The NBA approved sweeping changes to the draft lottery Thursday that will strip the teams with the worst records from receiving the best odds of winning the No. 1 pick, something the league hopes will prevent tanking.<\/p>\n
A vote by the league\u2019s board of governors made the plan official for the next three seasons. The \u201c3-2-1 Lottery\u201d proposal expands the event to 16 teams, flattens odds of winning the No. 1 pick and will try to deter teams from tanking by lowering lottery chances for teams that have the worst records.<\/p>\n
They still can win the lottery, but they\u2019ll have to buck odds to do so. The three worst teams will have 5.4% odds of winning, while teams that finish with the fourth- through 10th-worst records will all have 8.1% chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince October, the league office has met with key stakeholders to discuss current competitive incentives and solicit ideas aimed at discouraging tanking,\u201d the league said Thursday in announcing the move. \u201cThat process led to the creation of the 3-2-1 Lottery.\u201d<\/p>\n
ESPN reported the vote was 29-1, with the Memphis Grizzlies casting the lone dissenting ballot.<\/p>\n
The vote Thursday fulfilled a promise from Commissioner Adam Silver, who vowed that the league \u2014 which has changed the lottery system about a half-dozen times in the last 40 or so years \u2014 would strongly address the tanking issue before next season.<\/p>\n
Starting with next year\u2019s lottery, the 16 participating teams will all get somewhere between one and three lottery balls \u2014 the 3-2-1 part \u2014 awarded in this manner:<\/p>\n
The losers of the No. 7 versus No. 8 play-in games in both conferences will get one lottery ball each.
\nThe Nos. 9 and 10 seeds going into the play-in tournament will get two lottery balls each.
\nThe remaining 10 teams that miss the playoffs and the play-in will all get three lottery balls \u2014 with the exception of the three worst teams in the standings. They will enter \u201cdraft relegation\u201d and have one of their lottery balls taken away, which is the anti-tanking part of the plan.<\/p>\n
Tanking was a huge \u2014 and from the league standpoint, regrettable \u2014 talking point this season. The Utah Jazz were fined $500,000 \u201cfor conduct detrimental to the league\u201d over the way two top players were held out of the fourth quarter of a pair of games, one of which the Jazz actually won.<\/p>\n
The Jazz had reason to limit their win total this season; too many victories would have meant risking a chance to have a top-eight pick in next month\u2019s draft, a pick that they wound up securing.<\/p>\n
Utah was among five teams \u2014 lottery winner Washington, Indiana, Memphis and Brooklyn were the others \u2014 that had winning percentages below .180 after the All-Star break. There never had been a season in which so many teams lost so regularly after the break.<\/p>\n
Under the new plan, the teams that finish with the three worst records cannot fall below the No. 12 pick. But the best odds of winning No. 1 would go to the other seven teams that miss the play-in and the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Nos. 9 and 10 play-in seeds also would have a 5.4% chance of winning the lottery, and the losers of the 7-8 play-in games would both have a 2.7% chance.<\/p>\n
There are other caveats within the new plan, including that no team can win back-to-back No. 1 picks and that the NBA will now have \u201cexpanded disciplinary authority\u201d to address tanking \u2014 with potential moves including lowering teams\u2019 lottery odds or even changing draft positions.<\/p>\n
The new rules will be in effect through 2029. The board of governors will have to vote again, at some point, either to extend the new plan or to come up with a different one before the 2030 lottery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA approved sweeping changes to the draft lottery Thursday that will strip the teams with the worst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6,12,249,7332],"class_list":["post-746812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-nba-draft-lottery","tag-nba-tanking"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116656283577649871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}