NBA Draft Lottery 2023: Start time, odds, and how to watch and stream

It won’t matter much to Sixers fans still absorbing the loss to the Boston Celtics, but the NBA draft lottery will air Tuesday on ESPN.

Not only do the Sixers not have a shot at landing a lottery pick, but they shipped their 2023 first-round pick to the Brooklyn Nets in the deal that landed James Harden and sent Ben Simmons to Brooklyn.

Only the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs are eligible for the lottery.

Three teams each have a 14% shot at landing the top pick in this year’s NBA draft — the Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs. That’s thanks to a tweak put in place in 2019 that gives the three teams with the worst records an equal shot at winning the top pick, an attempt by the league’s Board of Governors to discourage teams like the Sixers from “tanking.”

Previously, the team with the worst record had a 25% chance of landing the top pick, which the Sixers took advantage of twice, selecting Ben Simmons in 2016 and Markelle Fultz in 2017. Simmons is now with the Brooklyn Nets trolling his former team, while Fultz averaged nearly 14 points a game for the Orlando Magic last season.

The 2023 NBA draft is scheduled to take place on Thursday, June 22.

Here’s everything you need to know to watch or stream Tuesday’s NBA draft lottery:

2023 NBA draft lottery

ESPN’s coverage of the NBA draft lottery will begin around 8 p.m. Coverage will be hosted by Malika Andrews, who will be joined by NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski and analysts Richard Jefferson and Monica McNutt.

The network has opted to keep the show at just 30 minutes, but it hasn’t helped the ratings much post-pandemic. The NBA draft lottery drew 2.15 million viewers for ESPN in 2022, the smallest TV audience for the event in 15 years, according to Sports Media Watch. It’s even lower than the 2.4 million viewers who watched in 2018 when ESPN decided to make it an hour-long program, angering fans who were forced to wait 40 minutes before a single pick was revealed.

Following the NBA draft lottery, ESPN will air Game 1 of the Western Conference finals between LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers and Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets.

Who is projected to be the NBA’s No. 1 overall pick?

It’s widely believed that French basketball star Victor Wembanyama will be the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NBA draft.

Wembanyama, 19, is being hailed by some as the most surefire NBA prospect since LeBron James (who called the young prospect “an alien” due to his rare combination of size and ability). The 7-foot-3 power forward plays for Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92, where he’s emerged as one of the most dominating players in the LNB Pro A league, France’s top professional basketball league.

He has become such a draw that the NBA streams every Metropolitans 92 game for free on the NBA app.

“Wembanyama has the height of a center, the shooting touch of a wing and the passing ability of a point guard,” wrote Tim Reynolds, a longtime NBA writer for the Associated Press. “His wingspan is nearly 8 feet and he can nearly grab the rim — 10 feet in the air — without even jumping.”

Do the Sixers have a first-round pick in the 2023 NBA draft?

No. In fact, the Sixers don’t own a single pick in the 2023 NBA draft.

The Sixers traded their first-round pick as part of the deal that landed James Harden and sent Ben Simmons to the Nets.

The Sixers lost their second-round picks in the 2023 and 2024 drafts after violating the league’s tampering violations in their pursuit to acquire P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr. But in 2024, they still have a second-round selection, thanks to a 2015 trade with the New York Knicks.

Here are the future draft picks the Sixers own:

NBA Draft Lottery odds

Here are the odds each team has at landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft lottery: