It became a meme at the end of the regular season: A Venn diagram of two circles: teams who made the playoffs or play-in fell inside one circle, with teams in the NBA Draft Lottery in the other. Some teams in the slim margin of the circles crossing over in the middle were lucky to make the postseason and still have a lottery pick from a trade with a lottery-bound squad.
The Phoenix Suns sat alone as the only team outside either circle altogether.
Their unprotected 2025 first-round pick was sent to the Brooklyn Nets in the Kevin Durant trade three Februarys ago, and the Nets last summer shipped it in deal to the Houston Rockets.
The draft lottery at 4 p.m. MST Monday will determine where the Rockets could pick with the Suns’ selection, which has the ninth-best odds because of the Suns’ 36-46 regular season record.
Where this goes Monday is a thing to watch in Phoenix beyond the team losing its pick in the Durant deal.
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Houston made the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference but fell in the first round to the Golden State Warriors. They are not only considered a potential trade partner if Phoenix moves off of Durant but one of the most asset-laden teams leaguewide.
The Rockets have a 3.8% chance of earning the No. 1 overall pick, where the prize is a potential generational talent in Duke forward Cooper Flagg. They also have a 17.3% shot at earning a top-four pick.
Behind Flagg, there’s likely to be a run of jumbo guards like Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey out of Rutgers, Duke shooter Kon Knueppel and Baylor’s Swiss Army Knife VJ Edgecombe.
From there, the tier becomes a pick-your-fighter situation with positional priorities coming more into play. Duke center Khaman Maluach and Maryland scoring center Derik Queen are in the range, as is Arizona high school product (Compass Prep) and Oklahoma freshman Jeremiah Fears, who went from mid-tier recruit to NBA prospect quite quickly.
2025 NBA Draft Lottery odds
Pick Team Record Win% Top 4 odds #1 Ovr 1 Utah 17-65 .207 52.1% 14.0% 2 Washington 18-64 .220 52.1% 14.0% 3 Charlotte 19-63 .232 52.1% 14.0% 4 New Orleans 21-61 .256 48.1% 12.5% 5 Philadelphia (goes to OKC if not top 6) 24-58 .293 42.1% 10.5% 6 Brooklyn 26-56 .317 37.2% 9.0% 7 Toronto 30-52 5-5 31.9% 7.5% 8 San Antonio 34-48 .415 26.3% 6.0% 9 Houston (via Phoenix) 36-46 .439 17.3% 3.8% 10 Portland 36-46 .439 16.9% 3.7% 11 Dallas 39-43 .476 8.5% 1.8% 12 Chicago 39-43 .476 8.0% 1.7% 13 Atlanta (via Sacramento if not in top 12) 40-42 .488 3.8% 0.8% 14 San Antonio (via Atlanta) 40-42 .488 3.4% 0.7%How does the NBA Draft Lottery work?
The Associated Press — Sometime around 3 p.m. MST Monday, locked inside a secure room with no way of communicating with the outside world, team executives and others will watch 14 ping-pong balls start to bounce inside a machine.
The balls will be numbered, 1 through 14. One will be drawn, then a second, then a third, then a fourth. And with that, the people inside that room will find out, an hour or so before the rest of the world, which team won the No. 1 pick next month in the NBA draft.
The NBA draft lottery is Monday night in Chicago, with the winner getting the chance to pick No. 1 overall. And that means Duke’s Cooper Flagg — the likely No. 1 pick — will have a good chance of knowing which city he’ll be calling home next season as soon as the lottery results are announced.
Nobody inside the room where the results are revealed on a televised broadcast will know who won the lottery until deputy commissioner Mark Tatum makes the actual announcement. Those inside the room remain there, without their phones, until that time.
The race for No. 1 There are 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick. Utah, Washington and Charlotte have the best odds, 14% each.
New Orleans has a 12.5% chance, Philadelphia a 10.5% chance, Brooklyn a 9% chance, Toronto a 7.5% chance and San Antonio a 6.7% chance.
After that, it’s Houston (3.8%), Portland (3.7%), Dallas (1.8%), Chicago (1.7%) and Sacramento (0.8%).
The reason there are 14 lottery spots but only 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick is because Atlanta’s odds convey to San Antonio, essentially meaning the Spurs are in the lottery twice — with a 6% chance of winning on their own, and an 0.7% chance to win with the Hawks’ combinations of ping-pong balls.
This system has been in place since 2019, the latest effort to discourage tanking — the practice where teams aren’t overly interested in winning regular season games with hopes instead of bettering their chances of winning the No. 1 draft pick.
The teams with the three worst records all have the same chance — 14% — of winning the No. 1 pick, and odds for the remaining lottery teams are gradually reduced from there.
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