Is NBA draft order determined by regular season or end of season order?

[AnnArborpiston]

If it is determined by regular season rankings, we could still end up with a nice pick AND have a chance to go deep in the playoffs. In the shallow east, this might turn out to be quite the savvy season approach. Other than Atlanta, I'm not really any more scared of a particular opponent in the playoffs, so the end of season rankings doesn't really matter.

[MrBigShot]

Just regular season. And yeah, we could make the playoffs and also come up with the 15th or 16th pick to perhaps use in a trade or just draft somebody in that range.

[DetroitSho]

Just regular season. And yeah, we could make the playoffs and also come up with the 15th or 16th pick to perhaps use in a trade or just draft somebody in that range.

Yeah at worst we'll be at 16, and if we just happen to get on a crazy roll the 2nd half of the season and get the 6th seed, we'll pick 17.

[whitehops]

the 16 playoff teams are ordered separately from non-playoff teams. the 16 playoff teams are ordered by their overall record (with tie-breakers coming into play), and then the 14 non-playoff teams are ordered by record and then placed into the draft lottery. the lottery is only to determine the top 3 picks and then the rest of the non-playoff teams get placed back in place after the lottery is done.

IF we make the playoffs we're pretty much locked into a pick around 14-16, depending on if we're a 6-8 seed. if we don't make the playoffs (assuming we don't make it), we'll probably have a pick somewhere in the 8-11 range.


this question got me thinking about how we could have WON the lottery last year instead of Cleveland, who had worse odds than we did, and have wiggins starting right now instead of singler. i'm shaking with rage right now lol...