The NBA will have to eradicate tanking another day.
According to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, proposed changes to the league’s current draft lottery system were voted down Wednesday:
The NBA draft lottery reform has been voted down at Board of Governors meeting, league sources tell Yahoo Sports. System stays.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 22, 2014
Twenty-four hours ago, passage of draft lottery reform was considered a sure-thing. NBA was confident it had 23 teams. Then It fell apart.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 22, 2014
Here were the 13 "No" votes, sources told Yahoo: PHX, PHL, OKC, NO, DET, MIA, MIL, San Antonio, Utah, Wash, ATL, CHA and Chicago.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 22, 2014
These results represent a stark change. As recent as Tuesday, Wojnarowski said the league was preparing to vote on a draft lottery system that would, in theory, deter tanking:
Gone will be a weighted system where the worst team has 25 percent of the pingpong balls for the No. 1 overall pick and a guarantee it’ll drop no lower than fourth in the draft order. Now, the worst four teams have a 12 percent chance at the first pick, No. 5 has an 11.5 percent chance, No. 6, 10 percent, and on down. What’s more, the worst team can drop as far as seventh in the draft order, the second worst can drop to No. 8, and so on.
Now, the bottom three teams have 64 percent, 56 percent and 47 percent chances of getting top-three picks, and that’ll change to 35 percent, virtually the same as the fourth- (35 percent) and fifth-worst (34 percent) teams.
It’s become common knowledge that the Philadelphia 76ers oppose such changes in the near future. They’ve built their entire reclamation project around tanking for better draft picks and developing from within. The proposed system would destroy any stability their current blueprint creates.
But they were not the only early birds against reform.
Per Grantland’s Zach Lowe, who has also been on top of this, the Sixers were initally joined by two other teams:
Two teams beyond the PHI/OKC/MIL block considering last-minute switch out of the "yes" column on lottery reform, per league sources.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 22, 2014
The Milwaukee Bucks sound about right. They’re in a similar situation, playing for draft picks, stockpiling young talent, crafting their rebuild to fit the current lottery system. The Oklahoma City Thuhder, though, have won at least 60 percent of their games in each of the last five seasons. Their inclusion was a surprise.
Or maybe not.
From Wojnarowski:
Presti declined comment to Yahoo Sports, but his case, laid out to others, is this: The big-market teams badly want this change because it’ll give them one more advantage over small markets in securing top talent. Big-market teams have an advantage signing superstar free agents and an advantage trading for them because those players are far more apt to agree to sign a contract extension. And, now, the big market teams will get better access to top players higher in the draft.
Interesting. The new system would have gave teams additional incentives to not tank, but it also meant better teams had a chance at getting even better more quickly. It would pay to reward the good squads if the NBA was some sort of utopia where every team’s chances at successfully rebuilding were the same, but that’s just not the case.
Free agents are already more likely to sign with big-market teams, hence the reason the Los Angeles Lakers aren’t being overly vilified for their restoration blueprint. If, say, the Utah Jazz tried this, forget it. They would be slammed. Good free agents, who are veterans, won’t play for bad teams in small markets. Sometimes they won’t even play for good teams in small markets and need to be overpaid for their services.
It’s a slippery slope, no doubt, but one that’s evened out for now. We reached the point where owners and general managers and everyone involved had to figure out what the bigger priority was: eliminating tanking, or promoting parity?
They chose the latter.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
