ORLANDO, Fla. – Several teams are still battling it out this summer to determine who will be the NBA champion of 2021, while 14 teams will have to rely on ping pong balls to improve their chances at title hopes in the future.
[RELATED: Here are 3 players the Magic drafted when Orlando won the NBA draft lottery]
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When is the NBA draft lottery?
The NBA draft lottery is scheduled for June 22.
What is the NBA draft lottery?
Lottery night reveals the order of the next draft, obviously, each team wants to have the first pick.
Each team that did not make the playoffs (unless this team has already traded the pick) has a chance to win the first overall pick.
How does a team win the lottery?
According to NBA.com, 1,000 ping-pong balls sit in a machine and each team gets a certain amount of them. The worse a team’s record was in 2021 the more ping-pong balls the team gets.
The Houston Rockets, Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic had the worst records in the league this year and each of these teams will have the most ping-pong balls.
The Magic will get 140 ping-pong balls, Orlando has a 14% chance of winning the first pick.
Golden State had the best record in the NBA without making the playoffs, the Warriors have a 0.5% of winning the lottery.
The first ping-pong ball shot out of the glass drum machine determines which team gets the first pick, this also happens for pick two, three and four.
The draft order for the rest of the teams that did not win a top-four pick will select in order from worst record to best record.
What are the odds for each pick for the Magic?
The odds are from tankathon.com: Orlando has a 14% chance of winning the first pick, 13.4% chance of winning the second pick, 12.7% chance of winning the third pick, 11.9% chance of winning the fourth pick, 14.8% chance of winning the fifth pick, 26% chance of winning the 6th pick and a 7.1% chance of getting the 7th pick.
The worst pick the Magic can end up with is the No. 7 selection.
Which player is projected to be the first overall pick?
Most mock drafts have Cade Cunningham getting picked first overall in this year’s draft.
Cunningham is a 6-foot-8, 220-pound guard out of Oklahoma State University.
The guard scored 20 points a game, brought in 6 rebounds and dished out 3.5 assists a game in his only year at OSU.
Cunningham shot 43.8 percent from the field and 40 percent from three.
When was the last time the Magic won the NBA lottery?
The Magic won the NBA lottery in 2004 when the team drafted Dwight Howard.