After the Dallas Mavericks won the top pick, it’s clear the current system creates financial and strategic disadvantages for the NBA’s struggling teams.
At the end of the 2010s, the NBA felt that tanking was completely out of control. To try building a championship franchise, the Philadelphia 76ers employed the process that prioritized losing seasons to finish with the league’s worst record and a 25% chance to win the draft lottery and secure the first overall pick, representing the best chance to acquire a superstar player needed to win an NBA championship.
Led by Executive Vice President of Basketball Strategy & Analytics Evan Wasch, the league changed draft lottery odds prior to the 2019 edition, flattening the odds so that the worst three teams each have a 14% chance at the first pick, with the worst team given a 52.1% chance at a top-four pick but a 47.9% chance at the fifth pick, guaranteed not to drop in the draft order below that. In the six years since this tanking disincentivization plan was implemented, there have been, let’s say, some unintended consequences.
In certain years, like this past season, a strong draft class with multiple potential All-Stars led by Duke’s Cooper Flagg, flattened lottery odds were not enough of a deterrent for teams like the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets that have bad rosters and aren’t free agent destination markets. The only true way for these teams to build consistent winners is through the draft, so they still stepped on the gas in the race to the bottom despite the diminished lottery odds reward because of what it could mean to a team both on and off the court.
“One NBA executive,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter, a football reporter by trade but forever a basketball fanatic, tweeted, “estimated privately in recent weeks that winning the draft lottery would be worth a minimum of $500 million and maybe up to $1 billion for one lucky franchise.”
The result of Monday night’s draft lottery in Chicago? Complete and utter chaos.
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The Dallas Mavericks — which inexplicably traded superstar Luka Dončić in February, lost their play-in game, won a coin flip with the Chicago Bulls to get the 11th-best odds and a 1.8% chance at the top pick — won the lottery and the right to select Flagg. The San Antonio Spurs, which had a 6.3% chance of landing the second pick, did just that. The 76ers, supposed to be a championship contender at the beginning of the season but tanked when things started to go haywire, got the third pick with a 10.6% chance and the fifth-best odds. As a reward for their abysmal seasons, Charlotte, Utah, and Washington received picks four through six, respectively.
Since the odds changed in 2019, the team with the worst record has never won the lottery. Atlanta won the 2024 lottery with 3% odds, pushing 14-68 Detroit to the fifth pick. It’s the third straight season that the team with the worst record was rewarded with the fifth selection.
Washington has made the playoffs just once in the last seven seasons, finally deciding to bottom out and tank the last couple of years. It earned the second pick last year in a bad class that netted a quality starter in center Alex Sarr, but will again be deprived of the chance of selecting a difference-making superstar. Utah hasn’t had a top-five pick in 11 years and doesn’t have a Donovan Mitchell-like superstar to build around anymore, needing lottery luck to climb back up the league ladder.
Next season, the Hornets will try to avoid their 10th straight season in the lottery. Despite their many chances, Charlotte’s never won the lottery and came tantalizingly close to getting superstars over the decades. It’s hard for the Wizards, Jazz, and Hornets to compete now when they can’t draw free agents and can’t acquire the draft picks necessary to rebuild around strong foundations.
Tanking must be really stressful on a organization.
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) May 13, 2025
Perhaps the NBA’s response to these teams’ woes is to stop tanking and come up with innovative ways to acquire talent. Perhaps the NBA is pleased with recent lottery results, rewarding teams in the middle that don’t tank and showing the most downtrodden franchises that there’s a better path than trying to lose.
But it’s clear that flattening the odds has resulted in a major disadvantage for the worst teams, decreasing parity and making the path to respectability that much harder for the NBA’s have-nots. Whether the NBA ultimately thinks the flattening of the lottery odds needs further tweaking could very well help determine the future of the league’s perennial losers.
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Shlomo Sprung
Shlomo Sprung is a Senior Staff Writer at Boardroom. He has more than a decade of experience in journalism, with past work appearing in Forbes, MLB.com, Awful Announcing, and The Sporting News. He graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2011, and his Twitter and Spotify addictions are well under control. Just ask him.