NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s quixotic quest to end tanking came to the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this week, and the only thing we can say for sure after his talk is that there will be changes made to the NBA’s lottery system this offseason.
Whether those will be “substantial changes” or “incremental” depends on what part of Silver’s talk you choose to listen to. Here are a couple of his quotes from the conference, via Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic.
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“We are going to make substantial changes for next year. I think where I’m on the fence — on one extreme, you could completely divorce the draft from teams’ records. Just argue we could take all 30 teams regardless of the outcome, that would completely disincentivize tanking. You could win the finals, you know, and get the first pick. But then there’s gradations of that.”
“Not to exactly forecast where we’re going, but I think I’m sort — I am an incrementalist. I think we got to be a little bit careful, you know, about how huge a change we make at once. I’m not ruling anything out, but I am paying attention to that. And then there’s something significantly more than, I would say, just tinkering with the existing system.”
First, nobody sane is suggesting putting all 30 teams in the lottery each year, that’s a straw man argument from Silver. The most “radical” suggestions on the table are to return to the 1985 system, where every team not making the playoffs had the same lottery odds, or to eliminate the lottery and have the worst team draft first. Nobody thinks it would be good for the league if this June Oklahoma City or San Antonio got the No. 1 pick.
What Silver mentioned, what is on the table, is going to the WNBA system of using two seasons of a team’s record to set the lottery odds. That would help lessen situations like the Pacers this season, a team in the Finals last June, but due to a rash of injuries starting with star Tyrese Haliburton, has the second-worst record in the league this season. Indiana is poised to add a high draft pick to a roster that, once healthy next season, will be a contender in the East. Whether this system is fair to teams that suddenly get worse because of injury or a star player leaving is the question.
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One change expected this offseason is to pick protections, according to league sources speaking with NBC Sports. Most likely, teams will only be able to protect picks 1-4 or for the lottery, but eliminated in future trades will be the top-eight protections that have Utah and Washington tanking to retain their picks this year.
Silver spoke with the 30 general managers of teams recently to discuss potential changes, and there was limited agreement about solutions in that group (to put it kindly). Silver needs the owners’ approval for any change, and their competing interests on this topic make incremental changes to a flawed system the most likely outcome.
The reality, something Silver admitted during All-Star weekend, is that tanking will never completely go away in the NBA because one high draft pick — landing Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, Cooper Flagg, Victor Wembanyama — dramatically changes the course of a franchise, so the losses are worth the risk. This season, with an exceptionally deep draft (especially at the top), has made this season a perfect storm of tanking.
This summer, Silver and the NBA are going to try to do something about it. What that will be remains the big question.
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