They can't get #4.
The lottery only determines the positions of the first three picks.
Washington's odds of landing a top 3 pick are a meager 12.4%. If the teams in front us all win the top 3 picks, the Wizards will stay at #8. If a team behind us wins a lottery pick, that pushes us back, meaning we could theoretically make our selection as late as pick #11. However, there's a 70% chance that we'll stay at #8.
My guess is that Orlando wins the #1 pick. The odds are in their favor - and so is history. When a team forfeits its franchise player for the "greater good" of the NBA by sending them to a bigger market in a comically lopsided transaction, they always seem to find compensation in the draft. Cleveland had the second best chance of getting the #1 pick two years ago after LeBron's sign & trade to Miami. The lowest they could pick was fifth. That pick would select
fourth, but the pick that wound up becoming #1 (and Kyrie Irving) came from the Clippers via the Baron Davis trade - which only had a 2.8% chance of winning the lottery. That's lucky. The NBA-run Hornets traded away a pouting Chris Paul last year and finished with the fourth-worst record in the league. They only had a 13.7% chance of winning the lottery, but the ping pong balls fell their way, too.
History and the odds are stacked pretty firmly against us. I'd love to wind up with the third pick again this year, as it would give us the chance to land the small forward of our choice, but more likely we stay at #8 and draft some stiff from an unusually large pool of mediocre oafs. I can't wait to welcome the new Fabricio Oberto to Washington.