NBA Draft Lottery - Odds and Draft Order

By Andrew Brand on Tuesday, April 29^th 2014

While the NBA playoffs continue to churn out some fantastic basketball this spring there are 14 teams who have already turned their attention to the upcoming NBA Entry Draft. For the non-playoff teams their draft order is of course not yet set as they must all enter the lottery. For the playoff teams they already known their draft slot as it was based on the regular season records.

Before we get into the actual lottery odds of each team we need to address a tiebreaker that occurred between Utah and Boston. Utah did win this tie breaker and as a result they have a minutely better chance of obtaining the top pick in the draft. The other tie breakers occurred outside of the lottery and as a result Chicago picks ahead of Toronto, Portland picks ahead of Miami and Brooklyn picks ahead of Washington.

Despite the odds, the worst team in the league has only ‘won’ the lottery and had the first overall pick once in the last decade. Looking back we see that just because the odds are stacked against you it doesn’t mean that anything can’t happen; as evidenced by the 2008 draft that saw the Chicago Bulls move up from the 8th spot to grab Derrick Rose with the first overall pick.

That wasn’t even the best jump up in the draft order. Back in 1993 the Orlando Magic had a 41-41 team record and entered the lottery in the 11th slot with a 1.52% of getting the top pick. Well despite the math, the Magic won the lottery and selected Chris Webber first overall before swapping him to Golden State for Anfernee Hardaway.

The last four draft lotteries have seen two 3rd seeds, a 5th seed and an 8th seed procure the top pick. These kind of historical facts do nothing to quell the fears of Milwaukee Bucks fans and team executives as they currently sit atop the lottery hopefuls. Here are the lottery odds for each team to obtain the top overall pick in the upcoming draft. The subsequent two percentages are the teams odds of getting the second or the third overall pick.

1st Overall Pick 2nd Overall 3rd Overall

Milwaukee Bucks - 25% 21.5% 17.8%

Philadelphia 76ers - 19.9% 18.8% 17.1%

Orlando Magic - 15.6% 15.7% 15.6%

Utah Jazz - 10.4% 12.6% 13.3%

Boston Celtics - 10.3% 9.7% 10.7%

Los Angeles Lakers - 6.3% 7.1% 8.1%

Sacramento Kings - 4.3% 4.9% 5.8%

Detroit Pistons - 2.8% 3.3% 3.9%

Cleveland Cavaliers - 1.7% 2.0% 2.4%

New Orleans Pelicans - 1.1% 1.3% 1.6%

Denver Nuggets - 0.8% 0.9% 1.2%

New York Knicks* - 0.7% 0.8% 1.0%

Minnesota Timberwolves - 0.6% 0.7% 0.9%

Phoenix Suns - 0.5% 0.6% 0.7%

*The Knicks are slated in the lottery due to their team record; however, this pick will either go to Orlando or Denver depending on how the lottery balls bounce.

As for the teams who continue their pursuit for a Championship they already know their draft slot and they have a bit of a luxury in preparing in advance of the actual draft. Here is the draft order for the teams outside of the lottery.

15 - Atlanta Hawks

16 - Chicago Bulls

17 - Boston Celtics

18 - Phoenix Suns

19 - Chicago Bulls

20 - Toronto Raptors

21 - Oklahoma City Thunder

22 - Memphis Grizzlies

23 - Utah Jazz

24 - Charlotte Bobcats

25 - Houston Rockets

26 - Miami Heat