The Sixers have the best lottery luck in NBA history. They’re hoping it doesn’t run out.

The 76ers are considered the luckiest team in the history of the NBA draft lottery.

Their draft position has improved eight times — moving up at least three spots on five occasions — during 18 lottery appearances since 1986.

As a result, the Sixers have gained 24 draft slots thanks to the lottery. No other franchise has more than 20.

They haven’t always put that luck to the best use, however. Several of those jumps led to the selection of outright busts or ill-advised trades.

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The bottom line is that the lottery gods have provided plenty of chances to pick elite talent. The Sixers just haven’t made good on many of those opportunities.

We’ll see what happens in Monday night’s draft lottery in Chicago. But based on past lotteries, the Sixers should feel good about the prospects of keeping their first-round pick.

They have a 63.9% chance of keeping their top-six protected pick after finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record of 24-58. The draft pick will go to the Oklahoma City Thunder if it lands outside the top six.

The Sixers have a 42.1% chance of moving into the top four, and a 10.5% chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick. However, they also have a 26.7% chance of falling to seventh and losing it.

“Well, listen, I think that it’s going to be almost a coin toss, right?” coach Nick Nurse said last month of keeping the pick. “I mean, obviously, that part of it is out of our control once it gets to the lottery, right? Then we’re going to deal with it how we deal with it.”

The Sixers were last awarded a lottery pick, which was 10th overall, on May 15, 2018. That pick came from the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Outside of finishing first overall, 10th was the best-case scenario. The Sixers would have given the selection to the Boston Celtics if it had fallen in the second or third slot as part of a June 16, 2017, trade with the Celtics for the right to move up to draft Markelle Fultz at No. 1.

They realized the pick would not fall in the fourth through ninth slot because the 10th spot they held entering the lottery could only get them into the top three.

“We feel like at No. 10, there’s going to be an opportunity to grab a player that will add to our young core,” said Bryan Colangelo, who was the Sixers’ president of basketball operations and general manager at the time. ”It’s a developing core. We are getting young guys in the system, and we’re continuing to take strides forward.

“As we’ve said in the past, when you start adding these pieces, the higher you select, obviously, the better. But No. 10 has some pretty good history.”

However, Colangelo resigned on June 7, 2018, ending a stunning nine-day saga that began when a website report tied him to damaging and anonymous Twitter accounts. With Brett Brown serving as coach and interim general manager, the Sixers drafted Mikal Bridges 10th before trading him to the Phoenix Suns for Zhaire Smith.

That ended the Sixers’ six-year run with a lottery pick.

They last won the draft lottery on May 17, 2016. That came after finishing the 2015-16 season with the league’s worst record of 10-72. In the process, the Sixers became the second last-place team to win the lottery in as many years.

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It also marked the first time they won it since 1996 and the third time overall. In 1996, the Sixers selected Hall of Famer Allen Iverson. They traded the first overall pick in 1986 to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who selected Brad Daugherty. The Sixers used the 2016 pick to select Ben Simmons.

They finished second in the lottery in 1993 (drafting Shawn Bradley), 1997 (Keith Van Horn) and 2010 (Evan Turner). Van Horn was traded to the New Jersey Nets for a package that included Jim Jackson, Eric Montross, Anthony Parker, and Tim Thomas.

The Sixers finished third in the lottery in 2014 (Joel Embiid) and 2015 (Jahlil Okafor). They finished fifth in 2017, two spots behind the Sacramento Kings. But the team received the rights to swap picks with the Kings in a 2015 trade that former general manager Sam Hinkie engineered.

“Thank you, Sam Hinkie,” Sixers managing owner Josh Harris said at the time. “He set us up well. I’m going to text him tonight and give him a big kiss over text. It’s all good.”

The team moved up to select Fultz, while Sacramento drafted De’Aaron Fox. The trade with the Celtics, who drafted Jayson Tatum, will go down as one of the worst deals in franchise history.

The Sixers will focus on making better decisions with whatever pick they receive on Monday — if they’re fortunate enough to keep it.

For now, they will just hope their luck in the lottery doesn’t run out.