Last Tuesday, word broke that the NBA had let its general managers know that a new draft lottery reform concept dubbed the "3-2-1 lottery" is the new clubhouse leader to be implemented in time for the 2027 draft. The highlights of the proposal are as follows:
- The lottery would expand from 14 to 16 teams, and all 16 picks would be drawn via the lottery.
- The bottom three teams by record would receive two lottery balls apiece (5.4% odds at the No. 1 overall pick) and could fall as low as 12th overall.
- The other seven non-playoff and non-play-in teams (fourth-worst through 10th-worst) would receive three lottery balls apiece (8.1% odds at the No. 1 pick).
- The teams who finish the regular season ranked ninth and 10th in each conference would receive two lottery balls apiece.
- The losers of the No. 7 vs. 8 play-in games would receive one lottery ball apiece (2.7% odds at the No. 1 pick).
- Teams would be prohibited from protecting traded picks in the 12-15 range.
- Teams would be prohibited from winning the No. 1 pick in back-to-back years and from winning top-five picks in three consecutive years.
- The plan would have a sunset provision, giving the NBA and its teams a chance to scrap it or reform it in 2029.
- The league would have increased latitude to impose penalties on teams believed to be tanking, including reducing that team's lottery odds or modifying its draft position.
Critics of the proposal - and there are many of them - have questioned whether the plan would actually fix tanking or whether it would just move it to a different part of the standings by providing incentives for borderline playoff teams to tank out of the play-in or into a lower play-in seed.
There was also a significant outcry about the fact that the proposal has the potential to hurt genuinely bad teams, who run the risk of repeatedly finishing in the bottom three of the league and not even getting a top-10 pick after a 17-win season, giving them few avenues to actually improve.
While I'm sympathetic to those concerns, I actually think there's a lot to like in the proposal, which could still be tweaked and must be approved by the NBA's Board of Governors before it's officially implemented. For one, I view it as a good thing that it no longer provides team a safe "floor."
Long-term effect:
1) It’ll be a lot harder to build/re-build a team through the draft. It’ll be almost impossible to load up on multiple years’ worth of high-draft picks.
2) Wealth, which allows spending over the apron, is relatively more important than drafting in long-term personnel planning.
Winners: Steve Ballmer (LAC), Joe Lacob (GSW), Mark Walter (LAL), James Dolan (NYK), Joe Tsai (BKN), and any other owners able to spend over the aprons for extended periods. (What a coincidence.)
Losers: Small market teams that rely on losing to acquire talent. What Utah, Sacramento, Memphis, and Washington did this year won’t make much sense in the future.