“They say they want you successful, but then they make it stressful, you start keeping pace, they start switching up the tempo.”
– Mos Def
Can’t print the name of the song. Realistically, the comparison is arguably offensive. The Mighty Mos Def is talking about racial inequality in America. This article is going to be about the NBA’s draft pick economy. Dear reader, just know that the quote comes from a place of unadulterated reverence.
Adam Silver’s tenure as a commissioner has been…busy. By now, one could
describe him as a busybody. The NBA is like a single-celled organism in a petri dish. There are two scientists in the room. One thinks they’ve introduced enough conditions, and ought to see how it grows organically. Silver is the other, and he wants to add more:
And more, and more, and more.
He won’t stop until the NBA is perfect. Problematically, the NBA will never be perfect. Silver seems unfamiliar with the law of unintended consequences.
For example, he flattened the lottery odds to discourage tanking. So, more teams started tanking. If they didn’t land “their guy”, they tanked for longer. Flattening the odds made tanking a bigger problem, so naturally, Silver is set to flatten them even more.
The Houston Rockets are major stakeholders.
Rockets could be impacted by new lottery odds
Specifically, the new proposal would expand the lottery to 18 teams. Without knowing what the new odds would specifically look like, that might be a wash for the Rockets.
In the 2027 Draft, the Rockets have swap rights with the Brooklyn Nets. The Nets are not necessarily on pace to escape the lottery, so if the rules are implemented this summer, that pick depreciates. That said, they also own the Suns’ pick with no protections. Phoenix is likely to land just inside that bottom 18 mark, so the Rockets may have lottery odds on that pick that they weren’t expecting.
In 2029, the Rockets own the best of their own, Phoenix, and Dallas’ picks. It’s difficult to project so far out. In a vacuum, flatter odds should capture more lottery potential here, but a Phoenix implosion would suddenly be less beneficial for Houston than it would have been before.
So, it’s hard to say how this would impact the Rockets. It could help, and it could hinder.
That’s not entirely the point here.
Rockets acquired picks under certain conditions
I’ll be frank: This boils my blood.
The NBA is a multilayered competition. There’s competition at the immediate, on-court level, but there’s competition between boardrooms as well. Imagine the league eliminates the corner three: How is that fair to teams that built their offense around generating corner threes?
So what’s the difference? Silver is trying to enhance competition, but he’s going directly against the league’s competitive spirit in the process.
These acquisitions were made with certain rules in mind. If the league wants to implement change, it should take hold starting in 2032, when no team owns another team’s picks yet.
That won’t happen. Tanking is apparently a catastrophic emergency that needs to be fixed immediately. It feels like a strange stance from a man who recently described basketball as a “highlight sport”. If I were a betting man…
I’d bet that sports betting has something to do with it.
Anyone who’s cheered for a tanking team is likely to disagree. It wasn’t so bad, was it? Speaking personally, I’ve preferred the experience of watching these young guys grow over, say, the Louis Scola / Kevin Martin years. Perpetual mediocrity is the real basement for the NBA fan experience, and you’ll see a lot more Chicago Bulls team building with these rules.
Is that what Silver wants? He wants three contenders, and 27 teams with no chance to win, and minimal avenues to improve? If so, he’s on his way:
Even if it means changing the rules of a game that’s still ongoing.
