Jeff Twiss isn't sure how long he waited. An hour? Maybe 75 minutes? It felt like a lifetime.

A meteor was headed toward Celtics Nation on May 18, 1997, and, stripped of all outside communication before entering the lottery draw room that night in Secaucus, New Jersey, there was no way for Twiss to alert anyone back home.

Not that he felt like talking to anyone at that moment, particularly not San Antonio Spurs director of player personnel Sam Schuler, who was seated directly next to him and, understandably, could hardly contain his excitement when the Spurs secured the No. 1 pick -- or, more precisely, the right to draft Tim Duncan -- that the Boston Celtics were convinced was as good as theirs.

Twiss, the Celtics' jovial media relations czar who this year completed his 36th season on the job, was still trying to wrap his head around what happened. He recalls that, before the formal lottery drawing, NBA officials had conducted a pair of mock draws to demonstrate how the event would run. In the first mock, the Celtics secured picks Nos. 1 and 3. In the second, Boston emerged with picks Nos. 2 and 3. Twiss liked the consistency.

Then came the official draw.

Twiss dutifully wrote down the four-ball combination and glanced at the list in front of him with all of Boston's potential combinations. When he realized it wasn't on his list, his heart sank. Then came the celebration from beside him. Spurs at No. 1. Then the Philadelphia 76ers snagged pick No. 2. The Celtics, who entered that night's draw armed with a 36.3 percent chance at securing the top overall pick, settled for selections Nos. 3 and 6 -- not the worst possible outcome, but try selling that to a team convinced it was about see Duncan in green.

"Popovich wouldn't give up Tim Duncan for those two picks, your next five picks, the revenue for the Mass. Pike for the next 50 years, the John Hancock Building, and half of the city of Boston." Former Celtics coach M.L. Carr

Those inside the draw room have to wait until the nationally televised reveal is complete before they can depart. The longer he waited, the more Twiss started to think that maybe it was best if those doors never opened.

"I thought about it and I'm going, 'Oh God, I don't know if I want to leave the room, because now I'm going to be blamed for not getting Tim Duncan," said Twiss, who joined the Celtics in time for the original Big Three's first title season in 1981.

Alas, the doors finally opened and Twiss emerged ashen-faced and wearing a thousand-yard stare. Amid the post-broadcast chaos, Twiss found M.L. Carr, who had just been relieved of his coaching duties after dutifully running Operation Duncan during the Celtics' 15-win 1996-97 season. Boston finished with the second-worst record in basketball -- only Vancouver was worse, but, as a recent expansion team, the Grizzlies weren't allowed to land the No. 1 pick.

Carr approached, a cell phone resembling something from the Zach Morris collection pressed against his ear and, spotting Twiss, thrust the phone into his hands. On the other end was recently anointed head coach, team president and director of basketball operations Rick Pitino back in Boston with a calm but firm question for Twiss.

"What the f--- happened!?"

Once Twiss had sufficiently explained to Pitino what had occurred that night in 1997, he returned the phone to Carr, who was instructed to immediately offer the Nos. 3 and 6 picks to San Antonio in exchange for San Antonio's No. 1 pick. Spurs coach and president of basketball operations Gregg Popovich was polite enough not to laugh Carr out of the NBA Entertainment Studios.

"Popovich wouldn't give up Tim Duncan for those two picks, your next five picks, the revenue for the Mass. Pike for the next 50 years, the John Hancock Building and half of the city of Boston," Carr would later tell the Boston Globe.

Popovich confirmed that assessment, telling the San Antonio Express-News, "I guess if you put a package together of Larry [Bird], Michael [Jordan], and Magic [Johnson], then you could make a trade."

Twiss said no one has ever held the lottery miss against him. When he got back to Boston, Celtics president Red Auerbach pulled Twiss aside and told him not to worry about what happened, because the ping-pong balls left everything to chance. Those words, coming from Auerbach, put Twiss at ease.

With the Celtics back in the lottery this year and questions swirling around whether this was Duncan's final season, it's fair to wonder what could have been. Duncan is a 15-time All-Star, two-time MVP and five-time NBA champion. The Spurs haven't been back in the lottery since that night in 1997.

Voice of the Celtics Tommy Heinsohn wasn't the lucky charm Boston needed in the 2007 NBA Draft Lottery. Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE/Getty Images

Seventeen championship banners and 21 retired jersey numbers hang above the parquet floor at TD Garden, a reminder of the overwhelming success the Boston Celtics organization has enjoyed during its 70 years in business. And yet, for a team with a shamrock and leprechaun as its logos, this team has essentially been devoid of lottery luck.

It wasn't always that way. The NBA introduced the lottery system in 1985, but the process used to involve simply taking each of the seven non-playoff teams and putting a sealed envelope for each team in a hopper. Each squad had a 1-in-7 chance (14.3 percent) at the No. 1 pick, and envelopes were selected with teams placed in descending order, with the final envelope earning the top selection.

Three weeks before the Celtics claimed banner No. 16 with an NBA Finals victory over the Houston Rockets, Boston secured the No. 2 selection in the 1986 draft thanks to a pick obtained in a 1984 swap in which the Celtics shipped Gerald Henderson Sr. to the Seattle SuperSonics.

That night, Auerbach nervously puffed a cigar on stage at the lottery. When the 76ers emerged with the top selection, Philadelphia general manager Pat Williams reportedly exclaimed, "My biggest relief is getting away from Red Auerbach's cigar. I'm going to have to take this suit to the cleaners to get that noxious smoke out."

Boston Celtics' history at the NBA Draft Lottery In nine trips to the lottery since 1994, the Celtics have never improved their pre-lottery position. A snapshot of their lottery history: Year Pre-Lottery No. 1 odds Post-Lottery Pick/Result 2016 No. 3* 15.6% ??? Brooklyn's pick via KG/Pierce trade 2014 No. 5 10.3% No. 6 (-1) Marcus Smart 2007 No. 2 19.9% No. 5 (-3) Traded for Ray Allen 2006 No. 7 5.3% No. 7 (--) Traded with Raef LaFrentz 2001 No. 10 1.1% No. 10 (--) Joe Johnson 2000 No. 11 0.9% No. 11 (--) Jerome Moiso 1999 No. 7 3.7% No. 8 (-1) Traded for Vitaly Potapenko 1998 No. 10 2.0% No. 10 (--) Paul Pierce 1997 No. 2 27.5% No. 3 (-1) Chauncey Billups 1997 No. 6 8.8% No. 6 (--) Ron Mercer 1994 No. 9 1.5% No. 9 (--) Eric Montross 1986 No. 5 14.3% No. 2 (+3) Len Bias

Nine days after Boston's Finals triumph, the Celtics drafted Maryland's Len Bias, a 6-foot-8 swingman who was supposed to help Boston sustain the success of a team that had won three titles in six years. But Bias passed away two days later following a cocaine overdose.

It would be 22 years before Boston raised another banner, and the team's rise back to consistent contender status was stunted in large part by the ping-pong ball system the league transitioned to in 1990.

In nine trips to the lottery since 1994, the Celtics have never improved their pre-draft position, and the two visits in which they had their best chances to vault toward a top spot -- 1997 and 2007 -- ended with the team absorbing brutal gut punches.

The Celtics are back at the lottery on Tuesday night with the third-best odds at the No. 1 pick, the spoils of a 2013 trade that delivered Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for a package that included three future first-round picks.

With Boston fans celebrating each of the Nets' 61 losses this season, the Celtics now own a 31.3 percent chance at a top-two pick in a draft field headlined by LSU's Ben Simmons and Duke's Brandon Ingram. The odds, however, suggest that Boston's most likely landing spot is No. 5 (26.7 percent).

All of which leaves Celtics fans cautiously optimistic. The Celtics won 48 games this season and have an intriguing young core under the direction of third-year coach Brad Stevens. But Boston's future success could be tied, in part, to how those ping-pong balls dance.

Is this the year Boston's bad lottery luck ends?

In 1997, the Spurs leapfrogged the Celtics to grab the No. 1 overall pick and Tim Duncan. The rest is history. Steve Freeman/NBAE/Getty Images

2007 Draft Lottery: Pre-lottery projection: 2nd (19.9 percent chance at No. 1) Draft spot: 5th

When then-deputy NBA commissioner Adam Silver peaked inside the envelope assigned to the fifth pick in the 2007 draft, his eyebrows appeared to briefly shoot skyward before he pulled out the card revealing Boston's logo. Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn, sitting with hands clasped on the podium next to Silver, stared sideways at the card for a moment before mustering a chuckle and incredulously flipping his thumbs skyward.

Coming back from commercial before announcing the top three spots, ESPN's broadcast cut to the Celtics' draft lottery party in Boston, where a fan wearing a green baseball cap backward stood mouth agape and hands on head after watching the reveal. Boston, which entered with the second-best odds of securing the No. 1 pick, hadn't just missed out on the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant sweepstakes, it had plummeted as far as it possibly could after the Portland Trail Blazers, SuperSonics and Atlanta Hawks all vaulted in the lottery.

Like Twiss a decade earlier, all Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck could think about was the impending letdown back home.

"I knew all the [ping-pong ball] numbers that we needed. It's not hard to figure out that your good combinations have certain numbers in them, and you need one or two of those numbers or you're moving down," said Grousbeck. "And so when those numbers didn't come up, you know instantly that we didn't get what we wanted.

"My feeling was, I felt badly for all the people who were about to be disappointed. Like I had my disappointment, but the immediate feeling after that was, 'Ugh, all those people gathered around Boston and all the Celtics fans are going to be so bummed out -- and it's going to be 15 minutes from now. And I wish I could stop it."

Grousbeck can chuckle now about the meteor that hit Celtics Nation in 2007.

"It turned out to be a meteor named Kevin Garnett. It was a good meteor," said Grousbeck. "Seriously, everything worked out that year, and [Celtics president of basketball operations] Danny [Ainge] did an amazing job.

The Celtics recovered well from the letdown. Ainge, who had promised Paul Pierce he would surround him with the type of talent that would make Boston a contender again or otherwise trade him to a contender, went to work with a stash of assets similar to what the team now possesses.

Ainge flipped the No. 5 pick (Jeff Green) to Seattle on draft night in exchange for Ray Allen. A month later, Boston finalized a deal that delivered Garnett to Boston and created a new Big Three. The Celtics immediately won 66 games and hung banner No. 17.

Maybe that's why Grousbeck is less stressed about this year's proceedings. The Celtics own eight picks overall, including two other first-round picks in No. 16 (via the Rajon Rondo swap with the Dallas Mavericks) and No. 23 (their own selection).

That 2007 draft lottery serves as a reminder that things will be OK if the ping-pong balls disobey again. While Ainge has stressed that the Celtics don't have a Paul Pierce on their team at the moment, they do have Isaiah Thomas -- the All-Star guard who will represent the team on stage -- along with cap space, intriguing and tradable young talent and a mountain of future picks.

But a little luck wouldn't hurt the team's quest, either.

"We have a lot of possibilities this year, so I'm not completely focused on this lottery," said Grousbeck. "I'm really hopeful. But we've got extra picks in this draft, extra picks in the future, a lot of young talent, and one of the very best coaches in the league, in my opinion, one of the best general managers in the league, a great fan base. And we got a lottery pick, it'll be somewhere between 1 and 6, so let's go."

Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca's lucky rooster couldn't secure Boston a top-three pick in 2014. David Dow/NBAE/Getty Images

2014 Draft Lottery: Pre-lottery projection: 5th (10.3 percent chance at No. 1) Draft spot: 6th

Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca, clutching what he had hoped was a lucky rooster and wearing a leprechaun-speckled tie that Auerbach had gifted him after Pagliuca purchased the team, was trying to put a positive spin on emerging with the No. 6 pick after the 2014 draft lottery when he wondered out loud if anyone had seen team president Rich Gotham.

At the other end of a small and crowded Times Square TV studio, Gotham wore the same weathered look that Twiss had displayed 17 years earlier. The draw room has a way of beating down the majority of its 14 invitees.

"I was sitting next to the Lakers guy, and we were pretty much in the same boat in [the 2007] lottery," said Gotham. "But it was kind of interesting going through that with the Lakers -- two teams that generally aren't here, aren't supposed to be here. We had the same experience and we're both like, 'We're never doing that again!'"

Ironically, the Lakers are one of the two teams with better odds than Boston this year. L.A. might need the lottery luck more than Boston -- particularly considering the Lakers will deliver their pick to the 76ers if it falls outside the top three.

But finding a representative to go into the sequester room is no easy task when the ping-pong balls consistently defy you. Armed with the knowledge that things worked out just fine after 2007, Grousbeck is breaking the promise he made after that draw that he would never return.

And armed with his 2008 title ring, he's optimistic about the venture.

"I'm planning to be happy on Tuesday," said Grousbeck. "I'm an optimist. And it would be fantastic."

For Boston, this will be its eighth time hoping that the ping-pong balls redeem themselves for that heartbreaking miss in 1997. During that span, the Celtics have never improved their pre-lottery status and have been leapfrogged by teams behind them in three of those years.

This time around, the Celtics have recruited 5-foot-9 Isaiah Thomas, a player whose arrival 15 months ago gave Boston's on-the-fly rebuild its biggest push. The Celtics made a second-half surge to the postseason at the end of the 2014-15 campaign, then won 48 games this year and challenged for a top-four seed in the East.

The Celtics are essentially hoping Thomas, the final pick in the 2011 draft, can help Boston secure the first pick in the 2016 draft. Grousbeck thinks Thomas exudes luck (but stresses that Thomas has created much of his good fortune with hard work), and Ainge believes good things happen with Thomas around.

"He's our leprechaun," Ainge joked.

Thomas and some lottery luck might help Boston make the sort of leap forward necessary to be a true contender. The team has made encouraging strides, but its brief playoff cameos over the past two seasons show that more talent is needed to get where they need to go.

Some luck would also save Boston's brass from having to talk about their lottery misfortune every May. But don't misconstrue: They wouldn't mind being back in New York City the next few years.

After all, Boston still has future first-round picks to collect from the Nets and Memphis Grizzlies. And the wait in the draw room isn't nearly as interminable when it's someone else's pick you're utilizing.