The 2025-26 season isn’t halfway over yet, but the three teams who are widely expected to finish the season with the best lottery odds are the Washington Wizards, Sacramento Kings and Indiana Pacers. The New Orleans Pelicans are behind the Kings in the standings, but they don’t have the same incentive structure as their first round pick in 2026 was traded to the Atlanta Hawks for Derik Queen.
The Wizards are in another season of a multi-year rebuild, while the Tyrese Haliburton injury in the Finals has been followed by a number of additional injuries for the Pacers to torpedo their season. The Kings, meanwhile, have signaled they will enter a rebuild with hopes of trading some of their core players.
“This has been a fascinating five days at the bottom of the standings in the NBA,” said Zach Lowe on his podcast on Monday. “If you had to tier the lottery right now, tier one, best chance at a top three, top four lottery seed, Washington, Indiana, Kings, Pelicans are kind of right now in a tier by themselves.
“Of those three teams, I think Washington, Indiana, and Sacramento have no hope of exiting this tier and no real ambition to do so,” continued Lowe. “I think those are the safe bets to finish with the three worst records in the NBA and be very hard to ‘catch’ for anybody currently above them in the standings.
“The Pelicans, although they have lost three straight, have been pretty frisky. The numbers when they have their best players on the floor like Herb Jones plus Trey Murphy plus Zion [Williamson], they actually have a positive scoring margin. They’re trying to win. They’re trying to stave off the embarrassment of potentially sending a super high pick somewhere else. I could see them climbing into the next tier pretty easily if they continue to play with this effort level and stay healthy.”
The next teams above those four in the standings include the LA Clippers, Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz. The Jazz have a top-8 protected pick that extinguishes if it isn’t conveyed in 2026.