The 2025-2026 season isn’t even halfway through yet, but the three teams widely expected to finish the season with the best lottery odds are the Washington Wizards, Sacramento Kings and Indiana Pacers. The New Orleans Pelicans are behind the Kings in the standings, but they don’t have the same incentive structure as their 2026 first-round pick was traded to the Atlanta Hawks for Derik Queen.
The Wizards are in the midst of another season of a multi-year rebuild, while Tyrese Haliburton’s injury in the Finals was followed by a number of additional injuries that torpedoed the Pacers’ season. The Kings, meanwhile, have indicated they will begin a rebuild in hopes of trading some of their core players.
The top-3 teams each have a 14 percent chance of winning the lottery and a 52.1 percent chance of getting a top-4 pick.
“It’s been a fascinating five days at the bottom of the NBA rankings,” he said. Zach Lowe said on his podcast Monday. “If you had to line up the lottery right now, row one, the best chance of a top three, the top four lottery seeds, Washington, Indiana, Kings and Pelicans are kind of sitting in a row right now.
“Of these three teams, I think Washington, Indiana and Sacramento have no hope of leaving this level and no real ambition to do so,” Lowe continued. “I think this is a safe bet to end up with the three worst records in the NBA and very difficult to catch for someone currently above them in the standings.
“The Pelicans, even though they’ve lost three in a row, they’ve been pretty playful. The numbers when they have their best players on the floor like Herb Jones plus Trey Murphy plus Zion [Williamson]they actually have a positive score margin. They’re trying to win. They’re trying to avoid the embarrassment of potentially sending a super high pick elsewhere. I could see them moving to the next level pretty easily if they continued to play with this level of effort and stayed healthy.”
The next teams above these four in the standings are the LA Clippers, Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz. The Jazz have a top-8 protected pick that will fizzle out if it doesn’t move in 2026.
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