Lakers finish the season with the sixth pick in the NBA draft lottery
The Lakers finished the 2013-14 regular season with two straight wins, finishing at 27-55.
The last two victories, over the Utah Jazz (25-57) and San Antonio Spurs (62-20) were costly, dipping the Lakers to sixth position in the NBA draft lottery.
The Boston Celtics (25-57), who the Lakers beat twice this season, finished tied with the Jazz at fourth -- both teams are directly ahead of the Lakers in the May 20 lottery.
The NBA will give out 1,000 combinations of four ping pong balls to the 14 lottery teams. In sixth position, the Lakers will get 63 combinations, giving 6.3% odds of landing the top pick, 7.1% the second and 8.1% the third.
In total, the Lakers have a 21.5% chance of moving up to the top three. After the first three selections, the remaining 11 teams slot in order of record, worst to best.
The Lakers can’t move up to four or five. The odds of staying at six is 43.9%. The Lakers also have a 30.5% chance of dipping to seven, 4.0% of falling to eight but just 0.1% of falling to nine.
Not all of the top prospects have declared for the draft. The early entry deadline is April 27.
The pool of players could include Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid from Kansas, Jabari Parker from Duke, Australia’s Dante Exum, Kentucky’s Julius Randle, Arizona’s Aaron Gordon, Indiana’s Noah Vonleh, Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart, Syracuse’s Tyler Ennis and Creighton’s Doug McDermott, among others.
The draft will be held on June 23.
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Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.
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