The NBA draft lottery is a tradition like many others: a terribly awkward congregation of people that is extremely hard to explain to anyone not steeped in the lore, and probably antiquated in its execution. That said, what tension! What drama! Dreams fulfilled and crushed in an instant. All from just a few words uttered from the NBA’s perpetually smiling deputy commissioner, Mark Tatum. In one of the most consequential lotteries of the decade, a couple teams stood tall as the ultimate beneficiaries of tanking’s swan song, while a whole lot of others saw their luck run dry at the worst possible time. Here are the winners and losers of the 2026 NBA draft lottery.
Winner: Washington Wizards
By god, it happened. It finally happened. The Wizards were one lottery combination away from landing Victor Wembanyama in 2023 and Cooper Flagg last year. Cursed? Not really, just cosmically unlucky. But now they have the last laugh. One time, in honor of my former Grantland colleague Andrew Sharp: It’s a Wizard Party.
After one of the most egregious tank jobs in recent memory, we can now say the ends have justified the rotten means. Starting Leaky Black for nine games in the final two months of the season? Worth it. Trotting out a two-man frontcourt lineup of Anthony Gill and Tristan Vukcevic that was outscored by a preposterous 50.3 points per 100 possessions in the 68 minutes they shared the court after the All-Star break? Worth it. Randomly deciding to trade for Trae Young and Anthony Davis only to sit them for essentially the entire stretch run? Worth it! Letting Bam Adebayo, of all players, usurp Kobe on the single-game scoring record leaderboard? Worth it!!!
The Wizards have spent years toiling in the pit, all the while fleshing out the team’s context: They have hyperathletes, they have positional size, they have daring shot takers who might soon grow into shotmakers. All that’s really missing is a savior, a player who can bind those loose strands of context into a real identity. As bad as the Wizards have been, they’ve always conjured parallels to the Pistons during their dogged days a few seasons ago, who figured it out as soon as a true cornerstone emerged. Now, the Wizards will have their pick of the lot. I think they’ll go with AJ Dybantsa. Here’s what I wrote in my mock draft from last month:
After they’ve waited a lifetime for a moment like this, I think they’ll opt for the physical specimen. Dybantsa is a titanic power wing who radiates star power, stampeding his way through as a creator with a combo of speed, power, and angular craftwork. On defense, Dybantsa would allow the Wizards to supersize the frontcourt without sacrificing athleticism—the ground coverage that Washington could ensure with Dybantsa running alongside Alex Sarr and Anthony Davis is a video-game fantasy.
The Pistons had a remarkable 29-win turnaround from 2023-24 to 2024-25; on paper, the Wizards could be in for a similar transformation next season.
Loser: Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade Chaos
The timeless allure of the lottery, despite its painfully awkward rollout, is in how it can change the league’s landscape in an instant. Before Mark Tatum stepped to the podium, the lottery had the potential to shake up the leverage stakes in what will be a long and drawn-out offseason for the Milwaukee Bucks’ front office. This Giannis saga has been a protracted game of grasping at straws. Not unlike wishing for the ideal lottery scenario for the Bucks as a whole.
It would have taken a whole lot to break right for the Bucks to be outright winners in the lottery. Their pick was tied up in a pick swap devised nearly six years ago in the 2020 trade that brought Jrue Holiday to the Bucks from the Pelicans—and as a result of some intense Dumarsing at the 2025 draft, Atlanta would be the recipient of the better pick between Milwaukee and New Orleans. The Bucks were ultimately praying for the miracle of both picks jumping into the top four. Neither did.
Instead, the Bucks stay at no. 10 and survey a landscape that isn’t all too different from the one that existed before Sunday. There is arguably only one win-now team in the top five of the draft—more on them soon—that might be willing to cash in a valuable chip to land Antetokounmpo at the end of his prime. That isn’t to say that there aren’t many eager suitors: Our own Michael Pina made a strong case for the Rockets as a looming favorite. But on the whole, it was an underwhelming outcome for anyone hoping for some glaring Antetokounmpo ripple effects.
Loser: Conspiracies
I guess all the tinfoil we put on our heads could’ve been better served to tent the Mother’s Day rib roast. The Thunder, with just a 1.5 percent chance of landing the no. 1 pick, did not obtain their dynastic Infinity Stone less than 24 hours after taking a commanding 3-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals. The Mavericks were not granted the no. 1 pick in consecutive seasons in what might have been the last time it could ever happen in NBA history. And the Warriors, desperate to prolong the Steph Curry era, were not gifted with a James Wiseman mulligan. None of the panic-inducing doomsday scenarios came to fruition. Sorry, Bill. Sorry, Tyler.
Then again, there might have been one less obvious conspiracy that played out on Sunday …
Winner: Los Angeles Clippers
Sure, Pablo Torre won a Pulitzer for his yearlong investigation of the Clippers’ strange and probably illegal entanglement with an environmental sustainability firm, but who’s to say all parties involved—other than said environmental sustainability firm, RIP—can’t be winners? Who’s to say that possible—nay, probable—cap circumvention can’t also bring good, positive energy to a franchise?
The Clippers made several future-leaning bets at the deadline, and it appears both have paid off. Darius Garland, should he remain healthy, is L.A.’s point guard of the future. And in the most 10-leg-same-game-parlay-ass trade we’ve seen in years, the Clippers were the clear winners in the deadline trade that sent Ivica Zubac to Indiana in exchange for Bennedict Mathurin and Indiana’s 2026 first-round pick, protected 1-4 and 10-30. The pick landed at no. 5. Suddenly, the Clippers have an extremely valuable pick that had just a 47.9 percent chance of conveying to them. Given the precarity of the team’s aspirations—no pun intended—with a fully healthy Kawhi Leonard, it wouldn’t be shocking for the Clippers to try one more all-in move for Giannis. In my eyes, there is a clear drop between the fourth and fifth pick in the draft, but the entire lottery is studded with immense talent. How the Clippers proceed with this unlikely windfall will clarify their path. All signs pointed toward the Clippers giving up the ghost on their superteam era and finding ways to get younger any way they could. But found money has a way of emboldening people.
Loser: Kevin Pritchard
For those of us who were draft-obsessed in the 2000s, Pritchard held a special place in our hearts as the aggressive architect of the snakebitten but mega-talented Portland Trail Blazers teams headlined by Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, and LaMarcus Aldridge—built off a number of draft-day deals that worked out great for Pritchard at the time. The basketball internet at the time coined the term Pritch-slap for his ability to “win” trades in the moment by extracting maximum value. Now, Pritchard deserves a ton of credit for building a team that was a game away from winning the whole damn championship last year, and his trade for Zubac at this year’s deadline filled a clear void for the Pacers as they await the return of Tyrese Haliburton … but at what cost?
The idea was sound enough—the bulk of the back end of the lottery consists of point guards who likely wouldn’t impact Indiana’s immediate success. But now that the landmine has indeed been triggered, it’s hard not to see the sudden loss of value for what it is. It sure seems like Pritchard Pritch-slapped himself in the face here. Minutes after the lottery concluded, Pritchard issued an apology on social media, reasoning away his mistake the way any habitual gambler would:
Loser: Brooklyn Nets
The Torontonian in me feels the need to blame the Nets’ fall to sixth on the franchise sending Vince Carter as its lottery representative. The Nets tied with the Pacers for the biggest fall in the lottery proceedings, but Brooklyn doesn’t exactly have a championship-contending context to come home to. The Nets drafted a record five players in the first round last year without a single obvious star in the lot. They needed to land in the top four as urgently as any team. No dice. Where once there were dreams of Cam Boozer, could there now, perchance, be Mikel Brown Jr.?
Winner: New Chicago Bulls EVP Bryson Graham
The Bulls hired player-evaluation ace Bryson Graham last week as the team’s new executive vice president of basketball operations. Little did he know that his signing bonus would include a top-four draft pick, which Chicago had just a smidge better than a 1-in-5 shot of landing. Graham, who spent the past year in the Atlanta Hawks front office after a long tenure with the Pelicans, was a rising figure in the league after amassing a pretty strong scouting track record, especially in the late first round and early second: Graham landed some gems in Trey Murphy III (17th in 2021), Herb Jones (35th in 2021), and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (17th in 2019), even if the latter didn’t fully emerge until he left New Orleans.
The stakes are higher with this new gig, but in a draft with four standout prospects, there might not be much to do except see how the board shakes out. Caleb Wilson, arguably the most explosive athlete in the draft, is the likeliest to land in Chicago’s lap, but there’s still about a month and a half left to dream of what the team might look like with Cameron Boozer’s genius-level court processing or Darryn Peterson’s more familiar star swingman archetype. It took forever for the Bulls to finally hit the kill switch on whatever purgatorial treadmill they were coasting on, but this is as good a scenario as Bulls fans could have asked for.
Loser: Sacramento Kings
Our own Tyler Parker felt deeply that the Kings were the most desperately in need of the top pick. Instead, they’ll get no. 7, a slot they’re well-acquainted with. The Kings have landed the seventh pick six times since the draft lottery was instituted in 1985—cult icon Jason Williams was probably the best player the Kings have ever drafted from that spot.
On the plus side, the Kings will be in a prime position to land their point guard of the future, which probably shouldn’t be something the team has a deep need for given that they drafted De’Aaron Fox in 2017 and Tyrese Haliburton in 2020 (and Davion Mitchell in 2021 and Devin Carter in 2024 …). Alas, it’s been years since the Kings have made sense. There are still a handful of lapsed stars on the roster hoping and praying to be off-loaded and some young talent in need of shepherding. If Darius Acuff Jr. is still on the board, he probably won’t make it past Sacramento. Not the worst outcome, all things considered, but the days of dreaming about Dybantsa and Wilson are over.
Winners: The Faithful Tank Commanders
The two most maligned teams in the league, who turned tanking into a nauseating pain tolerance stunt, were ultimately rewarded for their insolence in what’s likely to be the final year that tanking is beneficial. Yet the Wizards and Jazz were also the two most aggressive buyers at the trade deadline, acquiring depressed-value stars only to sit them on the shelf interminably like they’re vintage action figures. Now, the two most shameless teams in the league are also the two teams most likely to make exponential leaps next season. This is how the system promised to work for decades. It often didn’t, but this year, you could argue it did. In a way, it’s fitting that the Wizards and Jazz emerged on top at the end of tanking’s apocalypse. What better way to pay tribute to a game theory tactic that was almost universally loathed?
Now, with the proposed anti-tanking changes to the lottery format, we must say goodbye to the NBA system we’ve known for the past seven years—never mind the 25 years before that, prior to the first round of flattened lottery odds instituted in 2019. As recently as 2018—a draft year that produced all-world players like Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander—the team with the worst record in the league had a 25 percent chance of being awarded the no. 1 pick. Moving forward, the odds will stand at 5.4 percent. There will be ripple effects to the new rules that will come to roost in the ensuing years, but for now, all we know for sure is that tanking as a strategy is defunct. But it will live on as a vestigial organ in the Wizards and Jazz alike, no matter how their fortunes change (or don’t) with whatever decisions they make at no. 1 and no. 2, respectively; it will live on as a reminder for as long as the Thunder are on the edge of a dynasty.
Tanking is dead. Long live tanking.
