CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers' season has been over for more than a week now, but they still managed to suffer one more loss.
On Tuesday, the Cavs lost a tiebreaker coin flip with the Oklahoma City Thunder, which have a significant impact on next month's NBA Draft Lottery.
With both teams finishing the 2020-21 season tied for the league's fourth-worst record at 22-50, Cleveland and Oklahoma City will maintain the same odds of landing the first, second, third and fourth picks. Based on Tuesday's coin flip, however, the Thunder will enter the lottery in the No. 4 slot, with the Cavs falling behind at No. 5.
Those positions could prove significant based on the results of next month's lottery, in which the top four picks in the draft will be drawn. If Oklahoma City is jumped, the Thunder could now fall to as low as eighth, while Cleveland could find itself picking as low as ninth based on the lottery results.
As such, the Cavs chances of landing each pick in the draft lottery are as follows:
- No. 1 - 11.5%
- No. 2 - 11.4%
- No. 3 - 11.3 %
- No. 4 - 11%
- No. 5 - 2%
- No. 6 - 18.2%
- No. 7 - 25.5%
- No. 8 - 8.6%
- No. 9 - 0.6%
While Cleveland has less than a 1 percent chance of falling to ninth, losing Tuesday's coin toss did decrease its odds of selecting fifth or sixth and made it more likely the Cavs will be picking seventh or eighth. As a result, lottery luck will become even more important to Cleveland, which has been jumped out of the top four in each of the past two NBA Draft Lotteries.
The 2021 NBA Draft Lottery is scheduled to take place on June 22.