#1 Pick Odds

First off, Sportsbook followed The Greek's lead and put up odds on the Draft lottery. Strangely, some of them are pretty close to the true odds. The Knicks should be +1216; Sportsbook has them at +1200. I'm not really sure what they get out of this- if they want to have more attractive odds than The Greek, why not put them at +1000? At +1200, they are barely making any money.

They also have odds on who the #1 pick will be; this is somewhat more interesting, since we don't already know what the actual odds are.


This matches my intuition- it's essentially a coin flip between Beasley and Rose, and it'd be a shock if anyone else went first.

Obviously, a lot of this depends on which team wins the lottery. So I figured I'd mess around with ESPN's Lottery Mock Draft thing, and see which teams picked which players when they landed the top pick.

Here are the results, along with the percentage of the time that the team in question is expected to get the #1 pick.

The Pacers (0.8%) and Trail Blazers (0.6%) are noticeably absent from this list. That's because they never won in the ridiculous number of lotteries I ran, so I don't know who they would pick. Edit: Apparently he has both teams taking Rose. Which kind of makes the next paragraph irrelevant.

I question the uniformity in the bottom of this list, with each of the last six teams choosing Beasley. This may be true, but it's also possible that Chad Ford didn't actually break down the "2,184 potential lottery scenarios", and Beasley was the pick for these teams by default.

Mostly on the strength of being theoretically picked by the Heat, Timberwolves, and Grizzlies, Beasley looks like the favorite. I wouldn't bet on him with this information, since I have no clue how accurate Chad Ford's predictions on this are- it's likely that the oddsmakers' predictions are superior. We'll see if the odds change after the lottery, which is on May 20.

NBA Draft Lottery Odds

I spend a good deal of time on this site looking at odds, and trying to determine whether they're worth betting on or not. Sometimes this is pretty difficult, trying to incorporate all kinds of different factors, and make necessary adjustments.

Sometimes it's really, really easy.

The Greek has posted odds on the NBA Draft lottery. No, not the NBA Draft- the lottery. Like, which ping pong ball will pop up. It's not very hard to figure out what these odds should be-the chances for each team are listed here.

If you bet on these, you have a problem.

Shockingly, there is no value in these. It'd be pretty amusing if there was- if the oddsmakers screwed up and put the Heat at +1750 or something. Alas, no.

Unless...remember this? For anyone who throws these conspiracy theories around, this is your time. Oh, Stern is going to give the Knicks Beasley to get their franchise back on track? Okay, then put $300 down on them at +800.

What would be really funny would be if any of these odds changed. We'd have to assume that someone maxed them out, and The Greek didn't want to put themselves at too much risk on a silly prop. I'd like to interview anyone who actually bets significant money on these, and figure out what their reasoning is.