The NBA allows teams who had worse records (which means that they won fewer games) the previous season get to pick before better teams. This lets bad teams draft good players and become better. The first fourteen teams to pick are the fourteen teams that did not make the playoffs the previous season. (There are thirty teams in the NBA, and sixteen teams qualify for the playoffs every year, so fourteen teams do not.) The teams that do make the playoffs and who get picks 15 through 30 in the first round pick in reverse order of how good their records were (so the best team gets the 30th pick, the second best team gets the 29th pick, and so on). However, the first fourteen picks are given out differently so that teams will not lose games on purpose to get higher picks. These picks are given to teams in a process called the "draft lottery".