{"id":662279,"date":"2026-05-10T18:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T18:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/662279\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T18:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T18:05:12","slug":"ping-pong-ball-sunday-nba-draft-lottery-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/662279\/","title":{"rendered":"Ping-Pong Ball Sunday: NBA Draft Lottery Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 _16w9vov6 _16w9vov5 ls9zuh1\">The annual run-up to the draft is impressively idiotic: everyone draws out mock drafts and figures who is going where, and why\u2026all before the lottery is set.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Why bother? You can\u2019t know anything prior to that. It\u2019s fun speculation, and it\u2019s good content, but it\u2019s just speculation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">One of the great examples of this is last year\u2019s chase of former Blue Devil Cooper Flagg. How many people had Dallas sneaking in at #1 with a 1.8% chance?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So the real draft speculation starts this afternoon a little after 3:00, when we know the draft order. Currently, the Top 5 picks are usually projected to be, in some order, AJ Dybantsa of BYU, Darryn Peterson of Kansas, UNC\u2019s Caleb Wilson, Darius Acuff of Arkansas, and Duke\u2019s Cameron Boozer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Their strengths and weaknesses are well-known; now we\u2019ll see how they match with team needs and priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The annual run-up to the draft is impressively idiotic: everyone draws out mock drafts and figures who is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,7432,85],"class_list":["post-662279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-main","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}