As a former lawyer, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is a professional at speaking without saying much.
However, during an interview in March, Silver spoke decisively, stating that the league would look into lottery reform and make changes to address tanking.
Well, it appears the league has just done that with the NBA Board of Governors voting in favor of draft lottery reform at 29-1, with the Grizzlies being the only franchise against the change.
Shams Charania of ESPN was the first to report on the seismic
change to the NBA Draft Lottery system.
Now, the NBA Draft Lottery will expand from 12 to 16 teams. This new 3-2-1 system means that the bottom three teams will have significantly worse odds of getting the No. 1 pick. The odds in the old system of the worst team selecting first were at 14%, and now that’ll be dwarfed to just 5.4%, with a 71% chance of selecting outside of the top five.
This reform now goes in stark contrast to every other major sport in North America.
Typically, the draft is about helping the worst team to get better. Now, the NBA franchises that have won the fewest games actually don’t have the best odds of getting to pick first.
It’s important to note that an anomaly will still happen. Even in the old system, there were instances where teams in the play-in won the top pick. This is what happened with the Mavericks in the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery.
Clearly, given that everyone minus Memphis voted for this, the NBA felt it had to do something to incentivize winning and discourage tanking. And the likely reason the Grizzlies were against it is that it would impact a draft pick the Jazz owes them. Since the new rule indicates that a team can’t draft in the Top-5 for three consecutive seasons, it means that their draft pick from Utah now can only be sixth or worse.
Prior to this reform, Silver tried to create change without these restrictions.
He spoke out strongly against tanking in the past, and the NBA even fined teams like the Jazz and the Pacers this season for sitting players, but these efforts haven’t proven effective.
From the Lakers’ perspective, they hopefully aren’t involved in the NBA Draft directly for years to come. So the biggest impact will be in trading draft picks. Now teams can’t protect picks top-12 through top-15 via trades, making those assets even more valuable.
This is a lot to adjust to, and there will be benefits and unintended consequences. But the NBA Draft Lottery has now changed forever, and the Lakers and all other teams will have to learn how to navigate through this reform.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
