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If the season ended today, the Sixers would have a 15.6% chance at landing the #1 spot in the lottery. It’s a good spot to be in. Since 1985, the team with the 3rd-worst record in the NBA has won the lottery seven times. Second-worst has pulled the top pick four times, and the worst team has only landed the top pick three times. But that’s well-short of a guarantee.

To see how it can all shake out, you can run a lottery simulation over at ESPN. I just ran through it ten or so times and the Sixers landed the first pick once, second pick once (above), and fifth pick four or five times. And how do we know who each team would most likely pick? “NBA draft Insider Chad Ford has provided an analysis of which player each team is likely to take for each of the 2,184 potential lottery outcomes.” It’s not foolproof, but it’s more work than any of us were willing to do. The odds will change as the standings do — as will scouting reports as players grow — so you can figure out just how many more games you’d be happy with the Sixers winning. I think eight to ten more is probably fine.