NBA Draft Lottery 2014: Explaining the rules
By Josh Sanchez
On Tuesday night, we will finally learn who will be the proud owner of the No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. The Milwaukee Bucks, who finished with the worst record in the league, are hoping to see the lottery play out in their favor as they enter with the most likely chance to claim the top pick.
Of course, there are 13 other teams who have an outside shot of playing spoiler and they will have their fingers crossed that everything will work out in their favor despite the long odds.
Since the rules may be foreign to some, here is a look at how the NBA Draft Lottery process works in the words of the league:
• Fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1-14 are placed in a standard lottery machine.
• Four balls are drawn at random to determine the winner of each of the top three picks in the Draft. The order of the numbers drawn are not important, 1-2-3-4 is considered to be the same as 3-4-2-1.
• Each team in the lottery is assigned a certain amount of four-number combinations.
• Since the Milwaukee Bucks ended the season with the worst record, they will get 250 out of 1,000 number combinations available. The team with the best record in the lottery has only five combinations.
• Only the top three picks are drawn via the lottery. The remaining picks are decided by reverse order of finish.
• In the case of the Bucks, the lowest pick they could have is fourth overall.
Below are the odds for each team in this year’s draft lottery:
[table id=31 /]
The NBA Draft Lottery kicks off at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN, so be sure to tune in to see how it all plays out and check back in with FanSided.com as we sort through the fallout.