Sixers Clinch 2nd Best Lottery Odds

Just a little news to report as an update on the Sixers draft lottery position. Obviously seeing as how this whole year that has been dedicated to tanking, you'd expect the Sixers to end up with the number one pick given how bad they are. With that being said, the Milwaukee Bucks have actually found a way to out-tank the tankers. With the Bucks loss last night to the Raptors, coupled with the Sixers drubbing of the rival Celtics, the Bucks have officially claimed the best lottery odds and will have a 25% chance of winning the first overall pick.

Still not the worst team in the league...

So what does this mean for the Sixers? The Sixers are now locked into the 2nd worst record in the league and will have the second best odds at winning the first overall pick this summer at 19.9%. This also means that the furthest the Sixers can fall is the 5th overall pick in a worst case scenario. The Sixers chances at each pick are as follows:

1st Pick: 19.9%
2nd Pick: 18.8%
3rd Pick: 17.1%
4th Pick: 31.9%
5th Pick: 12.3%

I know it seems absolutely ludicrous that their chances at the 4th pick are higher than their chances at any other pick but consider this: the Bucks actually have the highest chance at scoring the 4th pick at 35.7% chance and the Sixers will have a 55.8% chance of getting a top 3 pick instead of the 4th or 5th so the odds are technically in our favor. You can find the rest of the NBA lottery odds for each individual pick right here.

I guess this lopsided distribution of probabilities is the NBA's way of trying to discourage tanking (obviously isn't working too well) and it seems really odd that the team with the 4th worst record only has 9.9% chance of getting the 4th pick. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the NBA lottery system is flawed in more ways than one but we're stuck with it for at least this year so all we can do is hope that the lottery balls drop in a way that makes the Sixers pain this season worth while.