The NBA Draft Lottery has been a subject of criticism in the league for a number of years now, as it has often been accused of unfairly favoring bad teams, and thus encouraging poor franchises to tank toward the end of the season. Recently, one such team accused of tanking has been the Philadelphia 76ers, who have more or less confirmed to everyone that they are, in fact, tanking in order to rebuild their team through the draft. In recent seasons, Philadelphia's poor performance has helped them land players like Joel Embiid, Michael Carter-Williams, and Nerlens Noel.
Over the summer, reports surfaced saying, in order to combat the issue of intentionally poor performance, the NBA would push to change the NBA Draft Lottery, and alter its percentage system to create a more level playing field for all teams in the draft. The idea here is to make losing less of an incentive for bad teams.
Today, Grantland's Zach Lowe reported that the NBA's plan will likely come to fruition. According to Lowe, the entire draft system will be revamped to lower a bad team's likelihood of receiving a top pick, and giving good teams an even better shot of landing a lottery selection. Here's the full breakdown via Lowe's Twitter:
Tweaks include decreasing odds just a bit for lotto teams with the best records, sources say. Lottery would draw top-6 picks, up from top-3
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014
Proposal details: four worst teams would have equal 12 percent chance to win No. 1 pick. Worst team could fall no lower than No 7.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014
Four teams w/ best record would have, in order, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2.5% chance at No. 1 pick and better chance than today of moving into top-6
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014
.@PistonPowered Proposed dds of No. 1 pick for teams 7-10: 8.5%, 7%, 5.5 %, 4%. All have 13%-plus shot at top-3.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014
Under current rules, worst team has 25% chance at No. 1. Second-worst: 19.9%. Third-worst: 15.6%. Proposal would give 4 worst equal 12% odds
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014So, to be clear, the NBA is offering a proposal which will cut the worst team's chances at landing the no. 1 pick in half. It's certainly a significant shift. Lowe also brought up the 76ers as an example for why the league is pushing to make these changes:
Hard to overstate degree of leaguewide displeasure with Sixers right now. Perhaps not entirely fair -- they're following rules -- but big.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 3, 2014However, others aren't buying into the Sixers hate. ESPN's Israel Gutierrez also points out that the team is simply working the system in play:
So we laud successful teams that are built "organically," but we rip the Sixers for wanting to build through the draft?
— Israel Gutierrez (@IzzyESPN) October 3, 2014Gutierrez brings up a good point: What exactly constitutes an "organic" team-building process in the NBA? Doling out boatloads of cash to the best available players in free agency? It's clear that there are parity issues in the league right now, and while Philadelphia may not be making the most palatable decisions for their fanbase, we have to accept the fact that they're looking to rebuild in any way they can right now.
Still, we should all want to see more good basketball, and less of this:
1.
Hopefully, these changes will go a long toward making that happen.
[via SB Nation]
