The Celtics have clinched the top position in the NBA Draft Lottery. Here’s what that means.
The No. 1 pick is far from a guarantee.
Thanks to the lowly Brooklyn Nets, the Boston Celtics are now guaranteed the top position in the 2017 NBA Draft Lottery. However, the No. 1 draft pick is still far from a surefire bet.
Due to the Phoenix Suns’ win Friday against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the 19-60 Nets clinched their position as the NBA team with the worst record. Normally, the league’s worst team gets the top spot in the league’s draft lottery. But because of the Celtics’ massive haul in their 2013 blockbuster trade with the Nets, which included the right to swap picks this year, it will be Boston who benefits from the Nets’ misery this year.
The Celtics’ pole position in the lottery means they have the highest chance of any team to receive to No. 1 pick in this summer’s draft — and hence first dibs on highly touted prospects like Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball. Yet at the same time, it’s three times more likely that some other team will get the top pick.
In the lottery, the Celtics have now clinched a 25 percent chance for the top pick. The second and third worst teams — which will be the Suns and Los Angeles Lakers, in some order — have 19.9 percent and 15.6 percent odds, respectively, at the top pick.
From there, the odds continue to descend all the way to 0.5 percent for non-playoff teams. Overall, there’s a nearly 40 percent chance that a team ranked fourth through 14th in the lottery actually lucks out and gets the top pick. For more on the details of the actual process of the lottery, read this NBA.com post from last year.
So while the Celtics will more likely than not miss out on the top pick, they still have a more than 64 percent chance of landing in the top three, per the lottery odds. And for Boston fans who have their eyes set on either Fultz or Ball, the team’s chances of getting a top-2 pick is 46.1 percent. One way or another, the Celtics are guaranteed a top-four pick.
ESPN also has a helpful post with the full top-five lottery odds for every team in contention.
The lottery is scheduled for May 16 in New York. In the meantime, click over to any number of draft lottery simulators to give the Celtics’ luck a spin.
