How Does the NBA Draft Lottery Work? Explaining the League's Complicated Annual Event

It's the month of May, which means NBA playoff basketball is in full flux-and the league's draft lottery is coming up.

The 2026 NBA draft lottery is set to take place on Sunday, May 10 at 3 p.m. ET and will be broadcast on ABC.

For savvy hoops fans who already know all the inner workings of one of the NBA's most complicated events, go away. This isn't for you. For the more casual NBA fan who's interesting in finding out exactly how the draft lottery works, read on for our handy explainer. And remember our golden rule: there are no stupid questions.

Let's start with the basics.

What's the point of using a draft lottery?

The NBA draft lottery was put in place to determine the order of selection for the first 14 picks of the league's draft. Why doesn't the NBA just do a draft based simply on teams' records from the previous season, like the NFL? Great question. Having a draft lottery intentionally creates uncertainty so that teams are less incentivized to tank for for higher picks. Rather than guarantee that the team with the worst record pick gets the best prospect available, teams receive weighted odds instead that shake things up a bit.

Also, the NBA tends to be more top-loaded than, say, the NFL, where the blue-chip talent typically goes beyond the first two or three picks. Further, the impact that one star player can have on the outlook of an NBA team is so great that certain years would result in a league full of more teams tanking than trying to win.

Using a lottery system discourages tanking for the much-coveted No. 1 pick, as it means that being the worst team in the league does not guarantee the top spot. Though tanking is still a prevalent issue that's not going away anytime soon, the league is constantly working on measures to fix the issue.

Is it an actual lottery?

Yes and no. The actual "lottery" is for the first four picks of the draft. The rest of the "lottery teams" will select in positions five through 14 in reverse order of their regular season records.

We'll explain more about that process below.

Which teams are eligible for the draft lottery?

The 14 NBA teams that failed to make the past season's playoffs participate in the lottery.

How are each team's odds determined? And how does one win the No. 1 pick?

This is probably the trickiest part to understand.

As stated above, the first four picks are drawn at random. The NBA does this via a ping pong ball system: 14 ping pong balls numbered one through 14 are placed in a machine, and four balls are randomly selected one at a time. Regardless of order, there are 1,001 possible combinations for the four balls drawn, and one combination (11-12-13-14) is thrown out to make it an even 1,000. Before the lottery, different combinations are assigned to teams based on their records the previous season, with the bottom three teams each having an identical 14.0% chance of winning the No. 1 pick (they are each assigned 140 combinations, and 140/1000 is 14.0%.)

On the day of the lottery, the balls are mixed for 20 seconds before the first ball is pulled, and then the next three balls are drawn at 10-second intervals. The team whose pre-assigned combination matches the first four balls drawn wins the No. 1 selection. Once the first pick is determined, the balls are placed back into the machine and the drawing process is repeated three more times to determine who gets the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 picks. If any team's combination is drawn a second time, or if the one null combination is drawn, the balls are placed back in the machine and the draw is repeated.

Once the first four picks of the draft are determined, the rest of the draft order falls in place naturally, with team's placed in reverse order of their record the preceding season. This means that the worst pick the worst team in the NBA can have is the fifth pick in the draft. Also, the team that's seeded 14th (and thereby owns the best record of the lottery teams) will always end up with the No. 14 pick, assuming they don't get lucky and win one of the top four picks.

Here is a list of how many combinations each lottery team owns and their respective percentages of winning the top pick:

• 1 (worst record): 140 combinations, 14.0% chance of receiving the No. 1 pick
• 2: 140 combinations, 14.0% chance
• 3: 140 combinations, 14.0% chance
• 4: 125 combinations, 12.5% chance
• 5: 105 combinations, 10.5% chance
• 6: 90 combinations, 9.0% chance
• 7: 75 combinations, 7.5% chance
• 8: 60 combinations, 6.0% chance
• 9: 45 combinations, 4.5% chance
• 10: 30 combinations, 3.0% chance
• 11: 20 combinations, 2.0% chance
• 12: 15 combinations, 1.5% chance
• 13: 10 combinations, 1.0% chance
• 14: 5 combinations, 0.5% chance

And here's a handy table from Wikipedia showing the odds of each of the 14 teams receiving a top-four pick, and where their picks could fall should they not win the lottery:

Who oversees the lottery?

Witnesses from the accounting firm Ernst & Young audit the process every year to ensure there's no funny business involved.

What are the odds for each team in the 2026 draft lottery?

More NBA from Sports Illustrated

• The Six Worst Calls the Thunder Benefited From Against LeBron James, Lakers in Game 2
• The Five Teams With the Most at Stake Entering the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery
• JJ Redick Didn't Hold Back on the Thunder and the Refs After Lakers' Frustrating Game 2 Loss
• Peter's Points: NBA Best Bets Today (Predictions, Prop Bets for Victor Wembanyama, Tyrese Maxey, Knicks vs. 76ers)

This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Does the NBA Draft Lottery Work? Explaining the League's Complicated Annual Event.

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This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 8:11 AM.