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When in doubt, flatten the lottery odds further.
That appears to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s approach as he prepares to present new anti-tanking proposals to the league’s owners next month, ahead of a vote to further curb the practice on May 28.
“We are going to fix it,” Silver said of tanking in March. “Full stop.”
On Tuesday, ESPN reported that the NBA sent its 30 GMs a proposal for a “3-2-1 lottery.” The concept would expand the draft lottery from 14 teams to 16, flatten the lottery odds, and add a “relegation zone” that would give the three bottom teams worse lottery odds than the teams directly above them in the standings. The proposed system could be put in place as soon as next season.
To install a new system, Silver would need 23 owners to support the vote. ESPN reported that the “key points of the framework have a majority of the support from teams.”
The “3-2-1 lottery” name stems from the number of lottery balls each group of teams would receive in the new system. Silver’s proposal also gives two more teams the chance to land the No. 1 pick.
Teams that miss the playoffs and play-in tournament (but don’t finish with a bottom-three record) would each receive three lottery balls. The bottom three teams—the “relegation zone”—would get just two lottery balls but would also not pick lower than 12th.
Play-in tournament teams that are the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds would receive two lottery balls apiece; teams in the game pitting the Nos. 7 and 8 seeds would each get one. The new system would also prevent a team from getting the No. 1 pick in consecutive years or top-five picks in three straight drafts. Teams also wouldn’t be able to protect their first-round picks in the Nos. 12 to 15 slots.
The new system would make it harder for the league’s worst teams—which arguably need a talent injection the most—to land a high pick. Multiple league executives told Front Office Sports that they have an issue with a system that gives the bottom three teams the same lottery odds as the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds. “That aspect doesn’t make sense to me,” one executive said.
The “3-2-1 lottery” would be the league’s latest flattening of the draft odds, which has been its go-to remedy for tanking issues over the years. In the 1960s and ’70s, the top pick was determined by a coin toss between the worst teams in each conference. The league introduced the lottery in 1985 and has modified it four times since, most recently in 2019, when the NBA gave its lowest three teams each a 14% chance at securing the top pick.
“I don’t necessarily think the changes we made over the last 40 years or so were necessarily wrong,” Silver said in March. “I think in some cases they worked for a period of time. Math is math. When we make those changes and change odds, you know exactly statistically where you’re going to come out. What’s changed is behavior around those odds.”
Silver’s proposal includes a sunset provision that would allow the “3-2-1 lottery” to expire after the 2029 draft, with the league’s owners either electing to continue the system or deciding on a new one. The league’s current CBA expires after the 2029–30 season.
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