The NBA Draft Lottery is later this month, and Philadelphia 76ers fans should be preparing themselves for the worst, and hoping for the best. Here are the odds for the best and worst case scenarios.
It’s the month of May, and for most NBA fans, that means it’s time to get excited about some serously exciting playoff basketball. Not for Philadelphia 76ers fans.
For Sixers fans, May has been all about one thing over the last few years — the NBA Draft Lottery. This is where the final order of the NBA Draft that will come in the summer is solidified. This year, it’s especially important for the next few seasons of the franchise.
This being the third year of the Philadelphia 76ers true rebuild process, it’s time to start getting things on the upswing. With a fairly weak free agent class this year, and a potential four first-round draft picks for the Sixers to claim, their best bet at an upswing season is to have a really fantastic draft showing.
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The team with the top pick this year is bound to take Ben Simmons, a forward that has the potential to play guard in some offensive schemes out of LSU. Some would argue that Duke guard Brandon Ingram is better, and should be taken instead with the first overall pick. Both of these players potentially could be franchise-changing players, and could be leaders in the Sixers’ next chapter.
Forget about fit — any team that takes them can worry about that later. Simmons and Ingram are young and their talents are mostly untapped. They can be molded into just about anything at this point in their athletic careers.
The Sixers have the top odds in this year’s draft. At the bare bones, they have a 25 percent chance at winning the top overall pick with their own lottery balls. They do, however, have the opportunity to swap with the Sacramento Kings if the Kings’ pick is better than theirs, increasing their odds at the top two by just a little.
They can also own the Los Angeles Lakers pick, as long as it falls outside of the top three overall picks.
On top of that, they also have the Miami Heat’s pick at 24 and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s pick at 26.
The odds of different scenarios can be confusing, so my goal here is to clear up some of the numbers for different situations, while also talking about best case and worst case scenarios with the lottery coming up this month.
The first slide of this post is an overview of what the lottery is and how it works. If you already are familiar with that, the third slide is where the different scenarios and odds begin.
Next: Lottery Background