We’ve seen dozens of proposals for NBA Draft Lottery reform in recent months as the league has vowed to take steps to avert tanking. Flattened odds. Expansion of the lottery itself. Preventing teams from finishing in the top four in consecutive lotteries. Changing the rules governing pick protections. Changing the period of time lottery odds measure. They’ve all been discussed.Â
And until Thursday, the one concept that hadn’t entered the mainstream was actively punishing the worst teams. Now, even that appears to be on the table.
During a recent call involving general managers and commissioner Adam Silver, one GM proposed a concept that would preclude teams with the three worst records from winning the No. 1 overall pick, according to Yahoo Sports. That concept was considered too extreme, but another GM proposed a slightly softer alternative. Rather than preventing the worst teams from having any chance at winning the top pick, why not simply reduce their odds relative to the slightly better non-playoff teams?Â
Silver, according to the Yahoo report, “responded enthusiastically” to this idea.
On Wednesday, ESPN reported that the lottery reform proposal with the most current momentum is the first of three broad concepts proposed by the NBA in March. This structure would increase the lottery from 14 teams to 18, and it would involve drawing for each of the 18 picks rather than just the top four, as is the case now. The 10 teams that miss the postseason entirely would each receive identical 8% odds at the No. 1 pick, while the remaining eight teams that participate in the Play-In Tournament would presumably have 2.5% odds each.
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A vote is not expected until the May 28 board of governors meeting — after this year’s lottery on May 10 — and the final proposal from the league is expected to be tweaked based on input from teams between now and then.Â
What are the positives and negatives of this proposal?
Though the Yahoo report did not specify exactly how that reduction in odds would work, the basic concept would likely take a percentage point or two from each of the bottom three teams and reallocate them either to the teams between No. 4 and No. 10 or the eight teams that participate in the Play-In teams.
The appeal here is obvious. By punishing the absolute worst teams without creating a weighted odds structure in the middle, you give teams at the absolute bottom an active incentive to win without allowing teams in the middle to benefit by losing. Any team at risk of falling into the bottom three — say, the worst six or seven teams — would likely compete vigorously to avoid that odds reduction. This would likely prevent the worst teams from shutting down their best players at the end of lost seasons. They’d need to do so to avoid reducing their odds in the lottery.
The catch here is just as straightforward. The draft fundamentally exists as a balancing mechanism. The worst teams get the highest picks because the purpose of the draft is to allocate the top incoming talent to the worst teams so they won’t remain the worst teams much longer. By punishing the absolute worst teams, you may be reducing tanking, but you’re also making it harder for organically bad teams — which there would be more of in a world with less tanking — from actually improving.
The downstream effects are possibly significant. Would we see teams in those situations making irresponsible and shortsighted decisions purely to try to improve their lottery odds? Possibly, yes. As much as we’d prefer to see the worst teams use their best players late in the season, rushing them back from genuine injuries would risk aggravations that would cost them even more time on the sideline. An aggressive trade or free-agent signing might boost lottery odds in the short term, but it could deprive teams of assets or financial flexibility they’d need down the line.
Further, while this proposal would reduce tanking at the absolute bottom, it does little to address the fear expressed by general managers, according to Yahoo, of teams tanking out of the playoffs or Play-In Tournament to improve their draft position. For now, possible remedies to these concerns have not been made public.
Why this proposal is significant
Whether or not this concept should be adopted depends on what you consider the lottery’s ultimate purpose. If it exists strictly to reduce tanking, then yes, it likely does more good than harm. But if the draft primarily exists as a talent-balancing mechanism, a system that makes it harder for the worst teams to improve is ultimately detrimental.
Perhaps there’s a middle ground here. The obvious way to implement one would be through a lottery floor. In an 18-team drawing, the worst team in the NBA could theoretically wind up with the 18th pick. This defeats the entire balancing function of the draft. So maybe, in exchange for a reduction in odds for the No. 1 pick, the three worst teams could be granted a floor somewhere in the middle or back of the top 10 that other teams wouldn’t get. You’d therefore prevent teams from tanking to maximize their chance at the No. 1 overall pick, but you’d at least ensure that the absolute worst teams wouldn’t be punished so much that they couldn’t genuinely improve.
That’s one idea. Teams are surely proposing others. There are really only two ways to truly end tanking. Either there needs to be a direct negative consequence for losing or the relationship between losing and improvement needs to be severed entirely. This is the first proposal that has made its way into the public that actually acknowledges that, and that alone makes it worthy of consideration, so long as it’s tweaked to prevent it from becoming too punitive.
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