The NBA conducted its tiebreaking process for the league's 2026 draft, setting the order from 15 to 30 and breaking a pair of ties among teams nestled inside the lottery.
Tim BontempsApr 20, 2026, 05:55 PM ET
- Tim Bontemps is a senior NBA writer for ESPN.com who covers the league and what's impacting it on and off the court, including trade deadline intel, expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast.
The NBA conducted its tiebreaking process for the league's 2026 draft Monday afternoon, setting the order from 15 to 30 and breaking a pair of ties among teams nestled inside the lottery.
The most consequential result, determined by random drawing at the league's offices in Secaucus, N.J., broke the tie for the fourth overall slot in the lottery between the Sacramento Kings and the Utah Jazz, with Utah winning the rights to the fourth spot and Sacramento landing fifth.
As far as the lottery itself goes, the tiebreaker doesn't change much, as the two teams split the odds designated for the fourth and fifth spots in the draft. That means both teams have a 45.2% chance of jumping into the top four and an 11.5% chance of winning the top pick. But because Utah has a top-eight protected pick that would go to the Oklahoma City Thunder if it landed ninth, Utah finishing fifth would have meant there was at least an extremely small chance of the Jazz losing their draft pick.
That would have required four of the nine picks behind Utah in the lottery to all jump into the top four ahead of the Jazz -- an extremely minute possibility. But it is one that would have existed if Utah had landed fifth. Instead, by being fourth, the Jazz now guarantee they will keep their pick, and Oklahoma City will not get anything.
Five other ties were decided as well. The other lottery selections to be sorted out were the seventh and eighth picks, with the New Orleans Pelicans getting the seventh lottery slot and the Dallas Mavericks landing eighth. New Orleans, though, will not get that draft pick, no matter where it lands in the lottery, because of the draft night trade it made with the Atlanta Hawks last June. Instead, it will be the Hawks who get the better pick between New Orleans and the Milwaukee Bucks, who have the 10th lottery slot, with Milwaukee getting the lesser of the two selections.
The Dallas and New Orleans picks both have a 29% chance of jumping up in the lottery and a 6.3% chance of landing with the top overall pick.
The other tiebreaks were as follows:
• The 16th, 17th and 18th picks will be made by the Memphis Grizzlies, Thunder and Charlotte Hornets, respectively -- though none of those teams originally owned any of those picks. Instead, Oklahoma City is selecting with Philadelphia's pick, while Memphis received the better of Orlando and Phoenix's selections, and Charlotte received the lesser.
• The 19th pick will be made by the Toronto Raptors, and the 20th pick will be made by the San Antonio Spurs, who have Atlanta's first-round pick in this year's draft.
• The Philadelphia 76ers will pick 22rd using what originally was Houston's first-round selection, while the 23nd pick will be made by the Hawks, who have Cleveland's first-round pick.
• And, finally, the New York Knicks will pick 24th and the Los Angeles Lakers will select 25th.
The NBA's draft lottery will be held May 10 in Chicago, where the league's draft combine will run May 10-17. The NBA draft will once again be a two-night event at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, with the first round June 23 and the second round June 24.
The deadline for early entrant players to choose whether to enter this year's draft is Friday.