2016 NBA Lottery: What Sixers Fans Need To Know

Results from the 2015 NBA draft | Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA lottery will take place Tuesday night, an event which has the chance to completely alter the trajectory of a franchise.

It’s the kind of event that can leave a team with either Blake Griffin or Hasheem Thabeet, with Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley. And, for as much as we like to be in control of our own destiny, it’s a night that turns rational executives into superstitious creatures, left to the whims of a ping pong ball machine to influence the next decade of team building.

What does it mean for the Sixers?

How the lottery works?

The NBA has a lottery ball machine which draws four balls, creating a four-digit combination. That combination is then mapped back to a team. The team with the best odds has 250 of these 1,000 combinations (creating a 25% chance at the top pick), odds which decrease down to 5 combinations for the team with the worst odds.  Because the 76ers have the right to swap picks with the Kings, the Sixers essentially have 269 lottery ball combinations for the #1 pick.

The actual lottery process is conducted in private, with only select media members, team representatives, and members of the accounting firm Ernst and Young there to witness the actual lottery proceedings. These people, who are not allowed to have any communication devices with them in the lottery, will know the results about 30 minutes before the rest of the world. The results are then announced to the world when Mark Tatum, the deputy commissioner of the NBA, opens up the the envelopes to the world on live television. Neither Tatum or any of the team representatives who are on television, who are different than the representatives who were in the room when the actual lottery was conducted, know the results before they’re announced publicly.

The NBA conducts a lottery for the top 3 picks, with any of the 14 teams involved in the lottery having a chance to land in one of those three spots. For picks 4-14, the NBA distributes the picks to the remaining eleven teams (those who did not land in the top 3) based on record.

What are the Sixers’ odds? 

By virtue of having the worst record in the NBA, and with the additional lottery ball combinations from the right to swap picks with the Sacramento Kings, the Sixers have a 26.9 percent chance at the #1 overall pick and a 49.5 percent chance at a top-2 pick.

While that doesn’t sound great, that’s actually about the best a team can hope for. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is actually the best odds a team has had under the current system. The Sixers will also get the Lakers pick if it falls out of the top-3 in the draft, which it has a 44.2% chance of doing (31.9 percent chance of falling to #4, and 12.3 percent chance of falling to #5). Keep in mind, if the Lakers fall to 5, that means three teams below the Lakers in the lottery have jumped into the to-3, meaning the Sixers own pick would be guaranteed to be #4.

Why is it important for the Sixers? 

Most draft analysts (myself included: big board and mock draft) consider there to be a pretty steep drop off after the second pick in this draft, with quite a bit of uncertainty in the 3-through-14 portion of the draft. The Sixers have basically a coin flip (49.5 percent chance) of getting a top-2 pick, and it’s the kind of luck-based result that could completely change the course of the rebuild.

It’s also the kind of luck that the Sixers haven’t yet had during the rebuild, as they ended up with the third pick in each of the last two drafts. With the steep drop off in perceived talent after the top of this draft, not landing a top-2 pick would be a huge blow to the rebuild.

When is the lottery?

The lottery will take place on Tuesday, May 17th, before the start of game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Coverage starts at 7 pm.

Derek Bodner covers the 76ers for Philadelphia magazine. Follow @DerekBodnerNBA on Twitter.