How Does the NBA Draft Lottery Work? Odds and Percentages

The NBA draft lottery decides the first four picks of the draft. The 14 teams that miss the playoffs are entered, and a machine draws four of 14 numbered ping-pong balls to produce a combination assigned to one of them. The three worst teams each get a 14% chance at the No. 1 pick, and picks 5 through 14 are then filled in reverse order of regular-season record.

That's the whole system in four sentences. Below is the machine itself — the combinations, the complete odds table for all 14 seeds, the 2019 reform that flattened everything, and a worked example from the 2026 lottery.

The Lottery at a Glance

The Machine: 14 Balls, 1,000 Combinations

The drawing is deliberately simple, and it is done in a sealed room with team representatives, league officials and an accounting firm present.

Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 go into a standard lottery drum. Four balls are drawn out one at a time. The balls are mixed for 20 seconds before the first draw, then for 10 seconds before each of the next three. Order does not matter — a draw of 3-8-1-12 is the same combination as 1-3-8-12.

Choosing 4 balls from 14 without regard to order produces exactly 1,001 possible combinations. The NBA needs a round number to divide cleanly, so one combination — 11-12-13-14 — is set aside and never assigned to anybody. If it comes up, the draw is thrown out and redone. That leaves 1,000 live combinations, which are distributed among the 14 lottery teams in proportion to how bad their records were.

The first combination drawn wins the No. 1 pick. All 14 balls go back in, and the process repeats for the No. 2 pick, then No. 3, then No. 4. If a combination belonging to a team that has already won a pick comes up, that draw is discarded and the balls go back in. The same happens if the unassigned 11-12-13-14 combination appears.

After four teams have been drawn, the machine's work is done. Picks 5 through 14 go to the remaining lottery teams strictly in reverse order of regular-season record — worst record picks first among whoever is left.

The Complete Odds Table

Here is every lottery seed, its share of the 1,000 combinations, its chance at the No. 1 pick, and its chance at any top-four pick. Seed No. 1 means the worst record in the league.

Two things in that table deserve a second look.

The worst team in the league loses the No. 1 pick 86% of the time. Finishing last buys you a 14% ticket and nothing more. It also falls out of the top four roughly 48% of the time — close to a coin flip.

Nobody can fall more than four spots. Because only four picks are drawn, a team can be leapfrogged by at most four others. The worst record in the league is therefore guaranteed a pick no worse than fifth; the second-worst no worse than sixth, and so on. From the No. 10 seed down, the floor is simply 14th — there are not enough teams below them to push them any further, since the lottery only assigns picks 1 through 14.

How Ties in the Standings Are Handled

When two or more teams finish with identical records, the league holds a random drawing to set their order on the board, then averages their combinations. If two teams tie for the fourth-worst record, they split the 125 and 105 combinations assigned to seeds 4 and 5 — 115 each, or 11.5% apiece. When the total does not divide evenly, the coin-flip winner gets the extra combination, which is why you sometimes see odd-looking pairs like 6.8% and 6.7% side by side.

The 2019 Reform: What Changed and Why

The current format is not the original one. The NBA Board of Governors approved a package of lottery changes on September 28, 2017, by a 28-1-1 vote (Oklahoma City against, Dallas abstaining), and the new rules took effect with the 2019 draft.

Two things changed at once.

1. The odds were flattened at the top. Under the old system, the three worst teams received sharply descending odds at the No. 1 pick: 25%, 19.9% and 15.6%. Now all three sit at a flat 14%. The reform did not just trim the top number — it removed the incentive to be the single worst team rather than the third-worst, because those three positions are now identical.

2. The drawing expanded from three picks to four. The old lottery drew only the top three selections, with picks 4 through 14 falling by record. Adding a fourth drawn pick means a team can now be pushed down five slots instead of four. Under the old rules, the worst record in the league was guaranteed a top-four pick; today it is only guaranteed a top-five pick.

The stated goal was to discourage tanking — deliberately losing games to improve draft position — which had become a visible problem after several multi-year rebuilds openly leaned on it. The same 2017 vote also gave the commissioner authority to fine teams for resting healthy players in nationally televised games.

Has it worked? The evidence is mixed. Flattening the odds narrowed the payoff for finishing dead last, but the gap between the bottom three and the middle of the lottery is still large enough that a bad team has an obvious reason not to win extra games in April. What the reform did clearly accomplish is variance: the top pick has landed further and further from the bottom of the standings, which is exactly what a flatter board produces.

Worked Example: The 2026 Lottery

The 2026 drawing, held in May, is a clean illustration of every rule above.

Three teams tied for the best odds — Washington (17-65), Indiana (19-63) and Brooklyn (20-62) — at 14% each. Utah and Sacramento both finished 22-60 and split seeds 4 and 5, giving each an 11.5% chance. Atlanta (holding New Orleans' pick) and Dallas both went 26-56 and split seeds 7 and 8 at 6.8% and 6.7%.

Here is what the machine produced:

The Washington Wizards won the No. 1 pick — their first top selection since taking John Wall in 2010 — and used it on BYU forward AJ Dybantsa. John Wall himself sat on the stage in Chicago as the team's representative.

The big mover was Chicago, which jumped from the No. 9 seed all the way to No. 4 on a 20.3% top-four chance. Notice what happened below the winners: because four teams moved up, everyone who did not get drawn slid down. Indiana had identical 14% odds to Washington and ended up conveying the pick at No. 5. Brooklyn, also at 14%, landed at No. 6. That is the four-spot maximum fall doing exactly what it is designed to do.

Every team from No. 10 down stayed put, which is the normal outcome — the bottom of the lottery board almost never moves, because those teams hold so few combinations.

The drawing itself happens in a sealed room before the televised show, in a host city announced in advance — the 2026 lottery was conducted in Chicago rather than at a team's home floor, which is standard. It is a neutral-site event by design, unconnected to the arenas the 30 teams play in.

The Biggest Lottery Jumps in History

Long shots do win. These are the least likely No. 1 picks since the lottery began in 1985.

Orlando's 1993 win is still the outlier of outliers. The Magic had made the playoffs the year before in everything but name — they finished 41-41, the best record of any lottery team — and won anyway on a single combination out of 66. They had also won the lottery the previous year, taking Shaquille O'Neal.

Not every No. 1 pick is a franchise-changer, but the run of recent top selections has been unusually strong. Victor Wembanyama, taken first by San Antonio in 2023, became the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in league history in 2025-26 at age 22, and at 7-3½ he is also one of the tallest players ever to appear in an NBA game.

Dallas in 2025 is the modern equivalent and the biggest jump of the flattened-odds era: the Mavericks entered as the No. 11 seed with a 1.8% chance and came out with Cooper Flagg, who went on to win Rookie of the Year in 2025-26.

How This Compares to the NFL

The contrast with football is total. The NFL runs no lottery at all — its draft order is strict reverse order of record, so the worst team picks first, every year, with no drawing involved. Ties are settled by strength of schedule and, if necessary, a literal coin flip. Playoff teams are then slotted by how far they advanced.

That is why the two leagues have such different rebuild cultures. In the NFL, finishing last guarantees the No. 1 pick; in the NBA, it buys a 14% chance and a 48% chance of missing the top four entirely. The full breakdown of football's system is in How Does the NFL Draft Order Work - Every Rule That Decides Who Picks First.

The other structural difference is who ends up in the lottery in the first place. The NBA's play-in tournament means the 14 lottery teams are not simply the bottom 14 records — a team can finish ninth or tenth in its conference, lose in the play-in, and land in the drawing. See NBA Playoff and Play-In Format, Explained for how that field is set.

When This Page Updates

The lottery is held each May, and the odds table above stays fixed unless the league changes the format again. This page is refreshed after every drawing with the new winner and order — the next update comes after the May 2027 lottery.

FAQ

How many ping-pong balls are in the NBA lottery? Fourteen, numbered 1 through 14. Four are drawn to make each combination, producing 1,001 possibilities. One combination (11-12-13-14) is discarded so the league can work with an even 1,000.

How many picks does the lottery actually decide? Four. The top four selections are drawn; picks 5 through 14 are assigned in reverse order of regular-season record among the teams left over.

What are the odds for the worst team in the NBA? A 14% chance at the No. 1 pick and a 52.1% chance at a top-four pick. It shares those exact odds with the second- and third-worst teams. It can pick no worse than fifth.

Why did the NBA change the lottery odds in 2019? To reduce the incentive to tank. Before the change, the worst team had a 25% shot at the No. 1 pick, the second-worst 19.9% and the third-worst 15.6%. Making all three 14% removed the reward for being the single worst team, and expanding the drawing from three picks to four added more downside risk.

Can the team with the worst record fall out of the top five? No. Only four picks are drawn, so at most four teams can jump ahead of it. The worst record in the league is guaranteed a pick no lower than fifth.

What happens if two teams have the same record? The league holds a random drawing to set their board order, then averages their combinations. Two teams tied for the fourth-worst record each get 11.5% instead of 12.5% and 10.5%.

Do all 30 teams enter the lottery? No — only the 14 that miss the playoffs, which includes teams eliminated in the play-in tournament. The other 16 teams pick in reverse order of record after the lottery teams, with the champion picking last at No. 30.

Who won the 2026 NBA draft lottery? The Washington Wizards, who entered with a league-best 14% chance after a 17-65 season and selected AJ Dybantsa at No. 1.