The ongoing theme of the 2027 NBA Draft is how wide open it will be. Amidst the backdrop of college basketball's NIL market, the upcoming draft, particularly at the top, is more unpredictable than previous years. With eight months still to go, nothing is a sure thing, a drastic shift from what we experienced in last year's cycle.
That includes the draft order itself. The 2027 NBA Draft will mark the first year of the league's lottery reform, or what is called the "3-2-1" lottery system. The new system is designed to discourage tanking.
There will now be 16 teams in the lottery (up from 14): the 10 teams that miss the postseason entirely, the No. 9 and 10 seeds in both conferences, and the losers of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 Play-In Tournament games. There will be a new distribution of lottery balls.
The teams with the three worst records would fall into the so-called "relegation" zone. They would receive only two lottery balls each. The seven remaining teams that miss the postseason entirely would receive three balls.
The No. 9 and No. 10 seeds would receive two balls, and the loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 game would get one ball each. In total, this means there would be 37 lottery balls assigned to 16 teams.
Because that new system makes it much more difficult, if not impossible, to forecast the order, this first mock is reverse-engineered based on Tankathon's predictive win totals and is thus more based on the players than on team needs.
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