Phoenix Suns will finish season with worst record in NBA, have best odds to land No. 1 draft pick

The Phoenix Suns still have one more game on tap for the regular season, but the franchise will finish with the worst record in the NBA after the Suns fell to the Warriors 117-100 on Sunday.

Phoenix has the worst record in the NBA by 2.5 games since the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Pistons. 

This entails that the Suns will have the highest chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick of the NBA Draft during the lottery process with a current 20-61 record.

If the Suns receive the No. 1 pick of the NBA Draft, it's highly possible that Arizona's superstar big man Deandre Ayton will begin his professional career just up Interstate-10 in Phoenix, a city he's familiar with considering he played high school ball at Hillcrest Prep after moving from Nassau, Bahamas.

How does the draft lottery work? The 14 teams that didn't make the playoffs are entered in the lottery to determine the draft order with a different number of ping-pong balls. The ping-pong balls are placed into a machine, and the team with the worst record receives the most combinations of balls to land the No. 1 overall pick while the team with the 14th-worst record has the least amount of combinations.

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Behind closed doors, the 14 ping-pong balls are mixed in a lottery machine, with 1,001 possible combinations, and after the top three picks are randomly selected, picks No. 4 through 14 will be in order from worst-to-best record.    

The Suns right now have a 25 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick, a 21.5 percent chance at the No. 2 pick and a 17.7 percent chance at the No. 3 pick. The Grizzlies have a 19.9 percent chance at the No. 1 pick with Dallas (13.9) and Atlanta (13.8) right behind according to Tankathon.

Ayton is projected to be the No. 1 pick by Sports Illustrated and ESPN among others. Ayton went on CBS Sports Radio at the end of March and alluded that he wouldn't mind playing in Phoenix, particularly with rising star Devin Booker.

"Honestly, I could see myself in Phoenix. I could see a little Shaq and Kobe 2.0," Ayton said.

The NBA Draft order will be revealed on May 15 in Chicago followed by the combine, which runs from May 16-20. The NBA Draft will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on June 21.