2019 NBA Draft lottery odds flip between Cavs, Suns to happen Friday

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Phoenix Suns tied for the second-worst record this year, and the NBA decided that the two teams will have a tiebreaker on Friday to decide who has the second and third-worst record, which affects the 2019 NBA Draft lottery odds a bit.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Phoenix Suns didn’t have the best 2018-19 seasons in the world, as both finished with a record of 19-63, and as a result, tied for the second-worst league record. Under the new lottery rules starting in the 2019 NBA Draft, the teams with the worst three records for the prior season have an equal 14.0% chance of landing the next draft’s number one pick (h/t Tankathon).

This is different than in past years in the lottery, where the team with the worst record in the previous season had the outright highest chance to win the next year’s draft lottery, which was a 25.0% chance (again, h/t Tankathon).

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As we’ve hit on before, if the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to land the number one overall pick, it’s assumed they (just like any other team in the situation) would select Duke’s Zion Williamson, who was recently named the Naismith College Basketball Player of the Year for 2019; the superstar freshman had 22.6 points on 70.8 percent effective field goal shooting, 8.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game, to go with a ridiculous 40.8 PER, per Sports Reference.

Anyway, the key reason for this 2019 NBA Draft lottery odds tiebreaker reportedly happening on Friday (h/t Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor) between teams tied for the second-worst record is the worst case scenarios for both.

According to Tankathon, the team that ends up with second-worst record could draft as low as number six, whereas the team that finishes with the third-worst record could draft as low as seventh.

Furthermore, the team with the second-worst record has a 27.8% chance of drafting fifth overall, which would be their highest odds, again per Tankathon, and the third-worst record team’s highest odds for the draft would be selecting sixth (a 26.0% chance).

According to Sam Amico of Amico Hoops, this sort of draft lottery odds tiebreaker/flip (whatever you want to call it) did happen before, where it was between the Cavs and New Orleans Pelicans (then the New Orleans Hornets).

Amico did go on to note how Cleveland did win the pre-lottery odds tiebreaker, but New Orleans did ultimately win the “No. 1 overall pick anyway,” and would select Anthony Davis.

So this Friday tiebreaker does have 2019 NBA Draft implications to a degree for Cleveland and Phoenix, but it definitely does not make the draft number for each completely set in stone.

Nonetheless, I still hope the Cleveland Cavaliers win this, as Amico coined, “pre-lottery lottery.”