Wolves Win Tiebreaker Over Knicks

This afternoon a coin flip that wasn’t really a coin flip occurred to determine if the Minnesota Timberwolves or New York Knicks would have the six slot in this summer’s NBA draft. Instead of a coin toss, the NBA put four Wolves ping pong balls and four Knicks ping pong balls in a lottery machine. The ping pong ball that popped out was, in fact, a Wolves ball. Go us!

What Does This Mean?

This means, if neither the Wolves or Knicks jump into the top-3 in the lottery (63.4 percent chance) then the Wolves will be put ahead of the Knicks in the descending order of teams who were not given a top-3 pick.

Wolves final lottery odds:

1st pick: 5.3 percent

2nd pick: 6.0 percent

3rd pick: 7.0 percent

6th pick: 43.9 percent

7th pick: 30.5 percent

8th pick: 5.0 percent

9th pick: .1 percent

Knicks final lottery odds:

1st pick: 5.3 percent

2nd pick: 6.0 percent

3rd pick: 7.0 percent

7th pick: 59.9 percent

8th pick: 23.2 percent

9th pick: 1.8 percent

10th pick: >.1 percent

Had the wolves lost the coin flip, their most likely pick would have been the 7th pick, 59.9 percent. But with a coin flip win, the most likely draft slot is the 6th pick, 43.9 percent.

Again, this coin flip had no bearing on the Wolves or Knicks odds of drafting in the top-3. Those odds are still split between the two teams as they both have an 18.3 percent chance of moving somewhere in the top-3.

DraftExpress.com has Malik Monk as the sixth best prospect in this draft.