With the best regular season record among the 14 teams that participated in Tuesday’s NBA draft lottery, the New Orleans Pelicans faced extremely long odds to win the drawing (0.5 percent) or even claim a top-four pick (2.4 percent). As a result, it came as little surprise that the Pelicans did not move up from their pre-lottery slot during Tuesday’s event, based on the 97.6 likelihood of that being the case. New Orleans will have the No. 14 overall pick during the June 22 draft, the final selection of the lottery portion of Round 1.
New Orleans has selected in the latter half of the lottery several times in recent years, including obtaining Dyson Daniels (2022) and Jaxson Hayes (2019) via the No. 8 pick, as well as choosing Kira Lewis Jr. at No. 13 overall in 2020. The Pelicans entered the 2021 draft with the No. 10 pick, but traded down to No. 17 in a deal with Memphis, then tabbed Trey Murphy.