Where the Chicago Bulls on the right side of history all along?
In the wake of a gambling scandal that shocked the NBA world, the league is reportedly considering significant changes to its draft lottery system.
ESPN’s Shams Charania shared on Tuesday that the NBA has spoken with owners and executives about the best ways to deter tanking. While the current draft lottery structure does not always reward the league’s worst team, it’s still designed to heavily favor those who are aggressively on the wrong side of the win-loss column.
The three worst teams in the NBA are all handed a 14.0 percent chance at the No. 1 overall pick. The odds at the top pick incrementally drop by 1.5 percent until reaching the NBA’s 14th-worst team – aka the last team to miss the playoffs. Any franchise that does make the postseason is not part of the lottery.
Again, this system may not consistently reward the worst of the worst, but it does still offer a clear incentive for swimming at the bottom of the barrel. The NBA appears more eager than ever before to remove that incentive and encourage consistent competitiveness. So how do they plan to do just that?
Charania shared three ideas that have been discussed thus far:
(1) Limiting pick protections to Top 4 or 14 and higher
(2) No longer allowing a team to pick Top 4 twice in a row
(3) Locking lottery positioning after March 1 – over a month before the end of the regular season
While it’s unclear if the league will follow through with any of these policies, it’s at least telling that they already compiled a short list of possible solutions. Commissioner Adam Silver has also never hesitated in the past to make changes and toy with the structure of the league, which makes it even more conceivable that some kind of change is coming.
Could NBA’s Change Benefit the Chicago Bulls?