The National Basketball Association held its 40th Draft Lottery on Sunday afternoon to determine the order for the 2024 NBA Draft. The Atlanta Hawks were awarded the No. 1 overall pick despite having just a 3 percent chance to win.
The Atlanta Hawks earned the right to select first overall in the 2024 NBA Draft, courtesy of winning the NBA Draft lottery on Sunday afternoon. Atlanta, which had the 10th-worst odds to win the lottery with just a 3 percent chance, had the ping-pong balls go in its favor to improbably obtain the first pick. The Hawks had a 65.91 percent chance of getting the No. 10 pick but had the luck of the draw.
The Hawks getting the top pick despite just a 3 percent chance to do so makes them the team with the fifth-lowest odds in NBA Draft Lottery history to nab the top pick. The 1993 Orlando Magic had the smallest chance at just 1.52 percent, and they would go on to select Chris Webber first overall before trading him on draft night in a package for Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway.
The Washington Wizards will draft second, the Houston Rockets will select third, the San Antonio Spurs have the No. 4 pick, and the Detroit Pistons round out the top five.
The event took place at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago and was the sixth edition of the draft lottery under the current format. With the current rules, only the top four picks are decided by the lottery, with the rest of the lottery—which is picks No. 5 through No. 14—determined by the win-loss record for the rest of the non-playoff teams.
The three teams with the worst records in the league are given equal odds to win the lottery, which is a new rule put into place in 2019 to disincentivize teams from tanking. Previously, the team with the worst record in the league had the best odds to win the lottery. This year, while the Pistons (14–68) had the worst record, and the Wizards (15–67) had the second-worst record, two teams—the Charlotte Hornets (21-61) and Portland Trail Blazers (21–61) tied for the third-worst record.
As a result, only two teams—the Pistons and Wizards—were given equal odds to land the No. 1 pick, instead of the normal three. Both Detroit and Washington entered with a 14 percent chance of winning the lottery, followed by Charlotte (13.3 percent) and Portland (13.2 percent). But neither the Pistons nor Wizards had the ping-pong balls go in their favor, and Detroit was especially unlucky as it didn’t even get a top-four pick.
This year marks the sixth straight that the team(s) with the best chance of landing the top pick failed to do so. The Pistons were also lottery losers last year when they also had the best chance of winning the lottery but coincidentally fell to No. 5 at that year’s lottery as well.
The Hawks have only drafted first overall once before in the common draft era, which began in 1966. Atlanta had the top pick in the 1975 draft, in which it selected future Hall of Famer David Thompson. However, Thompson opted to play for the ABA instead of the NBA, and he would never play a single game for the Hawks.
Outside of the Hawks, the Rockets can be deemed as the next-biggest winner of the lottery. They landed the No. 3 overall pick despite having just a 5.23 percent chance of doing so, as they were projected to draft ninth overall. This draft pick comes courtesy of the Brooklyn Nets, who included it as a future draft pick in the James Harden trade from Houston to Brooklyn in January 2021.
While Victor Wembanyama was all but a lock to go first overall in last year’s draft, there’s no consensus top overall prospect this year. However, Wembanyama’s fellow Frenchmen Alex Sarr and Zaccharie Risacher are in the conversation to make it No. 1 picks from France in back-to-back years. Sarr, a 7-foot-1 center, played two seasons with Overtime Elite before spending last year with the Perth Wildcats of Australia’s NBL. Risacher, a 6-foot-10 forward, was a teammate of Wembanyama with ASVEL Basket in France and also played for JL Bourg Basket last season. Both Sarr and Risacher are sons of former professional basketball players.
The remainder of the lottery has the Hornets at No. 6, followed by the Trail Blazers (No. 7), Spurs (No. 8), Grizzlies (No. 9), Jazz (No. 10), Bulls (No. 11), Thunder (No. 12), Kings (No. 13) and Trail Blazers (No. 14).
The 2024 NBA Draft will be held over two days in New York City on June 26 and 27. The first round will be at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, followed by the second round the next day at ESPN’s Seaport District Studio in Manhattan. This is the first year that the draft is expanding to a two-day event in order to give teams more time for their second-round selections.
