NBA Draft tie-breakers to be settled Tuesday on NBATV

With the 2017 NBA Draft just two months away, there are still some matters that need to be settled before the NBA Draft Lottery on May 16.

The 2017 NBA Draft order is just about set but there are still a few loose ends that need to be tied up, as the hype continues to grow. Before the order of the first fourteen picks can be decided by the lottery on May 16, there are nine cases where teams had identical records and a tiebreaker needed to be put in place to finalize the draft order.

According to ESPN Insider, Kevin Pelton, these will be broken today.

A miniature lottery with ping-pong balls, not a coin flip, will finalize the order outside of the top fourteen picks giving us a better idea of who will go where. Any team that receives the less favorable pick in round one will get the better pick in round two to compensate.

According to Pelton, these are the tie-breakers that will be decided today:

"While the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks will split combinations in the May 16 draft lottery, the tiebreaker will determine where they pick if neither is drawn in the lottery’s top three. Ties will also be broken between the Chicago Bulls and Portland Trail Blazers for 15th and 16th, the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks for 17th and 18th, the Atlanta Hawks and Memphis Grizzlies (whose pick goes to Portland) for 19th and 20th and the Cleveland Cavaliers (to Portland), LA Clippers, Toronto Raptors and Utah Jazz for 23rd through 26th. The Raptors will get the better of the picks belonging to them and the Clippers, while the Orlando Magic get the weaker of the two."

Some teams to keep your eyes on in the draft would be the Sacramento Kings and the Portland Trail Blazers. The Blazers stole a first round pick and Jusuf Nurkic from the Nuggets for a 2018 second round pick and as it stands, will have the No. 15, No. 19, and 23rd pick. They already have one of the best backcourts in the league in Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum and a rising star in Nurkic.

They have all of their key players locked up next year and adding some talent in the draft could push them deeper into the postseason.

Next: Jayson Tatum is either an outdated archetype or the NBA’s next great wing scorer

The Sacramento Kings are still a mess, but they appear to be getting back on track. Hield and Labissière put the NBA community on notice as they showed plenty of promise down the stretch.  With the No. 8 and No. 10 pick, they can immediately grab some top talent in this deep draft to continue to work back towards contention.