© Brian Losness-USA TODAY Sports
The NBA’s draft before the draft took place on Tuesday night. Since the league decided to flatten the lottery odds beginning two years ago, the NBA lottery has become far more chaotic and consequential than it once was.
And for the Warriors, the ping pong balls bounced roughly the way they expected them to bounce. They received the 14th and 7th overall picks in the 2021 NBA Draft.
Going into the draft, Golden State owned their own pick at No. 14 overall, which carried a 2.4 percent chance of jumping into the top four picks and a 0.5 percent chance of becoming the first overall pick in a draft which is viewed as having five top-tier prospects.
Here’s what those odds looked like:
No. 14: 97.6 percent
No. 4: 0.7 percent
No. 3: 0.6 percent
No. 2: 0.6 percent
No. 1: 0.5 percent
Their other selection was the one to watch. The Minnesota Timberwolves finished with the sixth-worst record in the NBA and their pick, as traded to the Warriors in the D’Angelo Russell deal, would convey only if it fell outside the top three picks. The only pick in the top-10 they couldn’t land at was fifth. The odds of that pick’s placement were as follows:
No. 10: 0.2 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 9: 3.8 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 8: 20.6 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 7: 29.7 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 6: 8.6 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 4: 9.6 percent – Conveys to Warriors
No. 3: 9.4 percent – Remains with Timberwolves
No. 2: 9.2 percent – Remains with Timberwolves
No. 1: 9.0 percent – Remains with Timberwolves
In total, that was a roughly 72.5 percent of the Warriors getting the Timberwolves’ pick and a roughly 27.5 percent chance for Minnesota to retain it and draft in the top three, and the most likely selection conveyed, at seventh overall.
