The Tie That Made the Lottery Interesting Again
Under the NBA's 2019-revised lottery formula, the three worst regular-season records each receive 14% odds for the No. 1 pick. In most seasons, the league's three worst teams have separation — one team is clearly the worst, the second-worst is two or three games behind, the third is another notch below. The 2025-26 season produced a rare three-way tie at 16-66: Washington, Indiana, and Brooklyn all finished with identical records. The tie was broken for draft order purposes by random drawing, and that random drawing — held the day after the regular season — handed Washington the projected No. 1 slot, but did not change the lottery odds: all three remain at exactly 14% to land Boston College reject AJ Dybantsa.
The Pingpong Math In English
The actual mechanism: 14 lottery balls numbered 1 through 14, four are drawn (without regard to order), producing a four-number combination. There are 1,001 possible four-number combinations from 14 balls. The bottom three teams each get 140 of those combinations (140 of 1,001 = 14.0%). One combination — 11-12-13-14 — is set aside; if drawn, the lottery is redrawn. The remaining 1,000 combinations are split among the lottery teams in a way that produces the published odds. The Wizards, Pacers, and Nets each have 140 of those 1,000 combinations, and the order of those 140 combinations determines which team wins if the same numbers come up for multiple teams.
What Washington Does With AJ Dybantsa
If the Wizards win the lottery, the choice is straightforward: AJ Dybantsa, the BYU freshman wing who averaged 25.5 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 3.7 assists across 35 games. Dybantsa is the consensus #1 prospect on most boards, with a Paul George ceiling and a 6-foot-9 frame paired with a roughly seven-foot wingspan. Washington's roster — Bilal Coulibaly at the wing, Alex Sarr at the four — desperately needs a jumbo-wing scorer, which Dybantsa would provide on Day One. The fit is so clean that some boards have already moved Dybantsa to the Wizards in mock drafts despite the 14% lottery probability.
What Indiana Does — And Why It's Different
If the Pacers win, Dybantsa is still the pick, but the franchise calculus changes. Indiana already has Tyrese Haliburton at point guard on a long-term deal and a young core developed under Rick Carlisle. A Dybantsa selection accelerates a contention timeline rather than initiating a rebuild — the Pacers would project as a 50-win team within two seasons. The interesting question for Indiana is whether they prefer Darryn Peterson, the Kansas SG with the most polished scoring tape in the class, who fits the Haliburton-led offense more naturally as a tertiary creator off the ball. Most boards still take Dybantsa over Peterson, but for a contention-timeline team, the gap narrows.
What Brooklyn Does — And Why This Is the Wild Card
Brooklyn's three-team record-tie is no accident: the Nets have spent the last three seasons stripping the roster down to optimize for a top-three lottery slot. If the Nets win, Sean Marks has multiple options — Dybantsa, Peterson, or Cameron Boozer (Duke PF, Naismith winner, 2025 AP Player of the Year as a freshman). The interesting probabilistic outcome for Brooklyn is the No. 4 slot. If the lottery jumps two teams over them — most likely Dallas Mavericks at #4 odds rising to #1 or #2 — the Nets fall to #4, where Caleb Wilson (UNC, 6-foot-10 playmaking forward) becomes the most likely pick. Marks would prefer the top-three pick. He should be willing to trade out of #4 if that scenario hits.
The Historical Precedent for a Three-Way Tie
The last time three teams entered an NBA lottery with identical 14% odds was 1985 — the year the lottery system itself debuted, and the year the New York Knicks selected Patrick Ewing first overall. That lottery had a different mechanism (envelope draws), but the three-way-tie similarity has not been repeated in the 41 years since. The 2026 lottery, in other words, is the first true rerun of the original lottery's three-way-tie probability tree, and Adam Silver's office has already signaled that the May 10 broadcast will get unusual production attention as a result. Watch the ABC pre-game window. The pingpong balls have not mattered this much in four decades.