We’re 10 days out from the NBA Draft Lottery, which will shape the course of many of the league’s least distinguished teams. The Charlotte Hornets ended the 2024-25 season with the third worst record in the league, and with that the third best lottery odds.
In case you were unaware, the (not rigged) lottery is a ping pong ball machine that contains 14 balls numbered 1-14. Four balls are drawn. The order in which they are drawn does not matter. There are 1,001 possible combinations of balls that can be drawn. One of those is discarded (I really think they should make something fun happen if that combo happens to hit). The other 1,000 are distributed to the lottery teams based on the lottery odds. The Hornets are given 140 ball combinations, giving them a 14% chance of wining.
All of the three worst teams have those same 14% odds to land the top pick. After that, the odds gradually decrease as you move down the standings. Here are the odds that the Hornets land at each pick:
- 1: 14.00%
- 2: 13.42%
- 3: 12.75%
- 4: 11.97%
- 5: 14.84%
- 6: 26.00%
- 7: 7.02%
It’s a little discouraging to look at that and see that the single most likely pick for the Hornets to land on is the sixth pick, which would be an extremely disappointing consolation prize after the season Hornets fans had to endure. However, it’s all a matter of perspective. The Hornets have a 40.17% chance of staying the top three and a 52.14% chance of landing in the top four, which seems to be about where the line is between the tier 2 and tier 3 prospects according to a lot of people. Essentially they have a 14% chance of getting Cooper Flagg and a 52% chance of getting one of Flagg, Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey, or VJ Edgecombe.
The lottery will happen on Monday, May 12. The show starts at 7:00 but the actual picks start getting announced around 15 minutes before the end of it, whenever that is (I’d guess 7:30 leading into the Knicks vs Celtics).
