Draft Pick Tracker – March 24th, 2017

Welcome back to your daily Sixers draft pick tracker.

Summary:
The Knicks lost again, temporarily removes 10 ping pong ball combinations from the Sixers’ possession. Is it time to start rooting for the Lakers to, not to catch the Suns, but to avoid being caught by the Nets?

2017 Draft Pick Tracker – Summary

Yesterday’s results:

• Brooklyn beat Phoenix (good): The loss keeps Phoenix just 2 wins up on the Lakers, but is that the team we should be focusing on? LA does have 5 wins on Brooklyn, but with LA’s historic incentive to tank, and no incentive for Brooklyn to do so, it might be more of a discussion than it has any reasonable right to be. Brooklyn’s 5-5 in their last 10 and has a number of winnable games to finish out the season (Suns, 76ers, Magic twice), while the Lakers have won just 1 of their last 15 games.
• Dallas beat LAC (good): Dallas’ win gives them 4 more than Sacramento, and you can pretty much stop monitoring them. The Kings won’t catch them.
• Portland beat New York (bad): The Knicks lose to everyone these days. They’ve given up a combined 241 points to Brooklyn in games the past two weeks, for crying out loud. The loss keeps them tied with the Kings at 27 wins, but moves the Knicks into the 6th spot because they’ve played 1 extra game than Sacramento.

Tonight’s games:

• Phoenix @ Boston (go Celtics): Again, imagining the Lakers winning twice to finish out the season is tough to do. Still, a Phoenix loss helps keep that dream alive.
• Philadelphia @ Chicago: Depending on the results of this game, and the Orlando/Detroit game, the Sixers could jump into that 4th spot.
• Detroit @ Orlando (go Magic): ^– see above. The Pistons have lost 5 of their last 6 games, and 6 of their last 7 road games dating back to Feb 13th.
• Sacramento @ Golden State (go Warriors): Should be an easy W for the W’s.
• New Orleans @ Houston (go Pels): The Pelicans have 3 more wins than the Kings. You know what’s better than being 3 wins up? 4 wins up.
• Minnesota @ LAL (go Lakers): This one’s tough. Because of what I said above (BKN catching LAL), along with the Lakers chasing the Suns, a rare Lakers win would obviously be great. But Minnesota is also only 1 win up on the Kings, so I might throw this into the “win-win” category.
• Brooklyn @ Washington (go Wiz): I haven’t been tracking the Nets at all in this tracker, since they’ve been 7 or so games behind the Lakers for the majority of it, and thus unlikely to be a factor. But with the way the Nets are playing, and the Lakers complete disdain for winning, that changes. Hope the Nets start losing.

Current combined odds for Sixers/Kings pick swap:

• #1 pick: 13.1% (-1.0% change since yesterday)
• Top-3 pick: 41.4% (-2.6% change since yesterday)
• Two top-5 picks: 28.3% (-1.3% change since yesterday)

Lakers Pick (currently 2nd):

Lakers draft pick – Current Status:

(Where the Lakers currently are in the standings)

Lakers Draft Pick Matrix:

What odds the Lakers have of getting each pick (columns) depending on where they finish in the standings (rows). In red means the Sixers would not get the pick. The row in bold is where the Lakers are if the season finished today. All odds assume no ties in the final standings).

Sixers/Kings Pick (currently 5th/7th):

(How the Sixers and Kings fit into the standings. Lottery ball combinations based on if the season ended today.)