The San Antonio Spurs upset the New York Knicks in overtime Friday night, creating a log jam in the NBA’s draft lottery positioning. Once solidly in the third position for the draft lottery, the Spurs are on a three-game winning streak while the teams in front of them, including the Portland Trail Blazers, keep losing.
Here’s an update on the league’s draft lottery status, based on the position of the Blazers:
6. Toronto Raptors, 23-50 (4 wins ahead)
5. Portland Trail Blazers, 19-55
4. Charlotte Hornets, 18-55 (1 win behind)
3. San Antonio Spurs, 18-56 (1 win behind)
The Raptors, who have lost 12 straight, have barely gained any ground on the fifth spot. With 8 games remaining, they probably will vanish from this list soon.
In their final eight games, the Blazers play six playoff contenders, and two teams looking at the lottery: The Wizards and the Hornets.
The Hornets, outside of their tilt with the Blazers on April 3rd, play all their games against teams battling for playoff position.
The Spurs play many contenders down the stretch, including the Nuggets and Thunder, but also will play the Grizzlies and last-place Pistons.
How Does the Draft Lottery Tiebreaker Work?
First, the NBA themselves can explain the lottery system, via their write-up.
Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.
For any teams tied at the end of the season, the NBA has a separate drawing system to decide the order of the teams. This is done prior to the draft lottery, and provides a different use for the draft lottery than the draft itself.
First, let’s talk about the draft lottery drawing. If multiple teams tie for the same record, their draft lottery combinations are split evenly. If there are leftover combinations after that split, for example a three-way split leaves two extra combinations, the drawing system is used to distribute the remaining combination(s).
And second, we revisit draft night positioning. The lottery only chooses the first four draft positions, after which all remaining teams are slotted in reverse order of their record, starting in the fifth spot. If other teams with better records (such as Utah, Brooklyn, or Memphis) leapfrog up into the top four, it can push the tied teams down to fifth or lower. In that scenario, the NBA’s drawing system will decide the order of the tied teams.