The NBA draft lottery is finally here on Tuesday, May 20.
The lottery will start at 8 p.m. EDT on ESPN.
Live streaming will be available via Watch ESPN.
The worst teams in the league have the best percentage chances of getting the top pick.
The Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, have a 25 percent chance of winning the top pick since they were the worst team in the league this year.
A number of usually-great teams, such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, are also high on the list.
Odds
The odds of winning the top pick for all the teams involved are, per ESPN:
1. Milwaukee Bucks (25 percent)
2. Philadelphia 76ers (19.9 percent)
3. Orlando Magic (15.6 percent)
4. Boston Celtics (10.4 percent)
5. Utah Jazz (10.3 percent)
6. Los Angeles Lakers (6.3 percent)
7. Sacramento Kings (4.3 percent)
8. Detroit Pistons (2.8 percent)
9. Cleveland Cavaliers (1.7 percent)
10. New Orleans Pelicans (1.1 percent)
11. Denver Nuggets (via New York Knicks) (0.8 percent)
12. Orlando Magic (via Denver Nuggets) (0.7 percent)
13. Minnesota Timberwolves (0.6 percent)
14. Phoenix Suns (0.5 percent)
Last year, the Orlando Magic had the 25 percent odds but got the No. 2 pick. The Cavaliers, in third with 15.6 percent offs, got the No. 1 pick, while the Wizards, in eighth with 3.5 percent odds, got the No. 3 pick.
The Lottery
The picks are not solely determined by lottery–in fact, only the top three picks are.
The remaining picks are determined by record, meaning the Bucks, even if they don’t get one of the top picks, will get the fourth pick.
The lottery works like this: 14 ping pong balls numbered 1-14 are placed in a standard lottery machine.
Four balls are drawn at random to determine the winner of each of the top three picks. The order of the numbers drawn are not important because, say, 1-2-3-4 is considered the same as 3-4-2-1.
Each team in the lottery is assigned a certain amount of four-number combinations.
The Bucks as the worst team get 250 out of 1,000 combinations; on the other side, the Suns will get only five combinations.
Picks Changing Hands
Most picks are guaranteed to change hands while one is conditional.
Guaranteed
-Denver Nuggets (from New York Knicks). This pick is the Nuggets no matter what, part of the 2011 Carmelo Anthony deal.
-Orlando Magic (from Denver Nuggets). The Nuggets gave this up as part of the Dwight Howard trade.
-Chicago Bulls (from Charlotte Bobcats). The Bobcats gave this pick up as part of the 2010 Tyrus Thomas trade.
-Phoenix Suns (from Washington Wizards). The Wizards gave up this pick as part of the deal for Marcin Gortat.
-Phoenix Suns (from Indiana Pacers). The Suns already got one first-round pick as part of the Luis Scola trade, and now get another.
-Boston Celtics (from Brooklyn Nets). This pick was given up as part of the trade for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce.
-Oklahoma City Thunder (from Dallas Mavericks). This one was given up as part of the James Harden trade.
-Utah Jazz (from Golden State Warriors). One of two first-round picks that the Warriors sent to Utah as part of the Andris Biedrins-Richard Jefferson deal last summer.
Conditional
-Philadelphia 76ers (from New Orleans Pelicans). This pick will be the 76ers unless it falls in the top five, as part of the Jrue Holiday trade. If the Pelicans don’t get a top three pick they’ll get No. 10, which would go to Philly.
See a preview from the Associated Press below
NEW YORK—They lost often, 67 times in all for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Sometimes they lost always, such as 26 straight times for the Philadelphia 76ers.
Now the NBA’s biggest losers have a chance for a huge win.
The draft lottery is Tuesday, a night some teams appeared to be aiming toward for months during a season that featured plenty of talking about tanking.
The winner gets the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft, when an Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker might make this season’s misery worth it.
It’s a potential make-or-break night for some teams, which is why a program about the results of a random drawing ends up as the prime-time lead-in for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals.
“To me it’s part of the mystery and part of the enjoyment in seeing who’s right, who’s wrong,” Commissioner Adam Silver said recently.
“Will these perceived great players coming into the draft really be in a position to turn around teams? So it’s part of the fun.”
The Bucks and 76ers sure are enjoying it, and trying to get their fans in on the good times. There’s a viewing party in Milwaukee where all fans get a pingpong ball. The 76ers were giving away a trip to New York, where they were to be represented on stage by Hall of Famer Julius “Dr. J.” Erving.
Silver is aware of the tanking speculation and uneasy that fans might think NBA teams were willing to take their money without caring if they win the games. But he understands that teams sometimes need to rebuild, and that may mean going straight to the bottom if they think that’s the quickest route to the top.
“The jury is out on the strategy and I think that makes for good copy as well. I’m intrigued,” Silver said.
“I read both sides of it in terms of, is that the right way to build a team, what impact does it have on culture, can you rebuild a team in two years, can you rebuild in three years, what’s the track record of teams trying to do that,” Silver added, “and I am mindful that in a league of 30 teams that we’re also selling competition on a nightly basis and I don’t want to create a sense that we want to subject fans to subpar performances because don’t worry, it’s going to be great three years from now.”
The Bucks have a 25 percent chance to win and give incoming new ownership a great welcoming gift. Philadelphia (19.9 percent), Orlando (15.6) and Utah (10.4) have the next-best chances, with longtime powerhouses Boston and the Lakers behind them after rare poor seasons.
But this was a season where for some teams, a job well done meant doing their jobs poorly. After a forgettable draft in 2013, this one is considered much more promising, good enough that some teams which knew they weren’t going to win decided they would be better off if they lost.
Philadelphia owner Joshua Harris even called his team’s season a “huge success” after its 19-63 record included a 26-game skid that matched the longest in NBA history. The Sixers may have topped the list, but they were hardly alone among suspected tankers this season.
“I thought it was pretty crazy that teams were doing that. But they’re saying this is going to be one of the toughest draft classes since 2003,” Indiana University star Noah Vonleh said.
That class produced LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Carmelo Anthony, so if this draft really is that good, it’s hard to blame any teams for trying to get to the top of it.
The fact that so many did has sparked new calls to change the lottery process so as to not invite tanking. Silver said it will be looked at over the summer, but as the lottery turns 30, there isn’t a perfect idea for how to run it.
“I think for us, we’ve got to make sure we understand whether there’s an aberration here because of the perception of a particular draft class, whether indeed there is a better way of do it,” Silver said, “because of course at the same time you want to properly align incentives, but the very purpose of the draft is to help the worst teams restock.”
