Oklahoma City's Probability to Draft an All-Star with the No. 6 Pick

With the No. 6 pick in the upcoming 2021 NBA Draft, Oklahoma City has decent odds at landing a future star.

Despite the NBA Draft Lottery being over, Oklahoma City can’t quite stop fretting about percentages just yet.

The Thunder own the sixth pick in the draft. From a numbers standpoints, not awful, but not the greatest.

The modern NBA is run by stars.

The Suns and the Bucks, the two teams in this year’s NBA Finals, both acquired star power in the offseason to propel themselves into the NBA’s elite.

For the most part, the probability of drafting a star is linear.

But an article written by Burak Can Koc on Medium showed that that’s not always the case.

The Thunder own the No. 6 pick. With data ranging from the 1989 draft, when it moved to the two round format, til 2019, Oklahoma City has a 20 percent chance at drafting an All-Star in that slot.

Not great.

For reference, 63 percent of No. 1 picks ends up with an All-Star bid. There’s a 40 percent chance for the second, a 57 percent chance for the third, a 33 percent chance for the fourth and 30 percent chance for the sixth.

After the top five, the only higher chance to land an All-Star past sixth is the 9th and 10th picks, which have a 33 percent chance and 27 percent chance, respectively.

Of course, not every draft is the same, this year having a clearly cut five to six prospects that have separated themselves, but with that much data, the results can be fairly accurate.

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Oklahoma City also has the 16th and 18th picks, as well as a slew of second round selections which can be used to improve their odds wherever Sam Presti sees fit.

The NBA Draft takes place on Thursday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m.