Once again, the Utah Jazz will be hoping the ping-pong balls fly their way.
After staying put in the NBA Draft Lottery of 2023, the Jazz go into the 2024 edition in a similar spot. This year, they enter as the team with the eighth-highest number of combinations in their favor, giving them a 6% chance at the top pick.
The prize last year was Victor Wembanyama, who wowed league-watchers this season with a variety of never-before-seen plays. This year, the prize looks to be another French center — Alexandre Sarr — but one with much larger warts to cast doubt on his future as an NBA star.
How does the lottery work?
The results of the lottery this year will be televised on ABC this Sunday at 1 p.m. MDT. But just before then, league executives and team representatives will gather in a room just adjacent to the broadcast studio for the actual lottery procedure.
There, a selection of 14 balls will be put into a ping-pong ball hopper, out of which four balls will be drawn, one at a time. Math tells us there are 1,001 possible combinations when you do this, and the Jazz have 60 of those combinations assigned to them. In general, bigger initial numbers drawn are good for the Jazz, pushing results away from the worst teams in the league like Detroit, Washington, Charlotte and Portland, and towards more unlikely results.
The winner of the No. 1 overall pick is selected first in that room, though announced last to the public. Because teams can’t win multiple times in the lottery, that raises the Jazz’s odds for the second pick to 6.34%, their odds for the third pick to 6.74%, and fourth pick to 7.21%.
Beyond that, teams jumping up above the Jazz can also push them downwards. There’s a 34.48% chance that the team stays at the No. 8 position, but the second most likely outcome is that they draft at No. 9, which has a 32.09% chance of happening. Two teams could skip them — a 6.75% chance — which leads to the Jazz drafting No. 10.
If three or four teams skip up above the Jazz, though, they would lose the pick entirely. That’s due to the trade in which the Jazz salary dumped Derrick Favors to the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2021, giving them a protected pick in either 2024 (top-10 protected), 2025 (top-10), or 2026 (top-8). The odds of this pick conveying to OKC this year are minuscule, though: just 0.39%.
While team execs have stated they don’t have a preference on whether they convey the pick this year or in future years, it’s an interesting conundrum regarding which would be better for the Jazz. On one hand, giving up the No. 11 pick would be a seemingly worst-case scenario for a top-10 protected pick owed over multiple years. On the other hand, this is generally regarded as a weak draft.
Jazz lottery history
Thanks to being a playoff team for most of their history, the Jazz have less lottery experience than most teams. Since the lottery was introduced 40 years ago in 1985, the Jazz have only participated nine times. Overall, they’ve stayed put six times, dropped twice, and won a higher selection once.
The drops proved to be significant. In 2005, the Jazz fell one spot from No. 5 to No. 6, which perhaps incentivized then-GM Kevin O’Connor to use future draft assets to go get his guy: three-time All-Star Deron Williams. Then 12-time All-Star Chris Paul was selected fourth in that draft, while Raymond Felton and Martell Webster went fifth and sixth.
The 2014 lottery looked to be one of the brightest in history, and the Jazz entered with the No. 4 selection. Instead, they fell down to No. 5 and used it on Dante Exum. His career sputtered in Utah, in large part due to injuries, and the Australian found himself out of the NBA for two seasons. This year, though, Exum has enjoyed a career resurgence with the Dallas Mavericks. Denver do-it-all forward Aaron Gordon was drafted No. 4, while MVP Joel Embiid was selected No. 3.
But the good lottery outcome came in 2011, when the Jazz had both the No. 6 and No. 12 selections. No. 12 stayed put, but the No. 6 pick jumped up to No. 3, which they used to draft Enes Kanter. Kanter’s career with the Jazz was relatively short — he too was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder. It was a weak draft, though: the No. 2 pick was Derrick Williams, and No. 6 Jan Vesely went to the Wizards and played just three seasons total in the NBA.
