The 2026 NBA Draft Lottery Is Happening Right Now and the Worst Team in Basketball Might Not Even Get the First Pick
The 2026 NBA draft lottery is going down in Chicago today, and here's the thing that should blow your mind: the team that finished with the league's worst record might not walk out of there with the top pick. Nope. The Washington Wizards limped through the season at 17-65, but that doesn't mean they're guaranteed anything. Welcome to the new lottery system.
The Odds Are Brutal for the Worst Teams
This is wild. The Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers, and Washington Wizards all have a 14% shot at landing the No. 1 overall pick. That's right, they're all sitting at the same odds even though Washington had the league's worst record. Since the NBA switched to the current lottery system before the 2018-19 season, the team with the worst record has literally never won the top pick. Not once. And it's not close. The last three teams to finish last in the league all ended up with the fifth overall pick. That was Utah in 2024-25, Detroit in 2023-24, and Detroit again in 2022-23. The lottery system is designed to punish tanking, but it's also designed to punish just being really, really bad.
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The craziest part? Big jumps happen all the time. Last season, the Dallas Mavericks jumped up 10 spots and won the No. 1 pick, using it to take Cooper Flagg. The year before that, the Atlanta Hawks leaped nine spots to land the top pick and selected Zaccharie Risacher. Teams that thought they were done sometimes get a second life.
This might be the last time we see this lottery structure in action. Sources told ESPN's Shams Charania back in April that the league has already briefed all 30 general managers on a new anti-tanking reform called the "3-2-1 lottery." It would expand the lottery to 16 teams with flattened odds and create a relegation zone where the bottom three teams get penalized with fewer lottery balls for the No. 1 pick. That starts with the 2027 draft.
So today in Chicago, representatives from all around the league are watching to see which team gets lucky. Stay tuned as the picks roll out.
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This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.