The NBA Draft Lottery for the 2023 draft will be held on Tuesday, May 16.
Here’s what you need to know about the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery:
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Who has the best odds?
The teams eligible for the Draft Lottery are the 14 teams that missed the NBA Playoffs this season. The final odds were determined on April 17 after tie breaks were settled between teams with identical regular-season records.
The Pistons, Rockets and Spurs are tied at 14% for the best chance to land the No. 1 pick.
When is the event and how does the draft lottery work?
The 2023 NBA Draft Lottery will be held Tuesday, May 16.
ESPN will air the results live at 8 p.m. ET. You can also stream this through ESPN’s apps. Here’s how the lottery works, from the NBA:
The 38th annual NBA Draft Lottery will determine the order of selection for the first 14 picks of the 2023 NBA Draft. Drawings will be conducted to determine the first four picks in the NBA Draft. The remainder of the “lottery teams” will select in positions five through 14 in inverse order of their 2022-23 regular-season records.
The actual lottery procedure will take place in a separate room just before ESPN’s national broadcast. Select media, NBA officials and representatives of the participating teams and the accounting firm Ernst & Young will be in attendance for the drawings.
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. The lottery machine is manufactured by the Smart Play Company, a leading manufacturer of state lottery machines throughout the United States. Smart Play also weighs, measures and certifies the ping-pong balls before the drawing.
The drawing process occurs in the following manner: All 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine and they are mixed for 20 seconds, and then the first ball is removed. The remaining balls are mixed in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, and then the second ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the third ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the fourth ball is drawn. The team that has been assigned that combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The same process is repeated with the same ping-pong balls and lottery machine for the second through fourth picks.
If the same team comes up more than once, the result is discarded and another four-ball combination is selected. Also, if the one unassigned combination is drawn, the result is discarded and the balls are drawn again. The length of time the balls are mixed is monitored by a timekeeper who faces away from the machine and signals the machine operator after the appropriate amount of time has elapsed.
A representative from Ernst & Young oversees the entire lottery process and stuffs and seals the envelopes before bringing them to the studio for the broadcast. The announcement of the lottery results will be made by NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum. A second representative from each participating team will be seated on stage. Neither the Deputy Commissioner nor the team representatives on stage will be informed of the lottery results before the envelopes are opened. The team whose logo is in the last envelope opened will have the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, which will be held on Thursday, June 22.
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