Hornets win NBA tiebreaker, land 3rd-best odds for top draft pick

The Charlotte Hornets picked up a rare win without even stepping on the court.

On Monday, the NBA announced the results of the league’s random tiebreaker drawings that gave the Hornets the edge over the Portland Trail Blazers, meaning Charlotte will have the third-best odds to land the No. 1 pick in the league’s annual draft on June 26-27 in New York, the first time it’s scheduled over two days.

The drawing was among the six ties the NBA had to break featuring teams with identical regular-season records to determine the order of selection of the event. The Hornets hold a 13.3% chance of securing the top overall pick.

Detroit and Washington have the best chances, each boasting 14% odds. Portland sits in fourth behind the Hornets at 13.2%. San Antonio rounds out the top five at 10.5%.

The lottery will be held at 3 p.m. on May 12 from Chicago and broadcast live on ESPN. Drawings will be conducted to determine the draft’s first four picks. The rest of the lottery teams in slots 5-14 will make their picks in inverse order of their records from the 2023-24 campaign.

The top pick in last year’s draft was known long before Victor Wembanaya was chosen by the Spurs, creating debate about whether the Hornets would go with Brandon Miller or Scoot Henderson. Miller turned out to be a pretty good choice, grabbing a spot as a finalist for the NBA’s rookie of the year award.

Experts are deeming this year’s draft as of the worst in recent memory, and many of the top prospects are from Europe, leading to some of the intrigue and question marks. Right now, projections have two Frenchmen — center Alex Sarr and small forward Zaccharie Risacher — as the initial two players off the board.

Whether one of those slots will belong to the Hornets remains to be seen. But that answer is less than three weeks away and will be the next piece of an offseason puzzle for Charlotte that includes finding a replacement for Steve Clifford, making sure LaMelo Ball and Mark Williams are healthy and figuring out their long-term relationship with Miles Bridges.