Simulating the 2016 NBA Draft Lottery 100 times to try and determine the fate of the Lakers first-round pick
So much is riding on the 2016 NBA Draft Lottery for the Los Angeles Lakers this year. Though their franchise isn’t going to fall into a deep abyss if things don’t work out, things working out on Tuesday night would go a long way into having the Lakers look like, well, the Lakers again.
As anyone with any kind of emotional investment in the Lakers can tell you by now, Los Angeles has the second-best odds in the NBA Draft Lottery of getting the No. 1 overall pick. However, if their pick would to fall outside of the top-3, they lose the pick to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Knowing that the Lakers have a 19.9 percent chance at winning the first-overall pick and a 55.8 percent chance of staying in the top-3, we simulated the NBA Draft Lottery 100 final times before Tuesday night’s actual lottery to see what the results were in regards to the Lakers’ first-round pick:
The percentages of losing the pick and keeping the pick are pretty much spot on in these 100 simulations as the Lakers would have kept the pick in 56 of the sims and lost it in the other 44. What’s interesting, though, is that the mode of the results where the Lakers kept their pick actually came at the No. 3 pick.
Even more curious is the fact that the Lakers getting the No. 2 pick was the least frequent result of all in the 100 simulations. Given the fact that they had the second-worst record last season, that’s certainly an odd result and something that should be a bit unsettling for fans hoping to keep the pick.
Next: 2016 NBA Draft Lottery: By the Numbers
Now we’ll see what the final result is on Tuesday night. However, now we have one final look with these simulations as to what could happen in the NBA Draft Lottery.