Lottery Notes: Player Movement, The Wheel, Value

The recently announced lottery changes will have an impact on tanking but it may be a minor one, Zach Lowe of ESPN writes. To fully rid the league of intentional losing, far more aggressive steps would need to be taken.

Essentially, Lowe writes, increasing the freedom of movement that players have could be fair but doing so could come in several drastic forms from cutting the length of rookie contracts to trashing the max salary. Those, of course, could come with their own set of negative consequences and may not necessarily be worth it.

The current reform, said to be an incremental step, will dissuade terrible teams from shamelessly losing games late in the season but it may hurt small market teams if it impedes them drafting stars. Without access to drafting those stars, the smaller market franchises would have an even tougher time trying to lure free agents.

There’s more regarding the lottery reform:

• The NBA’s new lottery rules don’t do enough to deter tanking, Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman writes. The scribe suggests that teams will still lose games on purposes, regardless of the new flattened odds, because getting a pick “anywhere near the top” is sufficient. He advocates for The Wheel as an alternative.
• The new lottery changes will do nothing to stop tanking, a Cleveland.com report suggests. Teams will still compete to be one of the three-worst clubs since they now have an equal shot at landing the top pick.
• Using a combination of probabilities and the estimated value each pick in 2019 lottery might have in addition to their salary, Kevin Pelton of ESPN makes a case for small market teams actually benefiting from the lottery reform. Pelton says that an under-discussed component of picking high in the draft is the salary that rookies are owed under the new CBA.