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While most fans (myself included) were still trying to fully recover from the Minnesota Timberwolves impressive Game 1 playoff victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, the NBA was busy Monday afternoon settling tiebreakers for the upcoming 2022 NBA Draft.
NBA Draft tiebreaker results:
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) April 18, 2022
No. 18 pick: Chicago Bulls
No. 19 pick: Minnesota Timberwolves
Because the Timberwolves and Chicago Bulls both finished with a 46-36 record in the regular season, the league had to essentially draw straws to see who would receive the 18th pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and who would receive the 19th pick. Much like they did in Game 82 a few weeks ago, the Bulls “defeated” the Timberwolves, therefore securing the higher pick.
We won’t officially know the full order of the draft until later this spring when the NBA Lottery takes place, but for now, here’s the order from the 15th pick to the 30th pick:
Here's the 1st round NBA draft order. NBA announces:
— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) April 18, 2022
— Bulls won the tiebreaker with Wolves
— Raptors won tiebreaker with Nuggets
— 76ers won tiebreaker with Celtics and Bucks. Bucks got 2nd place in that.
— Heat won the tiebreaker with the Warriors. pic.twitter.com/7JFlxUil1h
No offense to our good friends at Tankathon.com, but I refuse to visit that website until the Timberwolves are officially eliminated from the playoffs, which might happen in a week or it might happen in mid June. Who knows!
I don’t want to speak for everyone here but this is a little more fun than worrying about ping pong balls.
— Kyle Theige (@KyleTheige) April 16, 2022
In all serious though, it’s nice to have a little more clarity as to where exactly the Wolves will draft later this summer. In addition to the 19th pick, Minnesota also owns three second round picks, including the 40th pick (via the Washington Wizards), 48th pick (their own), and the 50th pick (via the Denver Nuggets). There’s obviously no way that the Wolves will actually use all four of those picks (they don’t really have enough roster spots), so I’d expect Minnesota’s President of Basketball Operations (hopefully that’s Sachin Gupta) to be making plenty of calls to swing some deals to either move up, acquire future picks, or try to land a player (via a trade) that can immediately contribute next season.
But again, let’s save all that #DraftTalk for another day. This week (and this month really) is ALL about seeing how deep of a playoff push the Timberwolves can make. Game 2 is scheduled for Tuesday night at 7:30pm CT, and we’ll have plenty of coverage leading up to (and after) the game.
Go Wolves.
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