The 2026 NBA Draft Lottery is only two days away, and FanSided has squeezed in one final mock draft before it hits. Unfortunately, it projects the Sacramento Kings sliding down to the ninth pick. On the upside, the odds appear to indicate a much better outcome for the Kings.
Only the Kings could find a way to get worse when they aren't even playing anymore. They've been on vacation since their season ended almost a month ago. And their spate of late season wins pushed them out of the top three lottery spots down to fifth. Honestly, that's still pretty good.
According to FanSided's most recent mock draft, the Kings have an 11.5% chance of getting the number one overall pick as well as a 45.2% chance of getting a top four pick. Those odds might not seem great, but they are better than nine other teams in the draft lottery this year.
Despite that, FanSided is still projecting that the Kings will end up with the ninth pick, which Sacramento only has a 0.6% chance of falling to. They are statistically more likely to end up with the number one pick than the ninth pick, with seventh remaining their most probable landing spot.
Mock drafts are interesting, but not definitive
Keeping all of that in mind, the NHL Draft Lottery literally just proved the odds don't define what happens in the lottery. Like the Kings, the Toronto Maple Leafs were fifth in the lottery and ended up with the number one overall pick in the draft. That did not make Canuck fans happy at all.
The same was true of the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery. Dallas only had a 1.8% chance of getting the number one pick, yet that's exactly what happened and they used it to select eventual Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg. The same kind of thing could happen to the Kings this year.
If you go to Tankathon and run the same mock draft, you get a myriad of results. After running it several times, the Kings got as low as the eighth pick and as high as first. It's also worth noting that the first and second picks popped up with a surprising amount of frequency.
It's not surprising that ninth rarely appeared considering how low the odds are of Sacramento ending up there. Yet, if any team was going to beat 0.6% chance of getting the ninth pick in the draft, it would be the Kings. The basketball gods rarely seem to be on their side.
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