The Brooklyn Nets (24-51) are nearing the end of a 2024-25 season that started with more wins than expected before the Nets understood that some of the veterans had to leave. Brooklyn began this season with the goal of maximizing their draft positioning along with continuing to evaluate the younger players on the team, but now, they will have to hope that the NBA Draft Lottery is kind to them.
When it comes to the Lottery, the Nets are at the mercy of the odds they are subject to based on what their record is at the end of the season. Heading into Monday's slate of games, Brooklyn has the sixth-worst record in the league, meaning that they have a 9.0% chance of getting the first overall pick along with a 37.2% chance of their pick landing in the top-4 of the Draft.
While the Lottery is far from a sure thing, the main concept of a probability-laden event is to get the best odds in said event, which would be finishing with one of the three-worst records in the NBA. Having a 14.0% chance of getting the first overall pick is much better than having just a 9.0% chance at the same goal, but the nature of the Lottery means that anything can happen.
Since 1987, the Nets have won the Lottery (i.e. getting the first overall pick) three times, but they notably have not made a selection in the Lottery since 2010. The last six times that Brooklyn's pick landed in the Lottery, those picks went to other teams and the players the Nets missed out on were: Enes Freedom (then known as Enes Kanter), Damian Lillard, Jaylen Brown, Markelle Fultz, Collin Sexton, and Reed Sheppard.
In essence, the NBA has been experimenting with ways to keep teams honest about competing as much as they can to win games even if it would be better for the team to lose enough guys to have a high draft pick. The league went from going in reverse order of win-loss record to a coin flip to a Lottery before getting to the current iteration of the Draft where different slots are weighted within the Lottery itself.
How all of this applies to the Nets with the upcoming 2025 NBA Draft is the conversation over whether the only way to win the Lottery is to finish with the worst record in the league as some pundits have claimed. Since 1990, when odds within the Lottery were first introduced, only 11 out of 35 Lottery winners had the worst or second-worst record in the league, meaning that there are ways around not having one of the worst records.
Ultimately, what the Nets and every other team in the Lottery are hoping for is the chance to get the first overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, giving them the right to select Duke forward Cooper Flagg, a player that many consider a franchise cornerstone at this point of the year. Brooklyn did not do everything it could to be as bad as teams like the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards, but they are hoping to have luck on their side.
With all of the talk about the Nets and the upcoming NBA Draft Lottery, here's a screenshot of Brooklyn's history in the Lottery. I found it interesting that the Nets have not made a Lottery pick since 2010 and they've only won the Lottery twice since 1987.
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