NBA Draft Lottery to Determine Trade Order Tuesday

The 2011 NBA Draft Lottery is about to play out in primetime Tuesday. The eyes of the basketball world will be on ESPN, and by the end of the night everyone will know who has the No. 1 selection in the upcoming draft.

According to NBA.com, the team with the best chance at nabbing the top pick will be the Minnesota Timberwolves. Minnesota has a 25 percent shot at the top selection, or 250 out of the 1,000 ping pong balls that will go into the lottery. They are followed by the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 19.9 percent chance and the Toronto Raptors with a 15.6 percent chance.

In the lottery, the team with the worst record from the previous season is given the best chance at getting the No. 1 selection in the following draft. All 14 teams that don't make it into the playoffs are given chances according to their records, meaning that they all have at least a small chance of jumping up the draft board. It means that a team like the Houston Rockets, which finished 43-39 this past season, still has a small chance to draft first overall.

Both the Utah Jazz and the Cavaliers have two picks in the top 14, with the Jazz acquiring its second selection from the New Jersey Nets and Cleveland trading for the pick of the Los Angeles Clippers. It gives both teams a bigger shot at taking one of the top picks, and that could prove very valuable.

After the top three picks are selected at random, the rest of the teams are placed in order of their finish from the past season. It is a way to add extra excitement to the draft every year, but also to help avoid a team simply losing on purpose to draft first. For all of the teams that failed to make the playoffs, this has been the most important day of the postseason for a while.

The official lottery will play out Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. PT / 8:30 p.m. ET and will be aired live on ESPN. The broadcast will reveal the selections in reverse order, announcing which team has the No. 14 pick and so on until the full order of the draft is known. With some really good prospects in the upcoming class, it could be very important for a franchise to move up in the order.