NBA's anti-tanking draft reform proposal is a disaster: Why Adam Silver's reform is destined to flop originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
What happens when you put 30 billionaires in a room to try and solve a problem of distributing resources between the haves and have-nots?
The NBA's draft lottery reform is trying to tackle this issue. And, unsurprisingly, they are close to passing a system that would drop the absolute hammer on the have-nots.
According to ESPN's Shams Charania, the league and board of governors are strongly considering a new "3-2-1" lottery system that is designed to eliminate tanking and would take effect starting with the 2027 draft. Rather than giving the best odds to the worst teams, the new system would distribute them more equally across the lottery while also punishing the bottom three teams in the league.
The details of the new rules are long and convoluted. But X user JoestarJokic put the goals in the simplest possible language: "We believe some of the teams are pretending to be bad. Therefore, we will find out which of the teams are actually bad and we will punish them."
MORE: NBA rules proposals to address 'tanking' are an overreaction to a one-year phenomenon
The proposed changes to the lottery are sweeping and dramatic. The event would expand from 14 to 16 teams, with odds distributed to discourage finishing with the worst record.
Three balls (8.1 percent odds) would be awarded to teams ranked 4th through 10th in the lottery.
Two balls (5.4 percent odds) would be awarded to the bottom three teams (known as the relegation zone), along with the 9th/10th seeds in each conference.
One ball (2.7 percent odds) would be awarded to the losers of the 7/8 play-in games.
In addition, no team would be able to win the top pick in consecutive years or win three consecutive top-five picks. There would also be a rule where teams could no longer protect traded picks from slots 12 to 15.
If you think that sounds complicated, then you're not alone in that assessment. The league's primary objective was to get rid of the race to the bottom. That will happen in the new system. But these changes are akin to breaking a few hundred eggs to make an omelet. There are bound to be unintended consequences that will cause far worse issues than the one they are trying to resolve.
MORE: NBA anti-tanking rules, explained: What to know about Adam Silver's proposed reform
The biggest issue with the proposed changes are that they are far too punitive for the bad teams. It is going to be impossible for them to dig themselves out of the bottom. On the flip side, the system will reward some teams that are already in pretty good shape.
Imagine this system was in place this year:The Heat, Warriors, and Clippers would have the same odds of landing the No. 1 pick as the Nets and Wizards.The Magic, who could realistically be in the conference finals, would have only slightly worse odds.That’s ridiculous, IMO. https://t.co/sklpHGzNU9
It can be hard to mentally envision how dramatic these changes would be. If you play around with Dylan Jackson's 3-2-1 lottery simulator, as I did, it becomes clear pretty quickly how extreme the results would look year over year.
Currently, the draft is the only realistic way for bad teams to become relevant. The league already killed free agency, changing the rules to the point where every star is extending contracts with their old teams and demanding a trade down the road. To wit, Myles Turner was the best free agent to switch teams last season.
It's still theoretically possible to get a star via trade, but the ones who come up are generally distressed assets or cost so much that a team at the bottom would only marginally improve by tearing down everything of value around them.
There's another issue with the relegation aspect of the league's plan. That label is being applied to the bottom three teams, who are hurt most in this system. While relegation would be an interesting idea and solve several different problems with bad ownership groups, that isn't actually what's happening here.
In a true relegation system, incompetent franchises are punished by dropping to a lower-level league. A new, more capable team takes their place. The NBA has no such plans to use the G-League or other leagues to replace their bad teams. Instead, they are making them even worse.