How the draft lottery odds actually work

Finishing the regular season with the league's worst record buys an NBA franchise a 14 percent chance at the top overall pick, alongside a direct path to falling all the way to fifth. The draw relies on 14 ping-pong balls placed inside a lottery machine, creating 1,001 four-ball combinations that decide only the top four selections on the draft board. The rest of the lottery order is never drawn from the machine at all.

1,001 Combinations and a Single Discarded Sequence

The physical drawing operates on mathematics rather than team logos printed on plastic spheres. The NBA places 14 balls, numbered 1 through 14, inside an air-mix machine. When four balls are drawn without regard to the order in which they appear, the mathematical formula yields 1,001 possible four-number combinations.

Before the drawing occurs, the league assigns 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations to the 14 participating lottery teams based on their regular-season records.

The 1,001st combination is thrown out.

If that single unassigned combination comes out of the machine during the live drawing, the result is discarded on the spot. Officials immediately draw a replacement combination.

Under the system approved by the NBA Board of Governors in September 2017, the three teams with the worst records receive equal weight at the top of the board. Each of those three clubs is assigned 140 combinations, establishing an identical 14 percent chance of winning the top pick. The remaining 580 combinations are distributed among the other 11 lottery participants in descending totals tied to their regular-season records.

Twenty Seconds for Ball One, Ten Seconds for the Next

The actual drawing protocol inside the lottery room runs on strict time limits.

All 14 balls enter the machine and mix for 20 seconds before the operator draws the first ball. Once that first number is secured, the remaining balls mix for another 10 seconds before the second ball is drawn. The process repeats with additional 10-second mixes between the third and fourth balls.

Those four numbers form a single winning combination.

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1. Mix all 14 balls for 20 seconds -> Draw Ball 1
2. Mix remaining balls for 10 seconds -> Draw Ball 2
3. Mix remaining balls for 10 seconds -> Draw Ball 3
4. Mix remaining balls for 10 seconds -> Draw Ball 4

```

Whichever franchise was assigned that exact four-digit group receives the draft selection. The machine is then reloaded with all 14 balls to conduct the drawing for the next pick.

If the machine produces a combination assigned to a team that has already won a top-four pick earlier in the session, the draw is void. The balls return to the chamber, and technicians draw a new four-ball set until a team not yet selected in the top four claims the slot.

Four Picks Drawn, Ten Filled by Standings

A standard misunderstanding of the lottery is that the league draws ping-pong balls for all 14 lottery slots. It does not. The machine runs only to determine the first four picks of the draft, a structure introduced in the 2019 draft format.

Once pick four is decided, the lottery machine stops.

The remainder of the lottery teams select in positions five through 14 in inverse order of regular-season record. This specific operational split governs how far a poor team can slide down the board.

Because only four selections are determined by the ping-pong balls, the team with the absolute worst record can receive no worse than the fifth pick. If four separate teams with better records win drawings one through four, the team with the worst record drops to fifth, where the inverse-record rule catches them automatically. The lottery reorganizes the first four picks; the standings dictate the other ten.