The NBA’s process of finding new ways to deter teams from tanking is currently focused around three separate concepts to change the draft lottery, two people with knowledge of the discussions surrounding the issue told The Associated Press on Friday.
The concepts — they are not yet finalized proposals — were presented to the league’s board of governors by NBA executives earlier this week, the people said.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because none of the details have been shared publicly.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday he expects a special meeting of owners to take place in May to vote on changes to the lottery, vowing that the league would fix the tanking issue. And one of the people who spoke with the AP on Friday said it’s almost certain that the concepts will change or at least be tweaked in the coming weeks, with a possibility of more ideas being presented to owners as well. The league’s general managers — for some time — have also been weighing in with ideas for potential changes.
ESPN first reported that the concepts were shared with the governors.
“I will say again, as I’ve said this before, this is not a new issue in this league,” Silver said this week. “You can go back to the ’60s, when coin tosses were used to determine who got the first pick, then in the ’80s, when a draft lottery was created. That lottery has been modified four times since then. Does not seem to be operating optimally where we are now.”
The changes — whatever they end up being — won’t be in place for this year’s lottery, which will be held in May.
The current rules
The 14 teams that don’t make the NBA playoffs go to the lottery, where a four-number combination of ping-pong balls are drawn to decide the order of the top four teams in the draft.
The teams with the worst three records all have a 14% chance of winning the No. 1 pick — and none of the teams with the worst five records can finish lower than eighth in the lottery. The odds of winning the No. 1 pick decrease gradually for the other 11 teams outside the top three, from 12.5% for the team with the fourth-worst record to 0.7% for the team with the 14th-worst record.
“Incentives need to be fixed,” Silver said. “We will fix them. I’m looking forward to that.”
Concept 1: An 18-team lottery
The 10 teams that don’t make the playoffs and the eight teams that reach the play-in tournament all would be headed to the lottery. The bottom 10 teams would all have 8% odds of winning the lottery, and the odds would decrease from there.
This is the scenario where the 18th-worst team — a playoff team — could still win the lottery. It would have a 1% chance of winning.
Concept 2: The WNBA model
The WNBA lottery is for the worst teams over a two-season span, not just the previous season. An idea the NBA is considering would be similar to that.
But the NBA would also have a floor for wins as well — the current idea there being 25 wins per season. It would mean that if Team A won 31 games over two seasons, it would have the same odds of winning the No. 1 pick as a team that won exactly 50 games over those two seasons. That floor would be in place to give teams no incentive for trying to lose every game.
Concept 3: Better odds for more teams
A third idea being presented is one where the five worst teams would all have 11% odds of winning the No. 1 pick — instead of the current three-teams-at-14% model.
There would be some pick protections in that model as well, keeping the worst teams from falling too far in the draft.
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