The 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, aka the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, is set to take place Monday evening, with the bottom 14 finishers of the 2024-25 season in the mix for a shot at the No. 1 overall pick.
This year, the consensus No. 1 pick is 18-year-old Duke prospect Cooper Flagg, who led the Blue Devils to the Final Four in the 2025 NCAA men’s basketball tournament before getting bounced by Houston, 70-67.
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Date: Monday, May 12
Time: 7 p.m. ET
TV channel: ESPN
Location: Chicago, Illinois
The bottom-14 finishers in the regular season are eligible for the draft lottery and are assigned odds for the No. 1 overall pick. The three teams with the worst regular-season records — the Utah Jazz (17-65), Washington Wizards (18-64) and Charlotte Hornets (19-63) — have the best odds to secure the No. 1 overall pick at 14%.
On the actual selection process, the NBA notes:
Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.
The drawing process occurs in the following manner: All 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine and they are mixed for 20 seconds, and then the first ball is removed. The remaining balls are mixed in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, and then the second ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the third ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the fourth ball is drawn. The team that has been assigned that combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The same process is repeated with the same ping-pong balls and lottery machine for the second through fourth picks.
Once the top five have been determined through the lottery process, the rest of the draft order for the first round will be determined by the reverse order of the remaining teams’ regular-season records. The entire draft order for Round 2 is determined by reverse order of each team’s regular-season record.
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Follow along for 2025 NBA Draft lottery live updates and results:
