The NBA has leaked its potential plan to deter tanking, which appears to be a complete overhaul of the current lottery rules.
Shams Charania wrote about it, but here are some of the quick details.
The lottery balls become much simpler in the new 3-2-1 method. If I’m understanding this correctly, here’s a breakdown of how the lottery balls would be divided out.
Teams 1-3 (known as the relegation zone): 2 lottery balls
Teams 4-10: 3 lottery balls
Teams 11-14: 2 lottery balls
Teams 15-16: 1 lottery ball
That makes for a total of 37 balls, which makes the percentages easy to figure out. It makes the 1-3 zone worth 5.4%, the 4-10 zone (the money zone) 8.1%, the 11-14 zone 5.4%, and the 15-16 zone 2.7%.
The odds in this new scenario are as flat as you can make them without making each pick completely equal across the board. Clearly, the incentive is to stay out of the relegation zone, and to do that, they’re giving worse odds for the bottom three teams.
Probably the craziest change for this is that, instead of drawing for the bottom 4 picks, they will pick for all 16, which could lead to some crazy outcomes.
From Shams:
The Nos. 9 and 10 play-in seeds in each conference receive two lottery balls each, and the losers of the 7-8 play-in games receive one lottery ball each. Previously, the league drew odds for only teams with the bottom four records in the league, while the other 10 lottery teams were ordered by inverse record. Under this proposal, all 16 teams would be in the drawing.
Some of the other changes include…
For the Spurs, who have benefited the most from the current rules, the ladder has been pulled up behind them. Teams can’t win a top-5 pick three straight times. Congrats to the Spurs, who benefit more than anyone else from the old rules. The rest? They have to navigate a new set of rules with insane variability.
Another fun nugget is that the NBA can punish tanking by reducing odds or moving picks. With Adam Silver’s history of making the worst decisions in these situations in every scenario, there’s no way he screws it up again, right?
The good news is that if this doesn’t work, they do have an opportunity to end the current system by 2029.
The good news and bad news
Let’s first look at the bad. Like I said, Adam Silver clearly doesn’t understand that the flattening of odds from before is what made tanking worse. He created the problem, no one else. It doesn’t give me faith in him to come up with a solution to this “problem” that has always existed.
Like before, flattening of odds just incentivized more teams to tank, so what could go wrong with expanding the lottery and flattening odds even more? It’s clear that the 4-10 range will be the zone teams try to be in come lottery night. We WILL see some element of tanking to be in that zone from the higher-ranked teams. It’s clear that Silver is betting on teams that are near the playoff picture to play hard. It’s also clear that giving himself power to punish teams could cause teams to play hard OR ELSE.
Finally, it does make it harder for the worst teams to have a clear path to becoming contenders. With the odds flattened like this, using the lottery to rebuild is still the best option, but there’s no overwhelming value in being outside the 4-10 range, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re 4 or 10, because all the positions will be drawn. There will be shenanigans of some sort at the end of the season with “injuries,” but it might not be as much as we wonder? Knowing that beig at the bottom doesn’t do anything for you does make rebuilding feel like a complete crapshoot.
Also, and I could be wrong, but I don’t see anyone trading picks unless it’s for something extremely valuable. Any pick in the lottery becomes a legit shot at the top pick. A team like the Jazz with a lot of future picks might have some serious picks coming their way.
There may be more downsides, some unforeseen, but those feel like the worst ones to me.
The good news?
This will definitely curtail the worst of the league’s tanking. The worst teams in the league will definitely be trying harder in more games, which could curtail the worst of the tanking we’ve seen. That’s definitely a positive and we’ll absolutely see teams at the bottom not resting players as often.
The lottery’s variability will now make lottery night completely crazy. Teams at the 16th spot might get the 1st pick, while the worst team in the league could pick 16th. It will make for a ton of craziness, making each offseason completely unpredictable.
The flattening of the odds might fix the no-man’s-land zone. For years, you want to be two things in the league: Bad enough to be at the top of the lottery, or good enough to compete. If you’re in no-man’s land, it actually can benefit you, so teams might as well do their best every season. In theory, this could work. And with this mentality, it could create some real parity, which could be very fun.
It’s an interesting system, and we’ll see how it pans out. For a team like the Jazz, this works out pretty well, considering they’re no longer in a tanking mindset. Let’s hope the Jazz become the team that learns how to maneuver these rules the quickest.
