Basketballs, Ping-Pong Balls, And This Week’s Top Lottery Prize

With all due respect to the various daily, nightly, and weekly lottery drawings going on around the country, the most watched and most talked about lottery drawing of the year will take place Monday night in Chicago.

At about 5 p.m. CT, inside a secure room, ping-pong balls will be drawn to determine which teams get the first four picks in the 2025 NBA Draft. About an hour later, an audience watching live on ESPN will learn the results.

As far as landing the No. 1 pick and scoring the jackpot that is Duke’s Cooper Flagg, there are five teams that are better off playing Powerball or Mega Millions.

The likelihood of winning a prize of some sort in Powerball is 4.02%. Under the new Mega Millions structure, it’s slightly better at 4.35%.

The Houston Rockets (3.8%), Portland Trail Blazers (3.7%), Dallas Mavericks (1.8%), Chicago Bulls (1.7%), and Sacramento Kings (0.8%) are all longer shots to win the grand prize and –warning: obvious pun ahead! — capture the Flagg.

Playing the percentages

There are eight other teams that should feel varying degrees of optimism about winning this lottery jackpot. Their respective number of ping-pong balls are determined by just how bad their record was in the recently concluded regular season.

The Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets each have a 14% chance of landing the top pick.

They’re followed by the New Orleans Pelicans (12.5%), Philadelphia 76ers (10.5%), Brooklyn Nets (9%), Toronto Raptors (7.5%), and San Antonio Spurs (6.7%).

The Spurs are in a unique situation as, thanks to trades, they hold their own pick and the Atlanta Hawks’ pick. The Hawks barely missed the playoffs and contribute a mere 0.7% to the equation, while the Spurs’ pick has a 6% shot.

The team with the widest range of outcomes is Philly. The 2020 trade that sent Al Horford to Oklahoma City included a conditional draft pick. If it’s a top-six pick, the Sixers keep it; if it falls to seventh or below, it belongs to the Thunder.

The 76ers finished with the fifth-worst record in the league. If they don’t get lucky enough to draw one of the top four picks and they also get unlucky enough to get leapfrogged by two of the teams with fewer ping-pong balls, they won’t pick at all in the first round.

So, they have a 10.5% chance of landing Flagg, and a 36.1% chance of not having a first-round pick.

How much prize money is the top pick worth?

Trying to think of the mega-prize that is Flagg in Lottery Geeks’ more familiar lottery terms, how large a scratch-off prize would an NBA fan give up to see a favorite team win the draft lottery and the chance to draft the 18-year-old guard-forward who was named the national college player of the year as a freshman?

Naturally, it varies from person to person based on their NBA fandom/desperation and their personal financial situation.

For me, as a Sixers fan watching the “process” era perhaps circle the drain unceremoniously if Joel Embiid is unable to ever get healthy again . . . but knowing how Flagg could singlehandedly extend the timeline and reshape the long-term future of the franchise … and also as a father of two working multiple jobs and preparing to start paying for his elder child’s college education . . . I’d probably fork over a $2,500 winner to see my team score the top pick.

I’d part ways with a winning lottery ticket worth up to $500 just to ensure my team doesn’t lose its pick entirely.

And if my team does indeed score Cooper Flagg, you’d better believe I’ll be getting drunk and kicking cops in Florida before the week is out.