The NBA has sent the latest version of its “3-2-1” draft lottery reform plan to team owners ahead of their Board of Governors meeting next week, reports Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo Sports. The governors are expected to vote on May 28 on whether or not to approve the proposal.
As O’Connor writes, the NBA’s proposal hasn’t undergone any real changes since the details were first reported last month. It still features 16 teams, 37 total lottery balls, flattened odds, a “relegation zone” for the league’s bottom three teams, protection restrictions in the 12-15 range, and each of the top 16 picks being determined by a lottery drawing.
However, according to O’Connor, the league has since provided additional information how a pair of rules affecting repeat lottery teams would work. One of those rules prohibits teams from winning the No. 1 overall pick in back-to-back drafts, while another prevents clubs clubs from landing top-five picks in three consecutive years.
The NBA has since offered the following clarifications related to those rules, per O’Connor:
- Those restrictions will apply in 2027 based on the 2025 and 2026 lottery results, which means the Wizards would be prohibited from landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2027 lottery after winning it this year.
- In the event that the lottery ball of a prohibited team is drawn, they would be moved down to the first permissible draft slot. For instance, if the Wizards’ ball comes up at No. 1 in next year’s lottery, they’d be moved to No. 2 instead.
- These restrictions apply to the team that originally owned the draft pick.
While the first two clarifications seem reasonable enough, the third may result in some push-back.
Using the Jazz as an example, O’Connor explains that because they had the No. 5 overall pick in 2025 and have No. 2 in 2026, Utah’s pick wouldn’t be permitted to land in the top five in 2027 even though it’s controlled by the Grizzlies, who will receive the most favorable of Utah’s, Minnesota’s, and Cleveland’s first-rounders next year.
If it had been the Grizzlies and not the Jazz who had landed in the top five in each of the past two drafts, Memphis could still have a shot at a top-five pick in 2027 via Utah’s selection, since it wouldn’t be subject to the same three-year restriction — in that hypothetical scenario, only the Grizzlies’ own pick would be prohibited from being in the top five, whether or not Memphis still controlled it.
As O’Connor notes, this rule could materially change the value of several future traded picks between 2027-29. When the Grizzlies acquired that “most favorable” 2027 first-rounder from the Jazz in the Jaren Jackson Jr. trade in February, they presumably viewed Utah as the likeliest of the three teams to end up in the lottery and believed that pick could move as high as first overall. If Minnesota and Cleveland make the playoffs next season and Utah doesn’t, it would – from Memphis’ perspective, at least – essentially add top-five protection to that traded first-round pick.
We should get a better sense in the coming days about how teams feel about that rule and about the proposal in general. While the NBA is determined to institute a new anti-tanking policy that begins next season, the “3-2-1” plan could still undergo changes before it receives approval from the Board of Governors.