How the NBA Draft Lottery works: odds, percentages, draft position

The 2025 NBA Draft Lottery will happen on Monday, May 12, and 14 teams will find out if their future is changed forever. But how exactly does it work? Here’s a quick explanation.

For me, the easiest way to think about it is like raffle tickets at the fair. The NBA has a lottery ball machine, and they put 14 lottery balls into it, numbered 1-14. To select the winner of the lottery, they draw four balls out of the machine and stack them in a row. They then read off that 4-number combination. If you are the team that has that first 4-number combination, you win the #1 pick. (See, it’s just like the fair.) They then do that four times to select the top four teams. Also, if they read a team more than once, they do it again. For example, the San Antonio Spurs famously had their combination read multiple times when they won the Victor Wembanyama, and they had to keep re-doing the draw until the next team was drawn. Once the top four teams are selected, the rest are placed in order based on their pre-lottery order. That’s why if the Utah Jazz, who have the top spot come lottery night, don’t win, they get the #5 pick at worst.

The NBA flattened the lottery odds in 2019 to make it less likely for the bottom three teams to win. Here is an updated standings chart showing a breakdown of each team’s total number of lottery ball combinations and their odds of winning the lottery.

• 1 Utah Jazz (protected 1-10): 140 combinations, 14.0% chance of receiving the No. 1 pick
• 2 Washington Wizards (protected 1-10): 140 combinations, 14.0% chance
• 3 Charlotte Hornets (protected 1-14): 140 combinations, 14.0% chance
• 4 New Orleans Pelicans: 125 combinations, 12.5% chance
• 5 Philadelphia 76ers (protected 1-6): 105 combinations, 10.5% chance
• 6 Brooklyn Nets: 90 combinations, 9.0% chance
• 7 Toronto Raptors: 75 combinations, 7.5% chance
• 8 San Antonio Spurs: 60 combinations, 6.0% chance
• 9 Houston Rockets (from the Phoenix Suns): 45 combinations, 4.5% chance
• 10 Portland Trail Blazers (protected 1-14): 30 combinations, 3.0% chance
• 11 Dallas Mavericks: 20 combinations, 2.0% chance
• 12 Chicago Bulls: 15 combinations, 1.5% chance
• 13 Atlanta Hawks (from the Sacramento Kings): 10 combinations, 1.0% chance
• 14 San Antonio Spurs (from the Atlanta Hawks): 5 combinations, 0.5% chance

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