit very well with Beilein.
Clarke might be a bit of a reach at five and the Cavaliers might be better suited for a trade, should Clarke be their choice, but Cleveland might have a lack of suitors for this pick.

Cavaliers fans have to be disappointed in falling out of the top three, but they still should wind up with a productive piece for their rebuild, if not an elite one.
It'll be interesting over the next few years to see, if the NBA continues with the lottery as designed or tweak it as has been done through the years, but for now, it's definitely been a success in one area-
it has fans talking.