CHICAGO — Despite the fact that the team wasn’t playing in the playoffs, the Bulls did have something on the line on Monday.

That’s when the NBA broke ties in the standings between the teams that didn’t make the postseason – and the Bulls got a little help in their quest to try and keep their first-round pick.

After each team finished with a 40-42 record, the Bulls won their tiebreaker against the Thunder for the 11th spot in the draft order. It’s the second time in the last three years the Bulls have done so, having won the tiebreaker with both the Kings and the Pelicans for the eighth overall pick in 2021.

Yet the team is faced with the same problem as they had that year, which is having to hope for some lottery luck in order to be able to use their first round pick.

The Bulls traded both their 2021 and 2023 first round picks to the Magic in the Nikola Vucevic trade in March 2021, getting it back only if they make it into the Top 4 of the lottery.

Thanks to the tiebreaker win, the Bulls’ odds to get that went slightly up, as they now have an 8.5 percent chance to get in the Top 4 with a 1.8% chance to get the No. 1 overall selection.

Had they lost the tiebreaker, those odds would have dropped slightly to 8 percent for a Top 4 pick and 1.7 percent shot to the No. 1 selection.

On May 16, the NBA Draft Lottery will be televised on ESPN starting at 7 p.m. central time with the NBA Draft taking place on June 22 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.