The NBA unveiled a trio of proposed massive changes to the current draft lottery system in a meeting with owners this week, according to a report by ESPN’s Shams Charania. League commissioner Adam Silver has been vocally critical of recent tanking trends around the league attempting to disincentivize teams from tanking and it seems he is trying to do more than just criticize the practice publicly. Here’s a breakdown of the three proposals, per Charania’s report:
The first proposal would expand the draft lottery to 18 teams, including all teams that do not finish in a top-six seed in their conference. In other words, all play-in teams would also be in the lottery. The 10 teams that miss the play-in would each receive an 8% chance of moving up in the lottery while the eight play-in teams would have a 20% chance of moving up.
The second reform would expand the lottery to 22 teams, including the 18 from the first proposal and the four playoff teams that are eliminated in the first round. It is unclear how the system would handle scenarios where a play-in team won a first round series, since technically 8 non-play-in teams could be eliminated in the first round.
The 22 teams would enter a lottery for the first four picks, however, the lottery odds would be based on a team’s average win total across the previous two seasons. Furthermore, the league would add a minimum win total floor, to lessen the benefits of extreme tanking.
The final proposal detailed by Charania would include the same 18 teams as the first proposal. However, the teams with the worst five records would all receive the same odds to be selected, with the remaining teams getting descending odds based on record. The lottery would select the first five picks.
Then there would be a second lottery drawing for the remaining 13 teams, creating an extremely randomized order. However, a team with a bottom-five record could not pick below 10th.
The league will now begin the arduous debate process for these proposals, however, all of them clearly have flaws of their own and would create new incentives that could lead to different types of tanking. Outside of abolishing the draft or entirely disconnecting the draft from win-loss record, it’s hard to imagine a system removing the practice from the NBA unless the commissioner’s office began enforcing more stringent anti-tanking rules separately.