Ranking the NBA Draft Lottery reps

At 9:00 tonight on ESPN the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets get the Conference Finals underway with Game 1 of their series in Oakland. But a half-hour before, we’ll take our first look towards the draft and the summer with the NBA Draft Lottery.

The 14 teams that failed to make the postseason will find out tonight which pick(s) they’ll have in next month’s draft that will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Here, via Sports Illustrated, you can see the 14 teams in order of the chance they have at getting the first pick.

Timberwolves (16-66): 25%

Knicks (17-65): 19.9%

Sixers (18-64): 15.6%

Lakers (21-61): 11.9%

Magic (25-57): 8.8%

Kings (29-53): 6.3%

Nuggets (30-52): 4.3%

Pistons (32-50): 2.8%

Hornets (33-49): 1.7%

Heat (37-45): 1.1%

Pacers (38-44): 0.8%

Jazz (38-44): 0.7%

Suns (39-43): 0.6%

Thunder (45-37): 0.5%

And that’s all well and good, but we’re not here to talk about potential effects of which team gets which pick. We’re here for something much more important: ranking the NBA Draft Lottery reps. Each team sends someone to represent the franchise at the event, and here at The Friendly Bounce, we felt it was our duty to rank these reps.

We asked our crew here to rank their top five reps, with five points being given for a first place vote, four points for a second place rank, three points for third, two points for fourth, and one point for fifth.

In what should be little surprise, Russell Westbrook (24 points), came away with the number one spot, and as such, is officially the most important NBA Draft Lottery rep. Congrats, Russell.

Results: