NBA Draft Lottery: How Does the Lottery Work and Who Will Get #1 Pick

Zak Drapeau
May 5
4 min read

by Zak Drapeau

Sportz Nation - 5/5/2026

When is the Draft Lottery?

The NBA Draft Lottery will begin at 3:00 pm EST on Sunday, May 10th.

The NBA Playoffs will be in full swing as Game 4 between the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers will start just 30 minutes after Lottery coverage starts.

With the NBA Draft's First Round set to start on June 23rd, the Lottery begins NBA Draft season. The Lottery will also be a prelude to the NBA Draft Combine set to be held in Chicago from May 10th to the 17th, where almost all of the top prospects of this 2026 class will be attending to show NBA Scouts and GMs their skills in hopes to improve their draft stock.

What are Each Team's Odds?

The Draft Lottery is based on reverse-2026 NBA standings with the three teams with the worst record having the best odds to get the #1 pick and so on.

The Draft Lottery is held between the 14 teams that didn't make the NBA Playoffs. While the Pelicans and Clippers did not make the playoffs, their 2026 1st round picks were traded away to the Hawks and Thunder respectively.

In the 2026 season, the Wizards had the worst record at 17-65 with the Pacers just behind them and the Nets following as the 3rd worst team. These three teams will share the highest percentage of any team to get the #1 pick.

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T-1 Wizards: 14%

T-1 Pacers: 14%

T-1 Nets 14%

T-4 Jazz 11.5%

T-4 Kings 11.5%

6. Grizzlies 8%

7. Hawks (via NO) 6.8%

8. Mavericks 6.7%

9. Bulls 4.5%

10. Bucks 3%

11. Warriors 2%

12. Thunder (via LAC) 1.5%

13. Heat 1%

14. Hornets 0.5%

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How Does the Lottery Work?

Before the 3:00 pm EST coverage begins, the Top-4 picks are selected behind the scenes by NBA officials and "a representative from the Ernst &Young accounting firm oversees the entire process." - ESPN via NBA official statement.

The process in which the exact order is selected is based on a combination of ping pong balls with numbers picked from a tumbler. So follow me here:

1. The NBA Draft Lottery has a total of 1,001 combinations of those numbered ping pong balls being selected.

2. Each team will have a total of combinations that could lead to them getting the #1 pick based on their odds shown above, (example: Wizards have 14% odds therefore they have 140 combinations. These combinations are random and could be any 4-digit combo such as 5931 or 3000 or 9998 and so on.)

3. Officials will randomly select 4 ping pong balls. Which ever team possesses the 4-number combination they select, will earn the #1 pick.

4. This process is then repeated for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th pick.

5. The rest of the draft order will be based on team's regular season record, (so if the Wizards don't get a pick within the Top-4, they are automatically going to be the #5 pick because they had the worst 2026 record.

Photo by Mellissa Tamez/ NBAE via Getty Images

This means that any of the 14 teams in the lottery could end up with the #1 pick. Even though the Hornets have only 0.5% odds, that means they have 50 of the 1,001 4-number combinations that could be chosen at random. A process not to unlike the 2025 Draft Lottery when the Dallas Mavericks had the 11th best odds (or 1.8% chance) to earn the #1 pick and ended up with that honor which ended up as new ROY Cooper Flagg. The Hawks also got the #1 pick in 2024 after having the 10th highest odds.

Will the Draft Lottery be favorable to another team that barely missed the playoffs for a 3rd year in a row? Or will we see one of the worst teams in the league claim the prize most of them have been tanking for since late-2025.

This question is very interesting when you read about NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's stance on tanking. Silver has stated that Tanking is at the top of his priorities for the NBA moving forward, including a potential vetoing process to the NBA Draft Lottery that will start in 2027, that will penalize teams who have tanked for a high draft pick.

Is it a coincidence that we've seen two teams who were just outside the Playoff Bubble end up with the #1 pick the last two years? Could we see another team with low odds jump to the #1 spot and see the teams who tanked fall out of the Top-4 again?

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For a look at the top prospects in the 2026 NBA Draft Class, check out Every NBA Team's Draft Needs by Joel Piton also released today.

More draft coverage will be coming out Every Tuesday and Friday leading all the way up to the June 23rd NBA Draft.