The NBA playoffs begin for 16 teams this weekend. For the 14 teams not in the playoffs, anticipation for the NBA draft has begun. While the draft will be held on June 25, the date the 14 non-playoff teams are looking forward to is May 19, the day the NBA Draft Lottery will be held in Secaucus, New Jersey.
The Utah Jazz finished with a 38-44 record this season and have a 0.7 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick. It’s safe to say the odds of the Jazz winning the first pick are slim to none. But strange things have happened in the draft lottery. In 1993, the Orlando Magic won the draft lottery with a probability of 1.52 percent — that’s one out of 66 lottery chances — and is the team with the lowest odds to have won the draft lottery.
Like the Jazz, the Indiana Pacers finished with a 38-44 record and a random draw before the lottery will break the tie between the Jazz and Pacers and determine which team gets an additional 0.1 percent shot at the No. 1 pick.
Here’s a look at the lottery teams and their odds for winning the No. 1 pick (courtesy of USAToday.com):
Minnesota Timberwolves — 25.0 percent
New York Knicks — 19.9 percent
Philadelphia 76ers — 15.6 percent
Los Angeles Lakers — 11.9 percent*
Orlando Magic — 8.8 percent
Sacramento Kings — 6.3 percent
Denver Nuggets — 4.3 percent
Detroit Pistons — 2.8 percent
Charlotte Hornets — 1.7 percent
Miami Heat — 1.1 percent**
Indiana Pacers —0.8 percent
Utah Jazz — 0.7 percent
Phoenix Suns — 0.6 percent
Oklahoma City Thunder —0.5 percent
* The Lakers' pick will go to the Suns if it falls outside the top five as a condition of an earlier trade.
** The Heat's pick will go to the 76ers if it falls outside the top 10 as a condition of an earlier trade.
So how does the NBA Draft Lottery actually work? Here’s a quick guide, courtesy of NBA.com:
- Fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1-14 are placed in a standard lottery machine.
- Four balls are drawn at random to determine the winner of the top three picks in the Draft. The order of the numbers drawn is not important, 1-2-3-4 is considered to be the same as 3-4-2-1, etc.
- Each team in the lottery is assigned a certain number of four-number combinations.
- The team which ended the regular season with the worst record (Minnesota Timberwolves) will get 250 out of 1,000 number combinations available. The team with the best record in the lottery (Oklahoma City Thunder) gets only five combinations.
- Only the top three picks are drawn via the lottery. The remaining picks are decided by reverse order of finish.
For the Jazz, they will most likely have the No. 12 draft pick. The only way the Jazz select lower than No. 12 is if the Suns or Thunder make it into the top three selections, sliding the Jazz and every other team down a pick. While the Jazz and 13 other teams wait for May 19 to arrive, fans can enjoy the fun of playing the odds of the draft lottery now by playing ESPN’s 2015 NBA Draft Lottery Mock Draft simulator. Click on the link to go to ESPN’s mock draft simulator. Then click “Play Lottery” and the simulator will do the ping pong magic for you.
ESPN has programmed the simulator to have the same odds as the real NBA Draft Lottery, so you may have to do a lot of clicking before you see the Jazz with the No. 1 pick.
Jazz fans, good luck at winning the NBA Draft Lottery!
Click here to play ESPN’s 2015 NBA Draft Lottery Simulator
Xoel CÀrdenas, MA, is a writer with Deseret News: Sports. Xoel is also a FC Barcelona columnist at SB Nation, and a columnist at Fox Deportes. Follow him on Twitter @XoelCardenas.