Bottom 6 as of this morning are Lakers, Suns, Bulls, Hawks, Kings, Mavs. I expect those to be the bottom 6 come the end of the year as well. The Pacers and Nets both seem to have enough to keep them milling over and the other teams around them are all playoff chasers.
It's all going to come down to lottery balls, can the Lakers pick jump up to the top 3 or can it stay within the top 5. At least the new lottery rules give us an extra advantage of being 2 or 3 if the Lakers finish 5/6th
The new lottery rules will come into effect in 2019. Here are the odds for each team in the 2018
draft
The chances of the pick landing 2-5 are as follows
If the Lakers have the worst record : 75%
2nd worst record : 80.1%
3rd worst record :80.4%
4th : 70.9%
5th : 46.5%
6th : 15.2%
7th : 10.7%
8th : 7.2%
9th : 4.4%
10th : 2.9%
11th : 2.1%
12th : 1.8%
13th : 1.6%
14th : 1.3%
To put it another way, chances are that bottom 6 isn't good enough. It seems like we need at least bottom 5 (ideally bottom 4).