NBA Draft Lottery: Ranking the 5 best possible results
With the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery finally upon us, we rank the five best possible results from the night’s festivities
Soon enough we’ll find out which lowly NBA team will be gifted Zion Williamson. That’s another way of saying that tonight is the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery. After months and weeks of analyzing and projecting, we’re finally going to figure out which NBA team will gladly receive the No. 1 pick in an extremely top-heavy NBA Draft.
Will it be the New York Knicks, whose franchise will no question be buoyed by a generational talent such as Zion? Will the basketball gods once again bless the Cleveland Cavaliers after losing LeBron James a second time? Or perhaps it will be the Phoenix Suns, who have been struggling to find the right pieces to surround Devin Booker.
Maybe it will be a team from outside the top 3 jumping up and breaking the collective hearts of the teams just named. Before we get to the juicy part of what could happen on NBA Draft Lottery night, let’s take a look at the facts.
Here are the official odds for each of the team’s participating in the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery:
- New York Knicks – 14%
- Cleveland Cavaliers – 14%
- Phoenix Suns – 14%
- Chicago Bulls – 12.5%
- Atlanta Hawks- 10.5%
- Washington Wizards – 9%
- New Orleans Pelicans – 6%
- Memphis Grizzlies* – 6%
- Dallas Mavericks** – 6%
- Minnesota Timberwolves – 3%
- Los Angeles Lakers – 2%
- Charlotte Hornets – 1%
- Miami Heat – 1%
- Sacramento Kings*** – 1%
*top 8 protected, or conveys to Boston
**will convey to Atlanta
***will convey to either to Boston (via Philadelphia) or Philadelphia
With the facts out of the way, let’s take a look at the five best – and most entertaining – possible results for the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery.