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The NBA draft order is an important aspect of the league that can have a significant impact on a team’s future success. The order in which the teams select their players is determined by the NBA draft lottery, which is held before the draft.
The draft lottery is a system designed to give the teams with the worst records the best chance of selecting the top players in the draft. The lottery includes the 14 teams that did not qualify for the playoffs in the previous season, and the order is determined by a series of random drawings.
If those 14 picks are determined, the remaining picks are then assigned based on the teams’ regular-season records.
In the event of a tie, the NBA uses a series of tiebreakers to determine the draft order. The tiebreakers take into account a variety of factors, including head-to-head record, divisional record, conference record, point differential, and coin flip (which is a random drawing these days) between the teams with the worst records in each conference.
The end of this past regular season will now lead to a hilarious coin flip. The Brooklyn Nets, just like the Phoenix Suns finished the season with a 45-37 record, which leads to the NBA conducting a coin flip to determine the draft order between the two teams.
But why is that hilarious? Well, you see, the Brooklyn Nets own the rights to the Phoenix Suns’ first round pick this summer, meaning thet the coin flip will basically decide if the Nets draft 21st and 22nd, or 22nd and 21st.
On a more serious note however, it isn’t totally meaningless, as the coin flip also determines the order of the Nets’ and Suns’ second round picks.
