The NBA Competition Committee is considering a change to the current lottery system, as we passed along on Thursday, and the proposed terms of the new system include:
- Teams would be able to drop four spots in the lottery. Currently teams can drop no more than three spots.
- The three worst teams would have equal probabilities of landing the first pick.
- The odds for those three worst teams would be flattened, closing the gap between their odds of landing the top pick and the subsequent teams’ odds of landing the top pick.
The reform would help to discourage tanking, something that commissioner Adam Silver would like to accomplish. The committee may vote on the proposal prior to the upcoming season and if it gains support, there could be a new system in place as soon as the 2018 draft, though it’s more likely that any changes are phased in over time.
That leads us to tonight’s topic: Should the NBA make these changes to the lottery or does the current system work for the league? Are there other alternatives to the latest proposal that would be better for the NBA?
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. We look forward to what you have to say!
It’s rigged anyways
Lottery reform would be great because it would help get teams that are in the middle of the pack and aren’t good enough to contend or bad enough to finish bottom 5. This’ll help teams like Charlotte, Milwaukee, Portland, Detroit, and others get off that treadmill of mediocrity.
The odds will still be that the lottery won’t help these teams. Those odds just won’t be quite as bad for them.
All this will do is change the area of tanking. Instead of tanking at the very bottom you will see it happen in the mid-table.
Right now seeding 7-8 into the playoffs is a worthless position, there’s no incentive to do so, those teams will look to tank now instead of the few worst in the league and improve their chances at a nice pick.
The rookies should be allowed player options for year 3 or even year 2 if they want to fix it. This will make teams shape up if they want their draft picks to mean anything. 76ers for example just get to stack talented young players and hold onto them. Its not fair for the players coming in.
Almost everyone would opt out when they can get 20 mil from some team. Keep the 2yr team options
I don’t even think this will change the tanking at the very bottom. You’d still be better off with the worst record (or at least the worst 3) than the other bad records. It will just add to that tanking higher up the lottery.
But this is a PR move. The NBA wants to say they are attacking tanking.
“Teams would be able to drop 4 spots in the lottery”. What does that mean? When do teams drop lottery spots?
right now if you have the worst record you are guaranteed no worse that the 4th pick. they can only have 1 2 3 or 4, thus can drop down only 3 spots. if they could drop 4 spots like the suggestion they could get no worse than the 5th pick
Ah thanks.
they should give all non playoff teams the same odds for a top 3 pick. takes away the incentive to try to be uncompetitive
That will screw the parity in the league
There’s parity?
I’m in favor of this one. The worst team gets the #4 pick at the very least and teams aren’t encouraged to be godawful because your odds in dead last and just missing the playoffs are exactly the same.
My only concern would be if fringe playoff teams started to tank late season because they wanted the lottery chance instead of being blown out by GS or Cleveland or Boston in round one of the playoffs.
But this violates the goals that the league has set. Adam Silverman, “I think we all recognize we need to find the right balance between creating the appropriate incentives on one hand for teams to, of course, win, and on the other hand allowing for appropriate rebuilding and the draft to work as it should in which the worst performing teams get the highest picks in the draft.”
The goal is to promote appropriate rebuilding by giving the worst performing teams the best picks in the draft. Flattening the lottery by giving equal chance to better performing teams will not do this.
The problem for me is that we’re back into a superteam era where if you’re not one of the top 5 teams in the league, you don’t have a chance anyway.
Do whatever you want with the lottery… it’s the other end of the spectrum that’s the problem.
The current system isn’t working like it could but these changes are just nibbling around the edges. The point of these changes is to change behavior, I don’t see that happening.
I’d rather see something like not allowing teams to move up via the lottery two consecutive years. Or even better, a lottery winner one year can’t get any better than 8th the second year and so on.
I’d like to see the NBA change the definition of ‘worst performing’ teams from ‘worst record in the most recent season’ to ‘missed the playoffs the most’. When we think of terrible teams, that’s what we think of and not worst record. This would change the tanking dynamic away from trying to have the worst record because you’ll basically know your lottery position before the season starts.