And-Ones: Lottery Reform, Awards, 65-Game Rule, Extensions

The three lottery reform ideas that the NBA presented at last week’s Board of Governors meetings should be viewed as “concepts” rather than fully formed proposals, according to Marc Stein and Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Substack link).

The expectation, Stein and Fischer say, is that each concept will undergo some changes between now and the May meetings in which team governors will vote on anti-tanking measures — the end product may even end up being a combination of two or more of those ideas.

Interestingly, the idea of flattening the lottery odds, which is an aspect of two of those three concepts, has received plenty of support from general managers and ownership groups even before last week’s Board of Governors meeting, per Stein and Fischer, so it sounds as if flattened odds will be incorporated into the eventual solution.

For what it’s worth, in evaluating the three concepts reported last week, Zach Harper of The Athletic expressed strong support for the idea that would expand the lottery to 18 teams and then give each of the bottom 10 clubs an 8% chance at the No. 1 overall pick.

We have more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

• With award season around the corner, The Athletic is taking a closer look at several of the races for end-of-season hardware. Christian Clark and Mike Vorkunov debate Cooper Flagg vs. Kon Knueppel for Rookie of the Year; Joel Lorenzi, Jared Weiss, and Dan Woike consider how Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Luka Doncic, and Nikola Jokic stack up in the MVP race (all three had SGA first); and Fred Katz outlines the decisions that are causing him the most stress, including his Sixth Man of the Year pick, the No. 5 spot on his MVP ballot, and his All-NBA third team.
• ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps solicited feedback from league insiders about several hot-button NBA topics, including the 65-game rule and expansion. Notably, Adam Silver‘s belief that the 65-game rule has been effective at curbing load management is shared by a number of executives across the NBA, Bontemps writes.“I think the 65-game rule has obviously had unintended consequences and needs to be looked at,” one Eastern Conference executive said. “But can we stop acting like it wasn’t collectively bargained for? It works to dissuade otherwise healthy rest.”
• Keith Smith of Spotrac explores which players still eligible for veteran contract extensions are the best candidates to sign new deals before June 30, while Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report looks ahead to this year’s rookie scale extension candidates and makes predictions about how those negotiations will play out.