The 2017 NBA draft lottery race is incredibly convoluted

There is one item regarding the 2017 NBA draft lottery that is without dispute: The Boston Celtics will have the best odds of winning the No. 1 pick. The Celtics will be able to swap draft places with the Brooklyn Nets, and the 12-53 Nets are by far the worst team in the NBA. There’s no chance Brooklyn wins enough games over its final 17 to “fall out of” the No. 30 position.

After that, it’s messy.

The L.A. Lakers are next at 20-46. It looked like the Lakers had done themselves a great disservice by beating the 22-45 Phoenix Suns on Friday, but Phoenix went out and edged the Mavericks on Saturday. It’s almost as if these teams don’t even know how to lose properly.

The Lakers experienced more intrigue on Sunday when they faced the Philadelphia 76ers. There are levels to this battle. L.A. owes a first-round pick to the Sixers (thanks to a couple of trades involving the Suns — like I said, levels), but that pick is protected in the top three this year.

The Lakers would very much like to keep that pick by getting it into the top three and then give a worse pick to Philadelphia next year. The Sixers would prefer a No. 4 or No. 5 pick in this excellent draft over an unknown pick in next year’s draft.

Because of those machinations, both teams had major incentive to lose on Sunday. (That actually might explain this funny and now seriously suspicious D’Angelo Russell moment.) But the Sixers and Lakers played their hearts out, with Philadelphia eventually winning behind 29 points from Dario Saric.

This is the problem with tanking: There’s been so much attention on it over the past few years, that teams can’t be too conspicuous in actually tanking. What may have avoided widespread scrutiny a decade ago won’t fly in this hypercognizant social media environment.

When Mark Madsen chucked a bunch of threes to help the Timberwolves secure protection for an owed pick in 2006, it was discussed and noted...but it didn’t take over SportsCenter. Nor did it dominate Twitter (which did not exist). If the Lakers gave Timofey Mozgov the green light from three these days, you would be crushed by the onslaught of thinkpieces. (Mine is prewritten, just in case.)

Philadelphia could have sat Saric, or the Lakers could have benched Julius Randle and Russell for a night, but that looks bad and everyone is paying attention. So the teams tanking usually give an honest effort, both in who the coaches play and in the players competing to win. That still doesn’t mean the Sixers wanted to win Sunday.

As it stands, the Lakers have two fewer wins than Phoenix. If that holds, L.A. would enter the NBA draft lottery with a 56 percent chance of landing in the top three and keeping its pick.

That also means the Lakers would have a 44 percent chance of landing at No. 4 or No. 5 and losing their pick to Philly. Right now, the team with the best chance to launch into the top three and push the Lakers down is Philly, who is two wins better than Phoenix.

There’s another twist here. The Sixers have a pick-swap option with the Sacramento Kings, who are the next worst team at 25-41. If the Kings move into the top three — currently 21 percent odds of that happening — and the Sixers do not, Philadelphia can simply swap its pick with that of the Kings.

Of course, the Sixers also benefit from the Magic, Pelicans, Knicks, and Timberwolves landing in the top three as well, just not as directly. The best case scenario for Philadelphia is that it captures the No. 1 pick — either through its own lottery balls or those of the Kings — and one other team moves from behind the Sixers into the top three, knocking the Lakers into the No. 4 spot, where they would have to pass their pick to Philly.

We mentioned the Pelicans, who have not shot up in the standings since acquiring DeMarcus Cousins, and now they owe their pick to the Kings. There’s a twist here, too: That pick is top-three protected. At some point, it will make more sense for New Orleans to try to give itself the best odds of getting that pick into the top three in lieu of fighting for a now hopeless playoff spot. One more ding to Anthony Davis ought to do the trick.

Unfortunately, New Orleans has around 12 percent odds of getting into the top three. The Pelicans are even in the standings with the New York Knicks, who are bad enough to have lost to the Nets on Sunday. Odds are that the Pels will hand over a mid-lottery pick to the Kings.

The Kings are scoreboard watching like crazy, just as are the Sixers and Lakers. Sacramento cannot win the No. 1 pick because of the Philadelphia pick-swap option. So the Kings’ true best case is the No. 2 pick and the No. 6 pick, should the Pelicans really go into the tank and end up worse than the Magic (24-43). More likely is that the Kings pick No. 5 or 6 with their own choice (or in a Philly swap) and somewhere in the No. 7-9 range with the Pels’ pick.

The Suns, Magic, and Knicks are normal actors in the lottery proceedings. They should proceed as teams typically proceed at this point in the season when the playoffs are out of reach: play younger prospects, don’t worry all that much about wins or losses, take an L if an L presents itself.

The Suns are fairly likely to stay in that No. 3 slot heading into the lottery after Saturday’s win and Sunday’s Lakers loss. The Magic are knotted up with the Sixers and could fall behind the skidding Kings. The Knicks are tied with the Pelicans, who could go either way. Beyond that, you get to the Timberwolves, Mavericks, and Hornets, who all still inexplicably have designs on playoff bids.

With so many picks traded this year and protections on just about everything, the lottery race is mad complicated. The easy way to look at it? When in doubt, root for your favorite team to lose.