Someday round 6 p.m. EDT Monday, locked inside a safe room with no method of speaking with the surface world, workforce executives and others will watch 14 ping-pong balls begin to bounce inside a machine.
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The balls shall be numbered, 1 via 14. One shall be drawn, then a second, then a 3rd, then a fourth. And with that, the individuals inside that room will discover out, an hour or so earlier than the remainder of the world, which workforce received the No. 1 choose subsequent month within the NBA draft.
The NBA draft lottery is Monday night time in Chicago, with the winner getting the prospect to select No. 1 general. And meaning Duke’s Cooper Flagg — the possible No. 1 choose — could have a great likelihood of figuring out which metropolis he’ll be calling house subsequent season as quickly because the lottery outcomes are introduced.
No one contained in the room the place the outcomes are revealed on a televised broadcast will know who received the lottery till deputy commissioner Mark Tatum makes the precise announcement. These contained in the room stay there, with out their telephones, till that point.
There are 13 groups with an opportunity to win the No. 1 choose. Utah, Washington and Charlotte have one of the best odds, 14% every.
New Orleans has a 12.5% likelihood, Philadelphia a ten.5% likelihood, Brooklyn a 9% likelihood, Toronto a 7.5% likelihood and San Antonio a 6.7% likelihood.
After that, it’s Houston , Portland , Dallas , Chicago and Sacramento .
The rationale there are 14 lottery spots however solely 13 groups with an opportunity to win the No. 1 choose is as a result of Atlanta’s odds convey to San Antonio, primarily that means the Spurs are within the lottery twice — with a 6% likelihood of profitable on their very own, and an 0.7% likelihood to win with the Hawks’ combos of ping-pong balls.
This technique has been in place since 2019, the newest effort to discourage tanking — the apply the place groups aren’t overly considering profitable common season video games with hopes as a substitute of bettering their possibilities of profitable the No. 1 draft choose.
The groups with the three worst information all have the identical likelihood — 14% — of profitable the No. 1 choose, and odds for the remaining lottery groups are progressively diminished from there.
Utah can’t end under fifth, Washington can’t end under sixth, Charlotte can’t end under seventh and New Orleans can’t end under eighth.
Philadelphia would hold the choose ought to it land within the prime six; another end result — solely seventh, eighth or ninth could be doable at that time — would ship the choose to Oklahoma Metropolis.
Brooklyn, Toronto, San Antonio, Houston, Portland, Dallas, Chicago and Sacramento all might transfer up into the highest 4 as effectively. They might all need to buck lengthy odds — and in some circumstances, actually lengthy odds — for that to occur. Brooklyn has a 37% likelihood of getting there; Sacramento solely has a couple of 4% likelihood.
The lottery solely units the order for the primary 14 picks within the draft. The remainder of the first-round — picks 15-30 — had been decided by regular-season end, although a few of these picks have been traded many instances through the years.
The remainder of the first-round order, for now, is: Oklahoma Metropolis picks No. 15, Orlando No. 16, Minnesota No. 17, Washington No. 18, Brooklyn No. 19 and Miami No. 20.
From there, the ultimate 10 picks within the first spherical are owned by Utah , Atlanta , Indiana , Oklahoma Metropolis , Orlando , Brooklyn , Boston , Phoenix and the Los Angeles Clippers .
NBA: /nba