Kings’ draft position revealed in NBA lottery. When will Sacramento pick?
The Sacramento Kings hoped the basketball gods would reward them for playing to win while other teams were blatantly tanking for a top draft pick, but they had no such luck in Sunday’s NBA draft lottery.
The Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls secured the top four picks in the draft while the Kings came away from the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago with the No. 7 pick.
Utah moved up two spots from its pre-lottery position, Memphis moved up three spots and Chicago jumped five spots to secure highly coveted picks at the top of the draft board. Sacramento, which was represented on stage by general manager Scott Perry, fell two spots to land outside the top five.
The Kings had the worst record in the NBA with four weeks remaining in the regular season, but they wound up tying the Jazz for the fourth-worst record after winning eight of their last 18 games to finish 22-60. Utah won the tiebreaker to secure the fourth-best odds in the lottery, leaving Sacramento with the fifth-best odds.
In the end, it was Utah, which was fined $500,000 in February for violating the NBA’s player participation policy, that moved up from the No. 4 spot while Sacramento slid to seventh.
The Kings had a 45.2% chance of landing one of the top four picks, but they were more likely to fall to sixth, seventh or eighth based on the individual pick odds.
The Kings had an 11.5% chance of securing the No. 1 pick, an 11.4% chance at the No. 2 pick, an 11.2% chance at the No. 3 pick and an 11% chance at the No. 4 pick. Sacramento had a 2% chance at the No. 5 pick, an 18.2% chance at the No. 6 pick, a 25.5% chance at the No. 7 pick, an 8.5% chance at the No. 8 pick and a 0.6% chance at the No. 9 pick.
Many experts are hailing this year’s draft class as the best since LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade entered the league in 2003. A number of prospects are being touted as potential franchise players, including BYU small forward AJ Dybantsa, Kansas combo guard Darryn Peterson, Duke power forward Cameron Boozer and North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson.
Sacramento will have little hope of landing any of those players when the draft is held June 23-24 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, but there are players the Kings like in the second tier of prospects. That group includes Arkansas point guard Darius Acuff Jr., Houston point guard Kingston Flemings, Illinois combo guard Keaton Wagler, Tennessee small forward Nate Ament, Arizona combo guard Brayden Burries and Louisville point guard Mikel Brown Jr.
This story was originally published May 10, 2026 at 12:51 PM.
