The NBA is pursuing a reform to the draft lottery that would make tanking more difficult; the proposed changed would give teams with worse records lower odds of landing top draft picks. From ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski:
The National Basketball Association is aggressively pursuing draft lottery reform that could be voted into legislation before the start of the 2017-’18 season, league sources told ESPN.
Commissioner Adam Silver is a strong advocate to de-incentivize tanking by implementing lower odds on the NBA’s worst teams to gain the top picks in the draft, league sources said.
The proposed measures would also increase the chances of better teams making a jump up into the draft lottery. The NBA’s 14 non-playoff team compromise the league’s annual draft lottery system.
If passed, the lottery reform would be phased into use over time, and there’s no indication that the 2018 NBA Draft would fall under new legislation, league sources said.
The NBA’s Competition Committee, comprised of several general managers and coaches, is expected to vote at a meeting next week on sending a formal recommendation to the Board of Governors for final passage, league sources said.
The Competition Committee is given significant latitude to challenge and amend the league office’s proposals, and thus, could recommend none, part, or all of a proposal for the league owners to vote upon at its late September Board of Governors meeting in New York.
Wojnarowski expounded on the changed rules:
The NBA’s proposal would flatten those odds, and give the three teams with the worst record the same percentage of earning the No. 1 overall pick, league sources said. Now, the worst record to the fifth worst record has a gap of 25 percent to 8.8 percent, but new legislation would tighten that difference significantly, league sources said.
For example, the fifth worst team would only have a few percentage point less than those teams with newly equal odds in the among the three worst teams, league sources said.
There’s another proposed idea that “could gather support,” writes Wojnarowski:
No team can pick in the top three of the draft in consecutive years. For example, if Minnesota wins the No. 1 pick and drafts Karl-Anthony Towns, it can pick no higher than No. 4 in the next lottery. For now, that idea is outside of the league office’s proposal but is expected to be considered in the upcoming committee meeting, sources said.
The intention of this reform is, as Wojnarowski wrote, to deter teams from tanking; if teams with worse records have lower odds at landing top draft picks, fewer teams will intentionally lose games. This would, in theory, lead to a consistently higher-quality product, and draw in more fans.
Some small market teams are against this proposal:
Many NBA executives believe those new measures will effectively impact the perception of the tanking issue, what with the incentivizing of teams to play healthy starters down the stretch of the season. Many teams believe that tanking is no longer an issue in the league, and that the fear of other teams mimicking the Philadelphia 76ers process has been unwarranted.
There is some fear among small market teams that lottery reform will make it even harder for them to obtain star level players through the draft, especially because of a pervading belief that it has become increasingly hard to do so through free agency and trades. Teams believe that the process of trading for star players has become more difficult, with agents and players warning that they’ll leave come free agency and will never consider re-signing with those teams.
