The NBA Draft Lottery, used to choose which team gets the first overall pick, was established in 1985 as a countermeasure to teams tanking or purposefully losing to receive a higher draft pick. It’s seen some adjustments over the years, and the system we see today has been in place since 2019.
The 2025 NBA Draft Lottery is here, and teams are about to know who gets Duke superstar and projected first overall pick Cooper Flagg. Still, it’s worth noting that the draft lottery doesn’t necessarily ensure that the worst team gets the number one pick. Let’s take a deeper look at how the process operates.
What is the NBA Draft Lottery, and How Does It Work?
Drawings will be conducted to determine the first four picks in the draft. The remainder of the “lottery teams” will select in positions five through 14 in inverse order of their previous season’s regular-season records.
A lottery machine holds 14 ping-pong balls (numbered one through fourteen). Four balls are drawn from the 14, with 1,001 possible combinations. 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations are assigned to the 14 lottery teams.
All 14 balls get placed in the lottery machine, where they are mixed for 20 seconds. After the 20 seconds are over, the first ball is removed.
Then, there are three straight ten-second mixes, where a ball is drawn. The team assigned that combination will receive the first pick in the draft. The process is then repeated for the second, third, and fourth picks.
The result is discarded if the same team is drawn twice, and a different four-ball combination is selected.
The Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets are teams that will pray to Mother Luck to shine its light upon them Monday night, as they recorded the three worst records of the 2024-2025 NBA regular season. The three franchises also have the highest odds of securing the number one pick.
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The Jazz, Wizards, and Hornets have a 14% chance of earning the No. 1 overall pick and presumably landing the Duke sensation. The Lottery odds decrease marginally thereafter, with the New Orleans Pelicans having a 12.5% chance to receive the No. 1 pick, followed by the Philadelphia 76ers, who have a 10.5% chance of getting the top selection.
The odds drop 1.5% for the next three teams — Brooklyn, Toronto, and San Antonio — before falling to 3.8% for the Phoenix Suns, who will send their pick to the Houston Rockets. Houston has the ninth-best odds of winning the draft lottery.
The 2025 NBA Draft Lottery will take place Monday at 7 p.m. ET before Game 4 of the playoffs matchup between the Knicks and the Celtics. Like the game, it will be televised on ESPN’s family of networks.
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