Fantasy Basketball Draft Lottery

The NBA Draft Lottery is one of the most exciting events in basketball. Now you can bring that same energy to your fantasy basketball league. Our simulator uses the same weighted odds system the NBA adopted in 2019 — the three worst teams share equal odds at the top, then probabilities drop sharply for better teams.

For a 14-team fantasy basketball league, the NBA-Style preset gives the bottom three teams each a 14% chance at the #1 pick. The 4th-worst team drops to 12.5%, the 5th to 10.5%, and so on. This prevents tanking while keeping the lottery exciting for every team in the bottom half of the standings.

See every team's probability at every draft position in a live odds matrix. After the reveal, get a full snake draft board showing picks across 13+ rounds — perfect for your category or points league.

The real NBA Draft Lottery uses 14 ping-pong balls numbered 1–14, drawn in combinations of four. There are 1,001 possible combinations, and each non-playoff team is assigned a set of combinations based on their record. The three worst teams each receive 140 combinations (14.0% chance at #1), the fourth-worst gets 125 (12.5%), and probabilities taper down to the 14th team with just 5 combinations (0.5%).

Our NBA-Style preset replicates this exact distribution. For a 14-team league, the odds match the real NBA almost perfectly. For other league sizes, the algorithm interpolates — maintaining the flat-top-3 structure and steep taper that makes the NBA system work. The key principle: the worst teams share roughly equal odds at the top, preventing any single team from "winning the tank."

This system was adopted by the NBA in 2019 specifically to discourage tanking, and it works just as well for fantasy basketball. No team is guaranteed the #1 pick, but teams that struggled genuinely get a better chance at franchise-changing talent.