The NBA draft lottery decides top picks with ping-pong math

The short answer to how does the NBA draft lottery work: the 14 teams that miss the playoffs enter a weighted drawing for the first four picks in the NBA Draft. The teams with the worst records get the best odds, but no team is guaranteed the No. 1 pick.

After those first four picks are drawn, the rest of the lottery order is set by regular-season record, from worst to best. So the lottery is only a scramble for the very top of the draft, not a full 30-team spin of the wheel.

How does the NBA draft lottery work on lottery night?

Under the NBA’s current lottery format, the process starts with 14 teams: the clubs that did not qualify for the playoffs. The league then uses a weighted lottery to determine picks No. 1 through No. 4.

A weighted lottery means teams do not have equal chances. A team with a worse record receives more assigned number combinations, giving it a better chance to be drawn. Better lottery teams receive fewer combinations.

The actual drawing is built around ping-pong balls, but the machine does not spit out a team logo. It creates a number combination.

1. Fourteen ping-pong balls, numbered 1 through 14, are placed in a lottery machine.
2. Four balls are drawn to create a four-number combination.
3. The order of the four numbers does not matter. For example, 1-2-3-4 is the same combination as 4-3-2-1.
4. There are 1,001 possible four-number combinations from 14 balls.
5. The NBA assigns 1,000 of those combinations to the 14 lottery teams, based on their odds.
6. One combination is left unused. If it comes up, the league draws again.

The first valid combination drawn determines the No. 1 pick. Then the league repeats the process for No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4.

If a combination belonging to a team that has already been selected comes up again, the league draws again. A team can only win one of the top four picks.

The televised show is a reveal, not the drawing itself. The drawing is conducted before the broadcast, with team representatives and league officials present, and the results are then announced in reverse order, starting at No. 14 and building to No. 1.

Which teams are in the NBA draft lottery?

The lottery is for the 14 teams that miss the playoffs. In the play-in era, that means the final playoff field matters: teams that do not make the playoffs are lottery teams, even if they were close.

The other 16 teams, the playoff teams, do not enter the lottery. Their first-round picks come after the lottery teams, generally in reverse order of regular-season record.

The phrase lottery team can mean two things in NBA talk. Strictly, it means a team in the drawing. More casually, fans use it to mean a team bad enough, unlucky enough or rebuilding enough to be outside the playoffs.

The lottery only controls the top part of the first round. It does not decide the entire draft, and it does not apply to the second round in the same way.

What are the NBA draft lottery odds?

The odds are tilted toward the teams with the worst records, but the NBA flattened the system compared with older versions of the lottery. That change was designed to reduce the reward for finishing last.

Under the current format, the odds for the No. 1 pick are:

• Worst record: 14.0 percent
• Second-worst record: 14.0 percent
• Third-worst record: 14.0 percent
• Fourth-worst record: 12.5 percent
• Fifth-worst record: 10.5 percent
• Sixth-worst record: 9.0 percent
• Seventh-worst record: 7.5 percent
• Eighth-worst record: 6.0 percent
• Ninth-worst record: 4.5 percent
• Tenth-worst record: 3.0 percent
• Eleventh-worst record: 2.0 percent
• Twelfth-worst record: 1.5 percent
• Thirteenth-worst record: 1.0 percent
• Fourteenth-worst record: 0.5 percent

Those percentages are easiest to picture as 1,000 assigned combinations. The three worst teams each receive 140 combinations. The team with the fourth-worst record gets 125. The team with the best record among lottery teams gets 5.

The same pool of combinations is used to draw each of the first four picks. Because a selected team is removed after it wins a top-four spot, the exact chance of landing No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4 depends on what happened in the earlier draws.

After the four lottery winners are set, the remaining 10 lottery teams are placed by record. Worst remaining record picks earliest, best remaining record picks latest.

That is why the team with the worst record can fall, but only so far. If it does not get picked in the top four, it can drop to No. 5 if four other lottery teams jump ahead. The second-worst team can fall to No. 6, and the third-worst team can fall to No. 7.

How are ties handled?

Tied records create a small but important piece of draft bookkeeping. Under NBA procedure, tied teams split the lottery combinations assigned to their tied positions as evenly as possible.

If the math leaves an extra combination, the league uses a random tiebreaking drawing to decide which team gets it. The same kind of tiebreaking process also helps set the order between tied teams when they do not move into the top four.

Here is the clean version: ties do not create equal chaos. The teams share the odds for the slots they occupy, the league breaks any leftover odd number, and the lottery drawing still decides whether any of them jumps into the top four.

For example, if two teams tie for one of the worse records, their lottery odds are based on the combined odds of those two draft positions. If the combination count cannot be split perfectly, one team gets the extra combination through the tiebreaker.

Why draw only the first four picks?

The NBA uses the lottery to balance two goals that pull against each other. Bad teams need access to top talent, because the draft is one of the league’s main tools for competitive balance. The league also does not want the worst record to come with a guaranteed superstar-sized prize.

Drawing the first four picks creates suspense and uncertainty at the top. A team with the worst record has a strong chance at a premium pick, but a team that barely missed the playoffs still has a tiny path to No. 1.

Once the top four are decided, the league returns to inverse order of record. That keeps the broader draft order tied to team performance, while still giving the lottery enough randomness to matter.

This is also why fans talk about a team moving up or sliding down. Moving up means a team was drawn into the top four from a lower lottery position. Sliding down means other teams jumped ahead, pushing it back from its pre-lottery slot.

What happens to traded or protected picks?

The lottery decides the pick, not necessarily which team keeps it.

NBA teams often trade future first-round picks. Some of those picks are protected, which means the original team keeps the pick if it lands within a certain range. A top-four protected pick, for instance, stays with the original team if the lottery puts it at No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4. If it lands outside that range, it can transfer to the other team under the trade terms.

That is why lottery night can matter to more than the 14 teams in the drawing. A playoff team may be watching because it owns another team’s pick. A rebuilding team may be watching because protection is the difference between keeping a high pick and sending it away.

Protections vary by trade. Some are top-one protected, some top-four, some lottery protected, and some decline over future years. The lottery order is set first; the trade language then determines who actually uses the pick.

The practical takeaway

The NBA draft lottery is a weighted drawing for the top four picks among the 14 non-playoff teams. Worse records get better odds, but the ping-pong-ball combinations leave room for jumps, drops and a lot of tense camera shots.

If you remember one thing, make it this: the lottery does not rank every team from scratch. It picks the first four, then record takes over.