{"id":714898,"date":"2026-04-21T00:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714898\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:33:16","slug":"nba-draft-lottery-bucks-odds-of-moving-up-rise-from-pelicans-mavs-tiebreaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714898\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Draft Lottery: Bucks\u2019 odds of moving up rise from Pelicans-Mavs tiebreaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the 2025\u201326 NBA regular season standings were finalized after last weekend, as I mentioned a week ago<\/a>, that didn\u2019t mean the lottery odds were completely set. Since multiple teams in the lottery finished with identical records, the NBA needed to conduct random tiebreakers between those teams to determine who got an extra ball in May 10th\u2019s drawing, potentially getting a better shot at a top-four pick. Or in the case of the Pelicans and Mavericks, who both finished tied for the seventh-worst record in the league, who would have a chance to pick seventh and who wouldn\u2019t. Those tiebreakers happened today.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter to the Bucks, who were locked into the 10th position after losing their final game to the Sixers? As you likely know, it\u2019s because New Orleans owned swap rights on Milwaukee\u2019s 2026 first-round pick, traded as part of 2020\u2019s Jrue Holiday deal. Now, the Pels shipped those rights to the Hawks last summer, so they won\u2019t have the chance to switch places with the Bucks in this year\u2019s draft, and the Hawks do. Milwaukee and Atlanta had to be watching this closely because whichever of New Orleans\u2019 or Milwaukee\u2019s picks ends up earlier on lottery night, Atlanta will own. The lesser of the two goes to the Bucks.<\/p>\n

Just after 4 p.m. Central, the league communicated the results of this and other tiebreakers: to Milwaukee\u2019s (and Atlanta\u2019s) benefit, New Orleans won their coin flip with Dallas and garnered the lottery\u2019s seventh-best odds. That pick now has a 29.3% chance of being in the top four as opposed to 28.9%; not a huge jump, but one the Hawks likely loved to see, since if that pick and\/or the Bucks\u2019\u2014which has a 13.9% of landing in the top four\u2014jumps up, they\u2019ll receive the best one. But this was good news for the Bucks too, as I\u2019ll explain.<\/p>\n

First the bad news: Milwaukee\u2019s chances at moving into the top four aren\u2019t good, and are even worse as a result of the pick swap. By virtue of the swap, they have 0% chance of actually drafting first overall (if they win the lottery, that pick goes to Atlanta by default, and they\u2019d pick wherever New Orleans ends up, which could be as low as 11th) and their chances at 2\u20134 decreased too. Instead of the listed odds for 10th, seen on the left, here are the Bucks\u2019 actual chances at any of those picks, factoring in the swap:<\/p>\n

PickListedActual13.0%0.0%23.3%0.5%33.6%1.1%44.0%2.1%<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a huge drop: had they not traded these swap rights back in 2020, they\u2019d have a 13.9% chance of jumping into the top four, with a shot at number one overall. It turns out the likelihood of that happening is 3.7%. For what it\u2019s worth, had the Bucks lost a few more games and finished with the league\u2019s ninth-best record, they\u2019d have only slightly better odds of moving into the top four: 5.3%, still with no chance of getting number one.<\/p>\n

Now we come to today\u2019s tiebreaker results, and the modicum of extra lottery luck they garnered for Milwaukee. Since the Pelicans finished seventh, the Bucks did see their chances of moving up improve slightly. While the overwhelming likelihood is that they end up picking 10th, the tiebreaker gave them a small shot at picking eighth, which wouldn\u2019t have been possible if the Pelicans lost the tiebreaker. That\u2019s because the NBA\u2019s lottery odds don\u2019t allow the team that receives the eighth position (which went to Dallas) to receive picks 5\u20137: they can only rise into the top four or draft between eight and 12.<\/p>\n

The seventh position (New Orleans\u2019) has a much better chance of picking eighth (34.1% if tiebreakers aren\u2019t involved) than seventh (19.7%). But because the Bucks\u2019 pick could land in the top four pre-swap, the Pelicans\u2019 pick would thus have a higher likelihood of coming seventh through ninth, since they couldn\u2019t move up to whichever spot the Bucks win. In this scenario, Milwaukee\u2019s pick would go to Atlanta, and New Orleans\u2019 to Milwaukee. While yes, it would stink to not receive that top-four selection, they would technically still be moving up.<\/p>\n

In the table below, you\u2019ll see the Bucks\u2019 chances to end up with any given spot in June\u2019s draft on the right, with the swap again factored in. Compare those with their chances had New Orleans lost today\u2019s tiebreaker and received the eighth-best lottery odds, rather than seventh:<\/p>\n

Bucks\u2019 pickPelicans in 7thPelicans in 8th10.0%0.0%20.5%0.5%31.1%1.1%42.1%2.1%50.0%0.0%60.0%0.0%70.0%0.0%85.4%0.0%95.6%7.8%1061.7%64.7%1121.5%21.8%121.7%1.7%13< o.1%< o.1%14< o.1%< o.1%Average pick9.89.9<\/p>\n

The figures are rounded, but as you can see, their shot at getting a top-four pick didn\u2019t appreciably improve. It\u2019s only half a percent better with the Pelicans in seventh as opposed to eighth. However, we can look at this another way: now the Bucks have a 14.7% chance of moving up from 10th to any spot, as opposed to 11.4% had the Pelicans lost. They also go from a 7.8% chance at ending up with the ninth choice to an 11% chance of receiving eighth or ninth after the swap. Again, if either of those two outcomes occurred, it would mean they ended up in the top four pre-swap and ended up taking New Orleans\u2019 pick while theirs went to Atlanta. Nevertheless, they moved up, so all\u2019s well that ends well?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be at the lottery on Sunday, May 10th, to see how the ping pong balls actually fall. Like I\u2019ve written before, don\u2019t get your hopes up about drafting second: you have a better chance of dying from accidental poisoning<\/a>. But until then, Bucks fans can take some solace in a positive lottery outcome, even if it\u2019s a small one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the 2025\u201326 NBA regular season standings were finalized after last weekend, as I mentioned a week ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[7,52048,6,478,470,4073,4072,675],"class_list":{"0":"post-714898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks-draft","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-new-orleans","12":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","13":"tag-neworleans","14":"tag-neworleanspelicans","15":"tag-pelicans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116439888967771473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}