Chicago will host to one of the most decisive nights of the NBA calendar on Tuesday night.
The NBA draft lottery will take place at 7 p.m. CT at McCormick Place, airing live on ESPN.
The random selection will determine the order for the 2023 draft, deciding which team lands a highly-touted young talent expected to immediately change the league’s landscape.
Chicago fans were already buoyed after the Blackhawks received the No. 1 overall pick in their respective draft lottery last week. After a disappointing season, the stakes are even higher — and the odds are even lower — for the Bulls as they wait and see if they’ll factor in the first round at all.
What is the draft lottery?
The lottery is an additional mechanism to enforce parity in the NBA by providing the 14 teams that finished outside the playoffs with a randomized opportunity to receive one of the top four overall draft picks.
The Bulls currently hold the No. 11 pick, but the lottery offers them a chance to make a major move up to the top four picks.
What are the odds?
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After finishing 10th in the Eastern Conference with a 40-42 record, the Bulls are the 11th seed in the lottery — giving them 20 entries for an 8.5% chance to be drawn for one of those top four spots.
The odds of that occurrence narrow with each step up the draft order: the Bulls have a 2.5% chance of landing the fourth overall pick, 2.21% chance of receiving the third pick, 1.98% for the second pick and 1.8% for the No. 1 overall selection.
What’s at stake?
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Chicago Tribune Sports
Tuesday’s drawing will decide whether or not the Bulls have a place at all in the first round of the NBA draft.
As one of the final stipulations of the 2021 trade to obtain Nikola Vučević, the Bulls will only retain their first-round pick if they land one of the protected top four draft picks. If not, the Bulls will cede their first-round pick to the Orlando Magic, limiting their involvement in the draft to a singular second-round pick.
A high pick is even more critical in this year’s draft, which features a young player already forecast to grow into an immediate generational talent — 19-year-old Victor Wembanyama. The 7-foot-2 center with unique shooting and ballhandling out of France became a salacious target for teams destined to finish on the bottom rung of the standings.
Wembanyana is expected to be a lock for the No. 1 overall pick, but three other projected picks — including Alabama’s Brandon Miller and G League product Scoot Henderson — are also expected to be the type of picks who immediately can impact a program for the better.
[ [Don't miss] Who is Victor Wembanyama? The NBA is about to get the answer to that question. ]
Drafts of the past
The Bulls have drafted with mixed success in recent years, and the selections made during the tenures of Marc Eversley and Artūras Karnišovas are still struggling to find full roles on the court.
Despite staying with the Bulls for the majority of the season rather than being sent down to the G League, 2022 pick Dalen Terry averaged only 5.6 minutes in his rookie campaign. 2021 pick Ayo Dosunmu was almost immediately thrust into the starting point guard position as a rookie, but his role was relegated back into the secondary rotation this season despite the team’s continued lack of a true starting point guard.
All five of the team’s remaining draft selections from the last four years continue to hold bench roles in the Bulls rotation, with Terry and Marko Simonović only seeing the court for mop-up minutes.
- 2018: Wendell Carter Jr. and Chandler Hutchinson
- 2019: Coby White and Daniel Gafford
- 2020: Patrick Williams and Marko Simonović
- 2021: Ayo Dosunmu
- 2022: Dalen Terry