For fans of specific NBA teams, the NBA draft lottery on Sunday will be all about how high their team ends up drafting. But for people like me who root more for BYU players than for specific NBA teams, it's going to be about who lands high enough to pick up AJ Dybantsa.
I decided to calculate the approximate probability of each team landing AJ Dybantsa. If this was like last year, where Cooper Flagg was basically guaranteed to be the number one pick regardless of which team it was, there would be nothing to calculate.
Each team's odds of drafting him would be the same as their odds of landing the number one pick. But unlike last year, while AJ is projected to be the number one pick, it's not a guarantee, so that makes the calculations more interesting (by the way, if you're not interested in how I did my calculations, you're welcome to skip to the end where I put the final percentages).
I tried to find an article that said who each of the 14 lottery teams would draft if they were given the number one pick, but I couldn't find one. Instead, I asked ChatGPT to determine the top 3 most likely players for each team to draft at number one (it used 20+ articles from all over the internet). According to ChatGPT, 10 of the 14 lottery teams would most likely take AJ at number 1. For the other four teams, AJ would be their second choice. The Nets, the Thunder, and the Heat would all most likely take Cam Boozer at number one, and the Bulls would most likely take Darryn Peterson.
Let's assume that ChatGPT is correct about everything. This means the following teams would have the following odds of getting the number one pick and picking Dybantsa:
Wizards: 14%
Pacers: 14%
Jazz: 11.5%
Kings: 11.5%
Grizzlies: 9%
Hawks: 6.8%
Mavericks: 6.7%
Bucks: 3%
Warriors: 2%
Hornets: 0.5%
Now, let's say that one of the other four teams gets the number one pick and doesn't take Dybantsa. Then, what are the odds of each team getting him with the second pick? This is where things get a little more challenging because the odds of each team getting the second pick are slightly different depending on who gets the first pick.
This means that for each team, in order to find the probability that they'll be able to take Dybantsa with the second pick, we have to find the probability that they'll get the second pick, given that each of the four teams that don't have Dybantsa as their first choice gets the first pick. Then, we have to multiply each of those numbers by each of the probabilities of those teams getting the first pick, and then add them all up. (If you didn't quite follow all that, it's OK. If you did, you're a nerd just like me.) Here are the odds of each team that has Dybantsa as their first choice being able to take Dybantsa with their second pick:
Wizards: 3.3%
Pacers: 3.3%
Jazz: 2.7%
Kings: 2.7%
Grizzlies: 2.1%
Hawks: 1.6%
Mavericks: 1.6%
Bucks: 0.7%
Warriors: 0.5%
Hornets: 0.1%
Now, unless ChatGPT is wrong, it's actually impossible for the Bulls to take AJ at number 2 because if they get the number 2 pick, they're guaranteed to be able to take their first choice, Darryn Peterson, since no one else would take him at number 1. But if the first two picks both go to the Nets, the Thunder, or the Heat, then theoritically, the team with the first pick would take Cam Boozer and the team with the second pick would take AJ Dybantsa. Here are the odds of each of those teams getting AJ in that scenario:
Nets: 0.4%
Thunder: 0.3%
Heat: 0.2%
And now, we have to account for the unspeakable scenario. What if Dybantsa is taken at number 3? In order for that to happen, either ChatGPT would have to be wrong, or the Bulls would have to get one of the first two picks, and the Nets, Thunder, or Heat would have to get the other one. Here are the odds of each team getting Dybantsa with the third pick in that scenario:
Wizards: 0.27%
Pacers: 0.27%
Jazz: 0.22%
Kings: 0.22%
Grizzlies: 0.18%
Hawks: 0.13%
Mavericks: 0.13%
Bucks: 0.05%
Warriors: 0.03%
Nets: 0.03%
Thunder: 0.02%
Hornets: 0.01%
Heat: 0.01%
And the Bulls would have a 0% chance because they can't get the third pick if they get one of the first two.
Now, after all that, we can finally tally up the total probability of each team getting AJ Dybantsa:
Wizards: 17.6%
Pacers: 17.6%
Jazz: 14.4%
Kings: 14.4%
Grizzlies: 11.3%
Hawks: 8.5%
Mavericks: 8.4%
Bucks: 3.8%
Warriors: 2.5%
Hornets: 0.6%
Nets: 0.3%
Thunder: 0.2%
Heat: 0.1%
Bulls: 0%
Now remember,this is all assuming that ChatGPT is correct about each team's preferences, but if they're wrong about one team, it doesn't affect he odds too much for the other teams. We'll see what happens on Sunday.
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