April 17, 2025
Patrick Gorski/Imagn Images
On May 12, the Sixers will either be rewarded with a top-six pick or leave the NBA Draft Lottery empty-handed.
Every day between the end of the Sixers' regular season and the NBA Draft Lottery on May 12, we will use Tankathon.com's famous simulation tool to run through the lottery 10 times. Over a 29-day period, we will collect a significant sample of possible outcomes and track those results as the Sixers wait to learn the fate of their own first-round pick.
The Sixers are entering the lottery with the fifth-best set of odds, but they will only keep their first-rounder if it falls in the top six slots due to an obligation to the Oklahoma City Thunder from a trade made nearly five years ago.
Let's get to today's simulations:
The outcomes of today's batch of 10 simulations:
• Simulation No. 1: 1st pick
• Simulation No. 2: 6th pick
• Simulation No. 3: 7th pick
• Simulation No. 4: 7th pick
• Simulation No. 5: 5th pick
• Simulation No. 6: 1st pick
• Simulation No. 7: 1st pick
• Simulation No. 8: 2nd pick
• Simulation No. 9: 1st pick
• Simulation No. 10: 7th pick
MORE: Paul George year-in-review
Four lottery victories in one day? This was quite a batch of outcomes for the Sixers, who did not land the No. 1 overall pick in any of yesterday's simulations.
Tankathon.com/for PhillyVoiceHaving the ability to draft Cooper Flagg would not just provide the Sixers with exactly what they need in the short-term, but give this organization new life in the form of a player who will immediately be one of the most valuable building blocks in all of basketball.
Whenever a simulation features the Sixers dropping down to No. 7 and losing their pick as the Brooklyn Nets and Toronto Raptors jump into the top four, it is nearly a guarantee to be chosen as the worst simulation of the day. It happened again this morning, with Brooklyn landing Flagg:
The painful irony of the Sixers outpacing their competitors in the tanking race for two months, only for one of them to leapfrog the Sixers with inferior odds, almost feels too perfect after a season like this one.
The cumulative results of this exercise so far:
| Draft Pick | Simulation Outcomes | Simulation Outcome Percentage | Actual Percentage Odds |
| 1 | 8 | 20.0% | 10.5% |
| 2 | 3 | 7.5% | 10.5% |
| 3 | 1 | 2.5% | 10.6% |
| 4 | 2 | 5.0% | 10.5% |
| 5 | 2 | 5.0% | 2.2% |
| 6 | 9 | 22.5% | 19.6% |
| 7 | 13 | 32.5% | 26.7% |
| 8 | 2 | 5.0% | 8.7% |
| 9 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.6% |
| Keep or Lose Pick? | Simulation Outcomes | Simulation Outcome Percentage | Actual Percentage Odds |
| Kept Pick | 25 | 62.5% | 64.0% |
| Lost Pick | 15 | 37.5% | 36.0% |
MORE: Joel Embiid year-in-review
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