As the week began, one thing seemed certain in the NBA: the draft lottery was going to be overhauled. The incentive for tanking “had” to be removed, we were told, to avoid the desecration of our beautiful game. A system that lessened the odds of the worst team winning the lottery (even though the worst team rarely wins the lottery) and increased the odds of the teams that just missed the playoffs.
Yesterday, Adrian Wojnarowski wrote
draft lottery change is coming on Wednesday and there’s no stopping it.
Then today happened:
The NBA draft lottery reform has been voted down at Board of Governors meeting, league sources tell Yahoo Sports. System stays.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 22, 2014
The vote was 17-13, with the Celtics not among the 13 “no” votes, meaning they were for the proposed changes.
I, however, would have voted no as well. It’s not so much that I think the current system is perfect. I think blatantly losing games is bad. But while I’m no fan of what Philly is doing, I’m of the belief that their efforts by no means guarantee future success. Like I said this morning, there’s still an issue of getting these guys to play together and learn how to win together. By the time they’re in that part of the team’s progression, the Sixers will be four years into this “project” and it’ll be time to start making decision on restricted free agents. Meanwhile, those RFA’s never got a fair shot to show their stuff…. so is Philly going to pay unproven young talent, or jettison it?
Further, I don’t see a rush to do reform the system THIS summer unless it’s to punish Philly for what it’s doing. Why not take a close look at what this proposal really does. Why not look at why drafts are historically some version of “worst team first” and why the NBA wants to eliminate that? Tom Ziller has a good look at that angle here.
Teams can tank to get bad, but not all bad teams are tanking. And if by bad luck or bad design your favorite team becomes a bad team, watching a .500 Western Conference team that should have been a 4th seed in the East win the lottery is not a very palatable scenario. Unless the NBA eschews conferences and lets the top 16 teams into the playoffs while placing the rest in the lottery, this kind of reform could come with serious consequences.
So I’m for this for now, but I’m not for this forever. Let’s think this through first before changing rules that will need to be changed again in four or five years.
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