The 2022 NBA Draft lottery is Tuesday night (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) and carries higher stakes than usual considering how loaded the top few tiers of this class is ... and how substantially it drops off beyond the top-seven. The Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons each hold a 14% chance of nabbing the top pick. They'd each exhale if they got some shot at picks Nos. 1-3 as this is a terrific elite tier of Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero and Jabari Smith, who have jostled the last few months for the top spot. Their work isn't over yet but they'll finally get a good idea Tuesday night of where their NBA careers will begin. In my latest installment of the 2022 NBA Draft Big Board I'm going in-depth on the top 14 players — i.e., the lottery-bound players — and then finishing out the full top 30. Note that many players in the latter half of the 20s such as Christian Braun and Patrick Baldwin are still deciding whether to stay in the draft and have until June 1 to make a final decision. They'll look to get a better eval this week at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago.
Denver Stiffs
