NBA Draft Lottery: Spurs land top pick (2024)

The wait is over: The San Antonio Spurs secured the No. 1 pick — and the right to draft French phenom Victor Wembanyama — in the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday. The Charlotte Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers, Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons round out the top five.

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2023 NBA Draft Lottery order:

1. San Antonio Spurs
2. Charlotte Hornets
3. Portland Trail Blazers
4. Houston Rockets
5. Detroit Pistons
6. Orlando Magic
7. Indiana Pacers
8. Washington Wizards
9. Utah Jazz
10. Dallas Mavericks
11. Orlando Magic (via Chicago)
12. Oklahoma City Thunder
13. Toronto Raptors
14. New Orleans Pelicans

Required reading/viewing

• NBA post-lottery Mock Draft 2023: Wembanyama goes No. 1 to Spurs; Henderson to Hornets
• After winning Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes, how quickly should Spurs rebuild?
• Victor Wembanyama scouting report from The Athletic draft expert Sam Vecenie
• 2023 NBA Draft Top 100 Big Board

Find the best ticket deals on StubHub to see your favorite team.

(Photo: Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)

The San Antonio Spurs haven’t had a winning season since 2018-19, which seems crazy to say out loud given its track record of success under Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich. Before these four years, the team posted a winning record in 22 straight seasons, including an absurd run within that streak of winning at least 50 games in 18 straight seasons. But despite this downturn, this past season was essentially only Year 1 of their true rebuild.

The team had Dejounte Murray and Derrick White on the roster holding up the record in 2022, as those two combined for nearly 4,000 minutes even with the midseason trade of White to Boston. Following the ensuing Murray deal to Atlanta for a king’s ransom this past summer, the Spurs dropped to 22 wins in 2022-23. But because they hadn’t yet bottomed out before this season, they didn’t have the franchise centerpiece on the roster yet. They had building blocks like Jeremy Sochan and Devin Vassell. But they didn’t have “the dude.”

On Tuesday night, they got the centerpiece.

The Spurs are the lucky organization that won the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery and have earned the right to select Victor Wembanyama with the No. 1 overall pick. To say Wembanyama is a franchise-changer is an understatement. He will be the clear top option here on this roster from Day 1, even with Vassell and Keldon Johnson, who combined last season to average 40 points per game.

And due to the state of the roster, we’ll get to see him explore the studio space and probe the upper bounds of his shot-creation ability for a coach that mentored two of the best all-time bigs in David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

Read more here.

(Photo: Franck Fife / AFP via Getty Images)

CHICAGO — Michael Finley never reacted. At least, not outwardly.

The Dallas Mavericks vice president of basketball operations sat expressionless in the NBA Draft Lottery’s drawing room, chin resting on his left palm, eyes fixating on a piece of paper in front of him. But inside were a few more jitters.

Finley was one of only 14 team representatives in the private room where the lottery plays out. Witnesses are then sequestered in the same room for the next 75 minutes until the results are broadcast on television. No phones, no electronics, nothing more technologically advanced than a typewriter.

For more than an hour, Finley knew his team was in the clear as the rest of the members of the Mavericks organization, some of whom had expressed mild anxiety about their pick situation to The Athletic at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago the day before, had to wait for the results.

There was a chance the Mavericks would lose its draft pick, even after they did all they could to float out of the playoff picture during the final week of the regular season. Dallas went into the evening with the 10th-best odds to win the No. 1 selection. If any of the four teams behind them jumped into the top four, their 2023 first-rounder, which was top 10 protected, would have gone to the New York Knicks.

But there was only a 20.2 percent chance of that happening, meaning there was a 79.8 percent probability that Finley would walk out of that drawing room unscathed — roughly the same percentage that Finley shot from the free-throw line back in his playing days. This wasn’t quite the same.

"It's not like making a free throw," Finley told The Athletic. "You can't control it."

Read the rest of this story here.

Winners

• San Antonio (duh): The Spurs will get the generational talent everybody wanted.
• Portland: Moving up to the third pick gives the Blazers either the opportunity to draft a big-time prospect or move the pick for a big-time veteran to help Damian Lillard.
• Charlotte: Whether the Hornets pair LaMelo Ball with Scoot Henderson or Brandon Miller, they have another potential star.
• Dallas: The Mavs didn’t fall to 11th, so they keep their top-10 protected pick. Tanking works!

Losers

• Detroit: The Pistons needed any of those top-three guys to bolster that core, and now we have no clue whether they can get a future star to pair with Cade Cunningham.
• Chicago: The Bulls owed a top-four protected pick to Orlando, so they lose the 11th pick to the Magic.
• Houston: Not the worst-case scenario, but the Rockets really needed a franchise-changer to help lead a talented but undisciplined core. That gets murky at No. 4, although the hope is Amen Thompson does that.

If the Wizards had won the first pick, there wouldn’t have been any debate on who they’d draft. Victor Wembanyama would have been their choice, of course.

Adding, perhaps, to the Wizards’ frustration was how close they actually came in the drawing room to winning the top pick. The Wizards’ allotted lottery combinations included the numbers on the first three ping-pong balls that were drawn, and they also had six of the remaining 11 numbers. But the number on the fourth ping-pong ball out of the lottery machine was not on the Wizards’ list.

In other words: If the Wizards didn’t have bad luck Tuesday night, they would have had very little luck at all.

They hoped for close to a miracle.

They wound up with something else. Again.

Read the rest of my story about the Wizards staying put at No. 8 here.

Now that the draft order is set, who should your team take? The Athletic’s NBA beat writers, national writers and podcast hosts weighed in and made the call on the first 14 selections.

The top five:

1. Spurs: Victor Wembanyama, C, Metropolitans 92
2. Hornets: Scoot Henderson, G, G League Ignite
3. Trail Blazers: Brandon Miller, F, Alabama
4. Rockets: Cam Whitmore, W, Villanova
5. Pistons: Amen Thompson, G, Overtime Elite

Read more here.

CHICAGO — Brian Wright remained stoic throughout. There was no outburst, no wide smile, barely even a fist pump. As the San Antonio Spurs’ winning numbers were read off individually after flying out of a lottery machine in a conference room here he forced himself to sit still. The realization that the fate of his entire organization had just flipped came when Clay Allen, the Rockets general counsel sitting beside him, let him know those four numbers — 14, 5, 8, 2 — were the ones he had been waiting a whole season for.

It’s a remarkable thing, the NBA Lottery. The fortunes of men, women, franchises, and cities, all decided by the random procession of ping pong balls from a clear drum on the third floor of the McCormick Place West Convention Center. As representatives from 14 teams sat waiting for the final number to be drawn a little after six o’clock local time, the futures of six teams hung in the balance. Five of them needed just one more number to land the right to draft the prospected being discussed as the best since LeBron James. Another, the Wizards, had six different outs — if just one of them hit, they’d find glory.

Instead, as Wright sat unmoved, San Antonio found themselves atop the draft again, another generational big man in their sights. In 1987, they got David Robinson. In 1997, they took Tim Duncan. In 2023, Victor Wembanyama awaits.

"It's a bit surreal," R.C. Buford told The Athletic. "You don't expect that. We haven't had time to digest it together. It can be incredible for our organization, for our communities, for our fans around the world and for our team. The chance to add a great young prospect to a young team and let them grow together, it's incredible."

Read the rest of my experience inside the lottery drawing room here.

(Photo by Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)

CHICAGO — We’re going back to Boudro’s. Anybody heard from the Chuckster?

You can’t possibly be surprised that, after getting David Robinson and Tim Duncan, the Spurs wound up with Victor Wembanyama. It’s the Spursiest thing that could possibly have happened Tuesday. After a few post-Duncan/Kawhi Leonard years in the darkness, San Antonio will soon be back on TNT and ESPN on the regular. They already have Jacob Riis’ “Stonecutter” credo translated into French, among numerous other languages, along the walls of AT&T Center, in tribute to Hall of Famer Tony Parker and ultravaluable sixth man Boris Diaw, among other French players who’ve played there. Wembanyama will feel right at home.

“This year, we had to find Georgian,” Spurs CEO R.C. Buford said after the Spurs picked up big man Sandro “Mamu” Mamukelashvili in late March. (The Stonecutter got translated into Polish, as well, this year by the mother of 2022 first-round pick Jeremy Sochan, who’s from Warsaw, Poland.)

So it will be nothing new for Gregg Popovich and company to welcome an international star, even one with the unlimited potential and worldwide hype of Wembanyama. The team’s history and continued willingness in good times and bad to take chances on players from all over the globe puts it in perfect position to inherit the French teenager and incorporate him into a team concept.

“Two things,” Buford said Tuesday after the stars aligned, again, for his franchise. “Our head coach loves a diverse community of experiences. I think you’ve seen our international community with Patty (Mills) and Manu (Ginobili) and Boris and Tiago (Splitter). And those guys never shared basketball; they shared life. And I think Pop loves creating environments where people learn about each other and each other’s experiences, and all grow together because of it. I hope we can continue that environment.

“We like being in (international) gyms. And early, we were in there kind of by ourselves. Not very many. Now I think you can see the league is full of international players.”

Read more here.

(Photo: Mike Mulholland / Getty Images)

The lottery deities did not favour the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night. They had a one percent chance of snagging the top pick and a 4.7 percent shot at moving into the top four. Neither hit, and they are slotted 13th in the 2023 NBA Draft, which is held on June 22. The San Antonio Spurs own three future Raptors draft picks and get to take Victor Wembanyama. Not fair.

All is not lost. This is an intriguing class, with a lot of guards in play right around where the Raptors project to pick. Here are my 13 initial thoughts (OK, closer to 11) on where the Raptors stand.

(Photo: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)

The 2023 NBA Draft Lottery has come and gone, with the San Antonio Spurs winning the No. 1 overall pick. They are the significant winners of the night and will have the opportunity to select generational French prospect Victor Wembanyama, a true franchise player whose presence will alter the trajectory of the team moving forward.

The Charlotte Hornets moved up to No. 2, positioning them in all likelihood to take either Alabama wing Brandon Miller or G League Ignite guard Scoot Henderson. The Portland Trail Blazers will pick third, a big result that gives them another elite asset to potentially help Damian Lillard. The Houston Rockets round out the top four.

From a tiers perspective, this class is interesting. There is a clear No. 1 with Wembanyama. On a consensus basis, teams see Henderson and Miller as the next two prospects in some order, although some evaluators will put Overtime Elite guards Amen and Ausar Thompson or even Villanova wing Cam Whitmore into that grouping from an upside perspective. Beyond that group of six, there is another group of five or six players seen as extremely likely to be taken in the lottery, and then another group of eight to 10 players seen as very likely to be first-round picks. Beyond those 20 to 22 players, the back-third of the first round is considered wide open, with real potential for many players to move in and out through the pre-draft process.

Read more here.

(Photo: Franck Fife / AFP via Getty Images)

Needless to say, Victor Wembanyama changes everything for the Spurs, a team that won 22 games last season while sporting the league’s worst scoring margin, finishing 29th in offense and 30th in defense. Conveniently, the Spurs moved center Jakob Poeltl for a first-round pick at the trade deadline; there was an 86 percent chance it wouldn’t look quite this prescient, but now it seems like absolute genius.

Wembanyama’s arrival also changes the Spurs’ calendar. In the midst of what seemed to be a long, painful rebuild from Kawhi Leonard’s departure, they can now pull out of that nosedive and head back toward the clouds.

Helpfully, the Spurs have a blank slate with which to paint around Wembanyama: Nearly $40 million in cap room, depending on other offseason choices, and only one contract commitment beyond 2024 (forward Keldon Johnson’s value extension that runs through 2027). San Antonio also sits on a gold mine of draft assets — five firsts and nine seconds are owed to it between now and 2029, plus two first-round pick swaps. Included in that are unprotected firsts from Atlanta in 2025 and 2027 as a result of last summer’s Dejounte Murray trade — the move that set the stage for this season’s reset, and has now paid off handsomely.

Read more here.

(Photo illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Hector Vivas, Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images)

In1987 the Spurs won the lottery to nab David Robinson, and 1997 they picked Tim Duncan. Those Hall of Famers set up two decades of success and five NBA titles. Could Wembanyama join that exclusive club? Wemby would be a centerpiece player on a roster that already has young talent like Keldon Johnson, Jeremy Sochan, and Devin Vassell.

(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / Getty Images)

If we are to take Damian Lillard and what he says seriously, the Portland Trail Blazers will trade the No. 3 pick that was just awarded to them Tuesday at the NBA Draft Lottery.

On April 9, in the hour after the Trail Blazers ended their second consecutive embarrassing season, Lillard flatly said he didn’t want to entertain what a lottery pick could do for the Blazers’ future. The future, in Lillard’s mind, was here, and he wants somebody who has the experience, the mindset, and the chops to win. Now.

"I’m just not interested in that. That’s not a secret," Lillard said in April when asked about adding another young player. "I want a chance to go for it."

That’s a pretty strong directive from the franchise pillar, and you better believe hearing Lillard say that made general manager Joe Cronin pucker a bit. Since Cronin took over in December of 2021, his words have said the right things (he wants to build an immediate winner for Lillard), but his actions have indicated a long-term build around youth and picks.

Now that we know there is no longer the possibility of the No. 1 pick and Victor Wembanyama, there should be no more waffling. No more kicking the can down the road. It’s decision time for Cronin: Make trades to win now for Lillard, or kickstart the next era of Trail Blazers basketball around Shaedon Sharpe, Anfernee Simons and whoever emerges as the No. 3 pick.

Photo: Sam Forencich / NBAE via Getty Images

Wow. There has to be a great deal of disappointment for Houston to end up drafting outside of the top three at No. 4, especially after enduring the season — or seasons — that they have. There are still some interesting names to consider here — the Thompson twins, Cam Whitmore and even the likes of Taylor Hendricks or Jarace Walker — but I expect the Rockets to be extremely open to trading this pick.

1. San Antonio Spurs

Victor Wembanyama | 7-4 center | 19 years old | Metropolitans 92

The Scout: The best draft prospect to enter the NBA since LeBron James. It’s that simple. Wembanyama is the epitome of a franchise changer. As a teenager, he is leading the French League in points, rebounds and blocks. It’s hard to overemphasize how incredible Wembanyama’s long-term potential is on both ends of the floor. He will immediately be the biggest, longest player in the NBA, which allows him to change the geometry of the court defensively. He has great instincts and recovery ability on that end. He’s doubling everybody else in the French League in blocks per game. But moreover, he is also a legitimate shot creator at center who can score off the bounce with creativity and knock down shots with ease off pull-ups or drives to the rim. He’s a terrific finisher inside due to his length and touch and is already starting to experiment with shots that could make him special such as some of the turnaround pull-ups, the fake-spin shimmies and even the weirdo floater 3s. He is a historic prospect, one well within the tapestry of past elite center prospects such as Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Ralph Sampson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan and Anthony Davis.

The Fit: Wembanyama fits every single team. He’s the player you build around. He is the fit. San Antonio has found some strong players in the latter half of the lottery and in the back portion of the first round, but the Spurs don’t have a star yet. Wembanyama slides everyone down a peg into roles that are more suitable. Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson can be young, high-level wings who don’t get the top defensive assignments. Wembanyama will be a tremendous fit next to Jeremy Sochan in the frontcourt, with Sochan as an all-around gap-filler who was productive as a teenage rookie. He’ll be able to be brought along slowly as a scorer as he continues to rework his shot. The Spurs got to transition beautifully from the David Robinson era into the Tim Duncan era and now slide perfectly into the Victor Wembanyama era.

The Range: No. 1.

2. Charlotte Hornets

Scoot Henderson | 6-2 lead guard | 19 years old | G League Ignite

The Scout: Henderson is an explosive playmaker who has been seen as the likely No. 2 overall pick behind Wembanyama all season. In many other drafts, Henderson would be the clear No. 1 pick. He’s going to be an exceptionally hard problem to solve for defenses from the first day he hits the NBA because of how well-rounded he is in ball-screen actions. He can pull-up and hit floaters, he can get all the way to the rim and finish with authority or touch, he can play slow or fast, and he can make high-level passing reads. On top of that, he’s going to force the action in transition and drive easy points that way, as well as be the guy from day one who sets the tone for your organization as the top dog on the team due to his competitiveness and drive. This is truly an elite, franchise-altering prospect. No. 2 is no consolation prize in this year’s class.

The Fit: I love the idea of putting Henderson in the backcourt with LaMelo Ball. It would create one of the most exciting, up-tempo attacks in the NBA with how good both players are at pushing pace. But more importantly, they complement each other well. Both have the ability to blend scoring and playmaking together, but Henderson tends to think more about the scoring side of the things, and Ball thrives as a creative decision-maker who can make high-level passing reads from any angle. Henderson’s elite midrange game would complement Ball’s 3s and layups approach. And I would bet Henderson’s overall competitiveness and attitude will really vibe with the intensity coach Steve Clifford brings. Don’t rule out Miller here, though. The team does have a significant need on the wing long term. This will be the swing point of the top five.

The Range: No. 2 to No. 4.

Read the rest of Vecenie's post-lottery NBA Mock Draft here, featuring all 60 picks.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Jacob Kupferman, Wesley Hitt, Auerelien Meunier / Getty Images)

Gregg Popovich gets his third generational big man in his time in San Antonio, joining David Robinson and Tim Duncan. Wembamyama augments a young Spurs core that has Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson, Jeremy Sochan and others to maybe keep the 74-year-old Pop on the bench for a few more years. Pop is no stranger to highly touted international players, as Wembamyama joins fellow Frenchman Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, Patty Mills and many others as the latest foreigner to suit up in the black and silver.

Photo: Chris Coduto / Getty Images

In the five years since the NBA Draft Lottery odds were flattened, the team with the worst record has not come away with the No. 1 pick.

2019: Knicks fall to No. 3, select RJ Barrett

2020: Warriors fall to No. 2, select James Wiseman

2021: Rockets fall to No. 2, select Jalen Green

2022: Rockets fall to No. 3, select Jabari Smith Jr.

2023: Pistons fall to No. 5, select … ?

These five teams all had a 14 percent chance of finishing with the first pick. Prior to 2019, the team with the worst record had a 25 percent chance.