The 2025 NBA Draft Lottery has come and passed, and it didn't bring nearly the result fans of the Washington Wizards were hoping for. After heading into lottery night tied for the best odds to land the top pick and gain the right to draft Cooper Flagg, the Wizards fell out of the top three and will be picking sixth, which was mathematically their worst-case scenario. This situation brings one specific topic to the forefront of the discussion — The fact that the NBA does little to help its small market teams get ahead.
If you watched all 82 games of Washington's season in 2024-25, you should qualify for some sort of compensation. There's no way around it: Prior to the trade deadline, this team was in the gutter. Entering the month of February, the Wizards were sitting with a 6-41 record, and although things improved in February, March and April, an 18-win season is hardly better than the 15 wins Washington racked up the year prior.
Looking at the Wizards' roster, there's a clear lack of star power. No one would question that. So it's extremely unfortunate that they will now have a much lower chance of landing a game-changing player come draft night on June 25.
All this points us to the fact that the lottery system is extremely flawed, and that the NBA itself does not seem to care much for the Washingtons, Charlottes, and Utahs of their league. No, this is not a rant about how the lottery is rigged, but rather a commentary on why it's set up the way it is in the first place.
The rich get richer under the current NBA lottery system
Think about it. Once the lottery odds were flattened beginning with the 2020 draft, the team with the worst record no longer had a one in four chance (25%) to earn the top pick. Instead, the teams with the three worst records each would get a 14% chance, which is what ultimately brought us Monday night's result.
Just take a look at the teams who ended up in the top three, and ultimately took the place of the dead-last Jazz, Hornets and Wizards. The Dallas Mavericks, the San Antonio Spurs and the Philadelphia 76ers. Each of those teams has a top-15 player in the association along with a deep roster of strong talent.
How exactly are the bottom of the barrel teams supposed to improve with these circumstances? It's one thing to discourage tanking, but it's another to completely bury all chances of actually landing a star for the teams that are legitimately not all that talented.
We know that there aren't going to be marquee free agents knocking down the door to play for the Washington Wizards. So teams like them have no choice but to make the best pick at six that they can, and hope for the best next year. It's a bad look for the league, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.