We’re a week away from lottery night—May 17—so it’s once again time to fire up the machine and do some thinking. This is the third annual edition of this column, which leans on Tankathon’s venerable lottery simulation tool to help envision some potential scenarios and dynamics that could affect the eventual flow of the draft. I didn’t keep track of all the simulations I ran (trust me, you don’t want to know), but I eventually landed on five options that illustrated a wide-yet-feasible range of possibilities. For the sake of realism, I included winning scenarios for the four teams with the best odds, and a fifth, more chaotic option at the end.
I’m not going to waste space breaking down individual prospects at length here—check out the Big Board for that—but contextualizing some of the potential fits and tough decisions at different junctures in the lottery can be valuable. This is more of a thought exercise than a formal mock draft, so try to keep an open mind as far as what’s possible relative to whatever the public groupthink about the draft might suggest. Let’s dive in.
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