How the NBA Draft Lottery Works

The NBA Draft Lottery is an annual event that takes place in order to determine the draft order for the NBA draft. Here’s how it works.

Introduction

Every year, the NBA Draft Lottery is held to determine the order in which teams will pick in the NBA Draft. The lottery is a weighted system that gives the worst teams the best chance of getting the top pick. It was created to discourage tanking, or losing on purpose to get a better draft pick.

The lottery is made up of 14 ping-pong balls, numbered 1-14. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14. Before the lottery, each team is assigned a certain number of combinations based on its record from the previous season. The team with the worst record gets 250 combinations, while the team with the best non-playoff record gets five.

The odds of getting the No. 1 overall pick are as follows: worst record (25%), second worst (19.9%), third worst (15.6%), fourth worst (11.9%), fifth worst (8.8%), sixth worst (6.3%), seventh worst and eighth worst tied (4.3%), ninthworst (2.8%), 10thworst (1.7%), 11thworst and 12thworst tied (1%), 13thworst (.5%) and 14thworst (.5%).

If you want to see how each team’s odds break down, check out this chart from FiveThirtyEight .

There are three drawings during the lottery process: one for the first overall pick, one for the second overall pick and one for the third overall pick. The remaining picks are then determined by inverse order of regular-season record. So, if Team A has the fourth-worst record and Team B has the fifth-worst record, Team A would pick fourth and Team B would pick fifth no matter what happens in the lottery drawing for first or second overall picks.

What is the NBA Draft Lottery?

The NBA draft lottery is an annual event held by the National Basketball Association (NBA), in which the teams that did not make the playoffs that previous year participate in a lottery process to determine the draft order for the upcoming NBA draft.

The Draft Lottery Process

The NBA Draft Lottery is an annual event in which the teams that did not make the playoffs participate in a lottery to determine the order in which they will select in the NBA Draft. The lottery is conducted in private before the draft, and the results are not announced until later. The team with the worst record in the league will have the best chance of winning the lottery, and thus the first overall pick. The odds of winning the lottery decrease with each subsequent pick, so that the team with the second-worst record has a slightly lower chance of winning than the team with the worst record, and so on.

The specific odds of each team winning are not announced until after the lottery, but they are known to vary slightly from year to year. In general, though, it is very unlikely for a team outside of the top three to win the lottery. In fact, since 1990, only five teams outside of the top three have won (Orlando Magic in 2004, Chicago Bulls in 2008, Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011, New Orleans Pelicans in 2012, and Milwaukee Bucks in 2019).

The current format of the NBA Draft Lottery was introduced in 2019. Prior to that, there were a few different formats used over time. Perhaps most notably, from 1985-1989 (and again from 1990-1993), all non-playoff teams were entered into a weighted drawing – meaning that each team had different odds of winning based on their record. This system was known as “the coin flip” because it was essentially a random process with little to no bearing on which teams would actually get good players – leading to some franchises “tanking” (i.e., losing intentionally) at various points during those years.

In 1994, a new system was put into place where only three teams could win the first overall pick – meaning that if your team wasn’t one of those three lucky ones, you were stuck with wherever you happened to fall in draft order. This system remained unchanged until 2019 when it was finally revamped into its current form.

One final note – while most years see 14 non-playoff teams participating in the Draft Lottery (7 from each conference), this is not always the case. If there are ties for playoff seeds at any point during tire regular season or playoffs, then additional teams may be added to bring things back up to an odd number (15 or 17).

The Draft Lottery Odds

The NBA draft lottery is a system used to determine which team gets the first overall pick in the NBA draft. The lottery is not a random drawing, but rather a series of Ping-Pong ball machines that are set up in such a way that the team with the worst record has the best chance of getting the first overall pick. The odds of getting the first overall pick are as follows:

-The team with the worst record has a 25 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The team with the second worst record has a 19.9 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The team with the third worst record has a 15.6 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The team with the fourth worst record has an 11.9 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The team with the fifth worst record has an 8.8 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The team with the sixth worst record has a 6.3 percent chance of getting the first overall pick.
-The teams with the seventh and eighth worst records have a 4.3 percent chance each of getting the first overall pick.
-The teams with the ninth and 10th worst records have a 2.8 percent chance each of gettingthe first overall pick

How has the NBA Draft Lottery Changed over the Years?

The NBA Draft Lottery is used to determine the order of selection for the NBA draft. The lottery is held in advance of the draft, and the teams that do not make the playoffs are eligible to participate. The team that wins the lottery is given the first pick in the draft, and the order of selection for the remaining teams is determined by their regular-season record. The NBA Draft Lottery has undergone several changes since it was first introduced in 1985.

The Early Years: 1965-1984

In the early years of the NBA draft, the process was simple: the team with the worst record in the league got the first overall pick. If there were ties for the worst record, a coin flip would decide who got which pick. This system led to some obvious tanking: teams that were out of playoff contention would often lose on purpose to improve their odds in the draft.

To combat this, in 1966 the NBA introduced a system where the fourteen non-playoff teams would be entered into a lottery. The team with the worst record would still have the best chance of getting the first pick (around 25 percent), but now every team had at least a small chance (1/14) of getting it. This system had one big flaw, though: it didn’t stop tanking. Teams could still lose on purpose to improve their odds, and in fact, it might have encouraged it even more. Instead of just trying to be bad, now teams had an incentive to be really bad—the worse your record, the higher your odds of winning the lottery.

The Modern Era: 1985-present

The modern era of the NBA Draft lottery began in 1985, when the NBA implemented a weighted system to determine the order of the draft. Under this system, the teams with the worst records would have the greatest chance of receiving the top pick.

This system remained in place for 19 years, until 2004, when the league implemented a new system in an effort to discourage teams from purposely losing games (a practice known as “tanking”). Under this system, the draft order is determined by a lottery drawing amongst all teams that did not make the playoffs. The team with the worst record still has the best chance of receiving the first pick, but now has only a 25% chance (instead of 100% under the old system).

This new system was tweaked slightly in 2019, when it was again expanded to include all 14 teams that did not make the playoffs (previously, only the 12 non-playoff teams were included). Under this expanded lottery format, the team with worst record now has a 14% chance of receiving the first overall pick.

The current NBA Draft lottery system will remain in place at least through 2024.

Conclusion

The NBA draft lottery is a weighted system used to determine which team gets the first overall pick in the NBA draft. The lottery is used to discourage tanking, or losing on purpose to get a better draft pick. The team with the worst record in the league has the best chance of getting the first overall pick. The odds are weighted so that the team with the worst record only has a 25% chance of getting the first overall pick, while the team with the best chance has a 47.9% chance of getting it.

The lottery is held before the start of the NBA playoffs. The 14 teams that did not make the playoffs are eligible for the lottery. The Draft Lottery is televised, and each of these 14 teams is represented by a ping-pong ball machine containing their logo. There are 1,000 total balls in the machine, and these balls are mixed up for 20 minutes before being drawn out one by one. The order in which they are drawn corresponds with that team’s spot in the draft order.

The drawing of ping-pong balls continues until 3 balls have been drawn out for each team not in the playoffs. In total, there will be 30 ping-pong balls drawn out, and these correspond to picks 1-30 in reverse order of finish from regular season (worst to best).

However, if any of these 14 non-playoff teams end up winning one of picks 1-3, then they automatically move up to that spot and bump down every other team below them accordingly. This year, for example, if any non-playoff team wins one of picks 1-3, then they’ll move up to that spot and bump down every other team behind them accordingly.

Finally, after all 30 ping-pong balls have been drawn and listed in reverse order of finish from regular season (worst to best), then ties will be broken by a random drawing between those teams with identical records from regular season .