The NBA Draft Lottery on Sunday will assign the first 14 picks of the 2025 draft, a process that determines which franchise gains the contractual rights to select a top prospect in a class CBS Sports analyst Adam Finkelstein has projected for 2026. The lottery's outcome resets the offseason hierarchy for teams that finished with the worst records, including Washington, Utah, and Charlotte. Finkelstein’s mock draft provides a baseline for how executives will value the top tier, but the actual order depends on the random allocation of lottery combinations among the 14 non-playoff teams. That tension—between scouting projections and probabilistic outcomes—will define the week ahead.