Winning Can Actually Help Wizards Lottery Odds

The truth is not very hidden with the Washington Wizards this season: they want to lose and get a top draft pick. However, lately they have been winning more often, as the squad ended 2025 with a massive win over the Milwaukee Bucks. That win put them at the fourth-worst record in the NBA, which gives them a 12.5 percent chance at landing the first overall pick. Not bad at all, but obviously 14 percent sounds better than 12.5 percent. It might not be.

I understand the Wizards need a bottom-4 record to guarantee they keep their pick, but I would take this 5-4 stretch every day of the week.

They’re getting big contributions from Sarr, George, Coulibaly, Carrington, Johnson & more and are still 3.0 games inside the bottom-4.
— Greg Finberg (@GregFinberg) January 1, 2026

See, winning does two things. The first for the Wizards is that it helps develop young players, such as potential All-Star Alex Sarr, rising star rookie Tre Johnson, and many others on the team. The second thing winning does is push back their odds in the NBA Draft even further. It makes it virtually impossible for the better you play, the worse your draft position ends up. With how this lottery system is set up, though, winning is not the end of the world, especially for the Wizards, who are trying to improve their luck in the new year.

Winning Actually Helps the Squads' Odds

This may sound like a foolish statement that goes against math and statistics. Still, when you look at the past few drafts, they actually support the statistics. Every year since 2020, a team with a 14 percent chance at the first overall pick has always fallen down to the fifth overall pick. A team that also has the fourth through eighth best odds has always jumped up a few spots. We saw this evident last season with the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers jumping up to third overall in the draft.

Since 2019, when the NBA changed the draft lottery odds, 100% of the time, a team with the fifth through ninth-best odds has jumped into the top three of the draft. 57.1 percent of the time, the team with the fifth-best odds jumped in the draft, and 42.8 percent of the time that team was in the top three. The lowest a team with the fifth-best odds has fallen is seventh overall.

Adam Silve with the third overall pick, VJ Edgecombe, who was selected by the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers. — Jun 25, 2025; Brooklyn, NY, USA; VJ Edgecombe stands with NBA commissioner Adam Silver after being selected as the third pick by the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images | Brad Penner-Imagn Images

This could be the numbers the Wizards actually want, rather than a 14 percent chance at first. Last year, they had those odds and landed sixth overall. Instead, these numbers presented are beneficial to them. The team needs to be a top-8 team in the draft to keep their pick. Having the fifth-worst record means the lowest that pick can fall is ninth overall. Even then, it is less than a one percent chance the pick falls to ninth, as the odds it drops that low are 0.6 percent. That means if the team has the fifth-best odds in the draft, they have a 99.4 percent chance of keeping their pick.

The numbers for the first through fifth picks become so similar that it is literally left up to luck for the five worst teams in the NBA. So, it may be best to win a few more games and avoid finishing with a bottom-three record in the NBA. We have seen it before: these ping-pong balls of luck actually favor the bold teams that don't tank or just trade away a superstar. This could be the only way Washington secures a top-three pick.

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