Just hours before the NBA Draft Lottery show, which airs Tuesday on ESPN at 7 PM CDT, Dikembe Mutombo tweeted a nice congratulations to the Philadelphia 76ers…
…wait. How would Mutombo know that if they haven’t even picked the ping pong balls yet? He deleted this tweet shortly after sending it.
Maybe Mutombo misspoke. The Sixers have the best odds of snagging the #1 pick after winning only 10 games in the 2015-16 season. Their record earns them a 25% chance in the lottery. The Sixers also have the right to swap picks with the Sacramento Kings after trading them Nik Stauskas last year. The Kings have a 1.9% chance of getting the top pick in this year’s draft.
The Sixers can also have have 2 high draft picks by the end of the evening, as they also have the rights to the Los Angeles Lakers’ pick if their ball is pulled outside of the Top-3, due to a three-team deal that sent Michael Carter-Williams to the Milwaukee Bucks and Brandon Knight to Phoenix. The Lakers have the 2nd best odds of landing the top pick with 19.9%. There’s a 44.2% chance the Sixers will get the Lakers’ pick otherwise.
Or perhaps the conspiracy theorists were right and the NBA is rigged and Mutombo let the cat out of the bag. We’ll just have to wait and see for ourselves tonight. If the Sixers land the top pick, the NBA is going to have some explaining to do.
UPDATE: Mutombo is already doing damage control on Twitter. This is fun.
Like a digital finger wag.
michaelpiff 