2026 NBA Draft order, lottery odds: Wizards, Pacers and Nets have best shot at No. 1 pick

The 2025-26 NBA regular season will officially come to a close on Sunday night. It means the postseason bracket is about to be set, and it also means a good chunk of June's draft order is about to be locked in place. So, what do we know now?

• The lottery slots and odds for the five worst teams in each conference. While the lottery itself will not come until May, the Bucks, Bulls, Wizards, Nets, Pacers, Grizzlies, Mavericks, Jazz, Kings and Hawks (via Pelicans) all know where they'll start on lottery night. The Wizards secured the worst record in the league. Washington has a 14% chance at the No. 1 overall pick and will pick no lower than fifth in June.
• The top-six playoff seeds in each conference all locked into place as well as none of the top six in either conference have a worse record than a Play-In team in the other conference.
• The eight Play-In teams will slot somewhere between No. 11 and No. 18, with the four Play-In losers joining the lottery pool in reverse order of record while the four winners will pick between No. 15 and No. 18 in reverse order of their records.

So where does that leave us? Below is the NBA Draft order as of now, with the final order coming after the lottery next month on May 10.

Note: All tiebreakers are determined via a random drawing that is set to be held later in April. 

2026 NBA Draft order, lottery odds

*The Hawks will receive the higher pick between the Pelicans and Bucks. If the Bucks give their pick to the Hawks, they will receive the Pelicans' spot in the lottery.

On a number of levels, 2026 stands to be one of the most significant NBA Drafts in recent memory. The 2026 class is considered one of the strongest in league history, with prospects like AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Darryn Peterson pegged as future stars since their high school days and later risers like Darius Acuff and Caleb WIlson making similar cases for themselves throughout their lone collegiate seasons.

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Meanwhile, the 2027 and 2028 draft classes aren't nearly as highly regarded. If you want to get an impact player in the draft, now seems to be the time to do it. Even if those classes were stronger, the NBA is poised to institute significant draft reform this offseason due to the tanking epidemic that has swept through the league this season, with many of those lottery teams seemingly built around intentional losing for the sake of draft position. That may not be an option moving forward, so with the 2026 draft still coming, let's look at what this draft means for the 10 teams we know to be in the lottery.

What's at stake in the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery?

In addition to the circumstantial stakes at play in June's draft, each individual team in the mix is relying on a lucky lottery night for specific reasons related to their roster-build:

• The Pacers took an enormous risk when they traded their top-four protected 2026 first-round pick in a package for Ivica Zubac. With Tyrese Haliburton coming back, the Pacers likely won't have another shot at a high draft pick for a long time. However, having lost Myles Turner in free agency, the Pacers needed to spend big to get a suitable replacement at center. The Zubac trade was their attempt at splitting the difference. If the pick lands in the top four, they get the best of both worlds: a high-end center and a top rookie. That sort of high-risk, high-reward approach will probably be necessary to keep up with asset-rich contenders like the Thunder and Spurs, but the risk is significant. If they don't get a major contributor on a cheap rookie deal here and now, it may make maintaining an affordable contender impossible in the years to come.
• The Nets don't control their 2027 first-round pick. They gave Houston the right to swap with them as part of the James Harden trade in 2021. They got control of their 2025 and 2026 picks back in a follow-up deal with Houston, but couldn't secure all three choices. The Nets surely don't plan to still be bad in 2028, so an extended tank is out. Their 2025 picks have shown promise, but none look like obvious franchise players yet. That makes 2026 potentially their last chance in the near future to secure a cornerstone in the draft. If they can't do it, their entire rebuilding plan likely changes, and significantly more pressure falls on general manager Sean Marks for initiating this tank in the first place.
• The Wizards just traded for Anthony Davis and Trae Young. They plan to try to win next season, but even though they've now spent three seasons in the lottery, they haven't landed a surefire future star yet. Alex Sarr is probably the best of their youngsters, but at least for now, he seems more like a supporting piece than a franchise player. The Wizards traded Bradley Beal to kickstart a rebuild in part because they were sick of being stuck in the middle. If they don't get a top pick here and now, that might be where they're headed again.
• The Kings didn't even plan to rebuild. When they acquired Zach LaVine in the De'Aaron Fox trade, they signaled an intent to remain competitive. They obviously didn't, so now they're kicking off this rebuild at a deficit. They could've gotten more for Fox and focused more on draft position last season, but didn't, so at this stage, there isn't a player on this roster who seems equipped to be even a top-three option on a contender, much less a true cornerstone. With lottery changes coming, it's going to be significantly harder for them to accumulate high draft picks and young talent as some of their tanking peers have. That makes getting this pick right all the more important.
• The Jazz owe a top-eight protected pick to the Thunder from the Derrick Favors cap dump in 2020. The odds are overwhelmingly in their favor. They have a better than 99% chance at keeping the pick thanks to their aggressive tanking. Still, with multiple 2027 picks traded for Jaren Jackson Jr., this is going to be their last shot at adding another key piece through the draft for the foreseeable future. Between Jackson, Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George and Ace Bailey, Utah has the foundation of a good team. But they had a good team with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert and chose to break it up. They're going for great, and a top pick is their best chance at getting there.
• The Mavericks saw last spring what an enormous difference a single lottery could make when a jump from No. 11 to No. 1 netted them Cooper Flagg and saved them from years of post-Luka Dončić misery. But getting Flagg alone is not enough to make Dallas a long-term contender. They need a young co-star for him, and this is perhaps their only chance to do so during Flagg's rookie deal. The Mavericks do not control their own first-round pick again until 2031. Some of those picks have light protections, but with Flagg in place, those protections are unlikely to save them. It may be now or never if they hope to seriously compete with the Thunder and Spurs in the Western Conference.
• The Grizzlies kicked off their rebuild by trading Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. within the past year. They did well in those trades, but the timing was less than ideal. Most teams that trade two players like that expect to spend multiple years accumulating young talent in the lottery, but with these lottery reforms coming, the Grizzlies may not get the same chances that prior rebuilders did. That makes getting lucky this year that much more important. The Grizzlies are very good at drafting and developing good players, but the entire premise of their last contender rested on their highest draft pick, Ja Morant, playing at an All-NBA level. It hasn't panned out, but there's a level of talent that simply is not accessible outside of the top few slots, and given the difficulties the Grizzlies have had convincing veterans to come to Memphis, drafting that sort of player is their only real avenue to acquiring one.
• The Hawks spent most of this year expecting to get a top pick out of last year's draft night trade with the Pelicans. New Orleans had the worst record in the NBA as late as Jan. 26, but surged up the standings with no incentive to lose over the final months of the season. Atlanta will have two chances to move up, as this pick includes swap rights with the Bucks, but the odds are much lower than they were around the trade deadline, when Atlanta could have shopped this pick for just about anyone on the trade market if they'd wanted to. Now they'll need a bit of luck to justify their caution.
• The Bulls, who recently cleared house in the front office, have spent the past several years in a purgatory of their own making. The whole basketball world told them to tear down the roster years ago and take advantage of the years of strong draft classes to come. Well, they didn't. They hovered around the Play-In Tournament far too long and finally moved their veterans at this year's deadline. They can't recoup the asset value they wasted by delaying those trades, but a lucky lottery could at least justify their perpetual hunt for the No. 10 seed. The last two lottery winners have been Play-In teams, so maybe their delayed tank pays off.
• The Bucks, on multiple levels, need more luck than anyone. They've dug themselves an enormous hole in trying to convince Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay long-term. They're now mostly devoid of future draft capital and their cap sheet is a mess. They'll have a pick in this year's lottery, but they need two long shots to hit if they're getting a top choice. Remember, the Hawks, via the Pelicans, get the higher pick between New Orleans and Milwaukee. The Bucks get the lower one. That means Milwaukee can't pick No. 1 and would need both choices to move into the top four to actually move up. That would be about as miraculous an outcome as the lottery has ever produced, and a miracle is what they'll need to salvage the Antetokounmpo era.

As we covered, the Hawks and Mavericks won the last two lotteries from the Play-In Tournament. That means we'll have four more participants when the dust settles, and those teams can't be ruled out either. We'll cover those teams when we know who they are. For now, we wait for what might be the most important lottery in NBA history.