Atlanta Hawks NBA Draft Lottery Odds, Projections and More

The first big day of the Atlanta Hawks offseason will be this Sunday during the 2024 NBA Draft Lottery. It’s been a quiet month for the Hawks since their season ended in Chicago in the NBA play-in tournament, but they will officially know their draft position after 3 p.m. Sunday.

It’s not quite the most anticipated draft lottery in recent memory, but if the Hawks can find a way to move up in the lottery, the pick would become a more valuable trade asset if they want to trade him or s They could use it to select a player (Alex Sarr?). While this is an off year in terms of elite talent in the draft, it would be huge if the Hawks could move up.

As of Sunday, Atlanta’s position heading into the draft is 10th. They have a 13.9% chance of landing a top-four pick and a 3% chance of landing the No. 1 pick. If the lottery were to remain as planned, Atlanta would pick 10th place. They can choose as low as 12th or as high as 1st.

For the Atlanta Hawks, they will be entering the NBA Draft Lottery for the first time since the 2020 NBA Draft, where they selected Onyeka Okongwu 6th overall. The Hawks have never won the NBA Draft Lottery and have only picked in the top four in the draft four times (2018, 2007, 2005, 2001). The only two drafts in which they moved up more than one spot in the projected lottery were in 2001 and 1985. The NBA Draft lottery hasn’t always been kind to the Atlanta Hawks, but they hope they can place in the top four of this draft. , even if it is not considered a strong project.

Here are the teams involved in this year’s NBA Draft Lottery, along with their chances of landing the No. 1 pick:

Here’s how the NBA Draft Lottery works, courtesy of NBA.com:

“The 39th Annual NBA Draft Lottery will determine the order of selection of the first 14 picks in the 2024 NBA Draft. Drawings will be conducted to determine the first four picks in the NBA Draft. The remainder of the “lottery teams” will select in positions five through 14 in reverse order of their 2023-24 regular season records.

The actual lottery proceedings will take place in a separate room just before the ESPN national broadcast. Selected media, NBA officials and representatives of participating teams as well as the accounting firm Ernst & Young will be present for the drawings.

Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 to 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, regardless of their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of these 1,001 combinations will be awarded to the 14 participating lottery teams. The lottery machine is manufactured by Smart Play Company, one of the leading state lottery machine manufacturers in the United States. Smart Play also weighs, measures and certifies ping pong balls before drawing.

The drawing process takes place as follows: the 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine and they are shuffled for 20 seconds, then the first ball is removed. The remaining balls are shuffled in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, then the second ball is drawn. There is a 10 second shuffle, then the third ball is drawn. There is a 10 second shuffle, then the fourth ball is drawn. The team assigned this combination will receive the #1 pick. The same process is repeated with the same ping pong balls and the same lottery machine for the second through fourth choices.

If the same team appears more than once, the result is discarded and another four-ball combination is selected. Additionally, if the unallocated combination is drawn, the result is discarded and the balls are drawn again. The length of time the balls are mixed is monitored by a timekeeper who faces the machine and signals to the machine operator once the appropriate time has elapsed.

An Ernst & Young representative oversees the entire lottery process and fills and seals the envelopes before bringing them to the studio for broadcast. The announcement of the lottery results will be made by NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum. A second representative from each participating team will take their place on stage. Neither the Deputy Commissioner nor the team representatives on stage will be informed of the lottery results before the envelopes are opened. The team whose logo appears in the last opened envelope will have the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, which will take place June 26-27, 2024.