The lottery selection to determine the order of the top four picks in the 2022 draft took place on December 19, 2021 and was televised on ESPN in the United States and on TSN2 in Canada.

[2] The four non-playoff teams in 2021 qualified for the lottery drawing: Atlanta Dream, Indiana Fever, Washington Mystics, and the Los Angeles Sparks.

The two teams whose numerical combinations do not come up in the lottery will select in the inverse order of their two-year cumulative record.

Under the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the WNBA and its players' union, draft eligibility for players not defined as "international" requires the following to be true:[5] A player who is scheduled to receive her bachelor's degree within 3 months of the draft date, and is younger than the cutoff age, is only eligible if the calendar year of the draft is no earlier than the fourth after her high school graduation.

Players with remaining college eligibility who meet the cutoff age must notify the WNBA headquarters of their intent to enter the draft no later than 10 days before the draft date, and must renounce any remaining college eligibility to do so.