The NBA draft lottery is coming on Tuesday for 2014 and the odds have teams like the Bucks, 76ers, Magic, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers looking to win the number one pick at the evens and the start time is at 8 pm on the ESPN TV channel schedule from New York and the lottery will also be streaming online from the WatchESPN website before the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers play.
The Celtics and Lakers come into the lottery with a 10 percent chance and a six percent chance to win the thing and while those teams may not end up with the number one overall pick, this draft is so deep it might not matter. The top five picks in this draft will have impact players and names like Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and Julius Randle are expected to be among the first names called at the draft in June. The Bucks come in with a 25 percent chance of winning the lottery as the worst team in basketball, while the Sixers and Magic round out the top three.
Last year many teams were thought to try and tank to get the number one pick and the Bucks now have the best odds to get it, while the Jazz, Celtics, Lakers, Kings, Pistons and Cavaliers come in before the Pelicans at number 10. Wiggins and Parker were talked about as the number one overall pick coming into this season and the battle could be between those two players for whoever picks number one overall. Randle will be a force in the top five and some think Joel Embiid is an option as the number one pick as well.
The top three picks in the draft are determined by the lottery and after that the rest of the picks between four and 14 will be done by who has the worst team records from the season. The Lakers and Celtics are looking to get lucky as they try to slide in to win the number one pick, while the Bucks are hoping the trend of the worst team not winning the pick changes this season. Last year the Cavaliers won the number one pick in the draft and they took Anthony Bennett, who so far has turned out to be a huge bust. The Cavaliers took Bennett as a Canadian player number one and now Wiggins could make it two in a row.
Some thought the Toronto Raptors would try to tank to get Wiggins, but they ended up making the playoffs instead and now they are not even in the lottery. The top of the draft will be very interesting, as Parker and Wiggins have been talked about like they are superstars, with Wiggins coming in after one season with Kansas, while Parker only played one season at Duke. The bottom teams in the lottery are the Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets and Pelicans and those teams will likely not win it.
There are a number of great players in the draft behind Parker and Wiggins, including Embiid as well as Doug McDermott, Dante Exum and Marcus Smart as well as Aaron Gordon and Kyle Anderson.
Check here for the full lottery order and draft odds for the lottery.