The Boston Celtics have won the draft lottery and will claim the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. The Celtics had the highest odds at the first overall selection, taking it in a pick swap from the Brooklyn Nets, who finished the season with the NBA’s worst record.
Celtics win the 2017 NBA draft lottery
Boston had a 25 percent chance to pick first overall, and they will do just that.
Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images
The Los Angeles Lakers will pick second and the Philadelphia 76ers, via a pick swap with Sacramento, will select third. The rest of the draft order is as follows: Phoenix (No. 4), Sacramento (No. 5), Orlando (No. 6), Minnesota (No. 7), New York (No. 8), Dallas (No. 9), Sacramento (No. 10), Charlotte (No. 11), Detroit (No. 12), Denver (No. 13), and Miami (No. 14).
Boston acquired swap rights to Brooklyn’s pick as part of the Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett trade. They also own the Nets’ pick in 2018 outright.
Now that the 2017 NBA draft lottery has concluded, we’ve prepped the first mock draft for you to take a gander at and enjoy.
The SB Nation mock draft features our thoughts on which teams will pick which stars when the NBA draft gets here, as well as why we think those picks will be made.
You can read it right here and, please, let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
The Celtics claim a pick in a draft touted as one of the deepest in recent memory, and are in position to add high-value talent to a team that already boasts the Eastern Conference’s best record. Boston, however, has an All-Star point guard in Isaiah Thomas and is in an interesting situation with the drafts two top prospects, Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball, running the same position.
This year’s lottery has been seen as an especially important one. Not only does it involve two of the league’s most storied franchises, the Celtics and Lakers, but those are the teams who could be leading the trade market for Paul George and other superstar trade targets.
For the Lakers, the question whether they would retain their top pick or lose it completely was a hugely important one for a franchise desperately looking for a new direction in the post-Kobe Bryant era.
Had the Lakers fallen outside the top three, their pick would have transferred to Philadelphia. The pick had transferred from the Lakers in the Steve Nash trade to the Kings, and then from Sacramento to Philadelphia to sway the 76ers to participate in a salary dump. Though it didn’t win them anything this season, Philadelphia owns the Lakers’ first-round pick next year without any protections.
One decade ago, NBA teams wrestled with whether to draft Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, seen as two franchise players. A decade before that, the Spurs lucked out by taking the top overall pick and selecting Tim Duncan. None of the top picks in this year’s draft are seen as generational talents, but Fultz isn’t too far from being a “sure thing,” at least in NBA scouting circles.
Behind him, the draft is deep, if slightly overhyped due to last year’s draft dud. Ball could still push to be selected first overall due to his impossible-to-gauge ceiling, several more point guards are locks for the top 10, and there’s a strong class of wings like Josh Jackson, Jayson Tatum, and Jonathan Isaac that should be great fits in the modern, versatile NBA.
The lottery in its current form has existed since 1990, and it worked like this.
With 14 non-playoff teams participating in the lottery, 14 ping-pong balls numbered 1-14 are placed in a machine. The balls are mixed for 20 seconds before the first one is drawn. The remaining balls are then mixed for 10 seconds before the second one is drawn. This process continues until four balls have been drawn to create a four-digit combination to determine the No. 1 pick.
There are 1,001 total combinations, with one of those combinations thrown out and the other 1,000 distributed among the teams.
This year’s NBA draft will be held on June 22. We finally know the order, but we’re still a month away from it meaning anything.
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