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On Wednesday, Adam Silver walked to the podium and said this about tanking: "We are going to fix it. Full stop." Full stop! That's not the self-proclaimed “incrementalist” talking. That's the commissioner, two months into his tenure, who banned an owner FOR LIFE. The Silver who means business!
And then what happened the next day? The NBA leaked three "concepts" that have been met with confusion, negativity, and skepticism that the mechanics don't actually solve what they're supposed to solve.
[Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season]
The negative reaction to all of this isn't really about any specific proposal. It's a confidence problem. All season, rhetoric kept escalating, speeches were made about competitive integrity, and fines were handed out to Indiana and Utah as warning shots. And then when the moment finally arrived, what materialized was a workshop session.
From what I understand talking to sources around the league, these three concepts are a collage of ideas drawn from the conversations with the competition committee, front offices, and ownership groups. They can be combined, tweaked, and stripped for parts. Nothing is locked in. That's why they're called concepts and not proposals.
I find it easier to think about them as individual levers the league is deciding whether to pull. So here’s what’s on the table:
Individually, these ideas all make sense. I've played around with assembling a proposal myself — expand to 22 teams, draw 10 picks in a 5-by-5 format, flatten the odds, randomize the floor positioning — and it's just too much. You can't explain it clearly to anyone in one or two sentences. And if you can't do that, what are we really doing here?
The NBA Draft Lottery needs to be a massive event. Not something that confuses people while it's happening. That's the broader issue. Reviews take too long. The NBA Cup has games on one night and not the other. The season drags. You can't turn on a game and know who's playing because of the alternate jerseys. It's too much. So the lottery needs to be made simple. Do something that takes one sentence to explain, such as:
The NBA Lottery draws 10 picks, and the teams that missed the playoffs get 6% odds, while teams that lost in the first round get 2%.
Like it or not, that’s so easy to understand. And odds are both flattened and smoothened. There’s no reason to bottom out due to a randomized floor and no reason to tank out of the playoffs when your odds only move from 2% to 6%. Plus, two-thirds of the league have a reason to tune in, which makes it an event.
The NBA lacks events. It's a volume product. That's why the NBA Cup was created. That's why the play-in exists. The lottery should be next on that list — and it’s why I’ve said for years the league should pair it with a Playoff Draft, letting top three seeds choose their first-round opponent on live TV.
Look, fans understandably push back on including playoff teams in the lotto. Fans worry about a scenario where a top seed gets upset and then lands a franchise-altering No. 1 pick. But let's look at the math: top-2 seeds have won 93% of their first-round series over the last 25 years. When you combine a 7% upset chance with a 2% lottery chance, the nightmare outcome is a 0.14% probability. That is 1-in-714. Worrying about that outcome is like refusing to play a hand of poker because you're terrified your opponent might be dealt a full house on the opening draw — the odds for that are 1-in-694, nearly identical.
The NBA can’t build policy around something that might haunt us only once every seven centuries. They have to build it for the 99.86% of the time where the system creates a fairer system and a high-stakes event. If the new lotto system introduces more randomness, fine. As long as it's simple, watchable, and makes intentional losing less rational.
And with expansion likely coming in 2028-29, this doesn't even need to be permanent. The NBA has reformed the lottery four times already: equal odds in 1985, weighted odds in 1990, the ping-pong machine and 25% top odds in 1994, and the flattened 14% reform in 2019. Each fix created the next problem. Maybe this one will too. If that’s the case, then the rules can be changed once again.
But please, for the love of the game, this time around let’s make it something that anyone can understand in two seconds. Silver said Full Stop. The whole league is waiting to see if he meant it.
Continue reading...
And then what happened the next day? The NBA leaked three "concepts" that have been met with confusion, negativity, and skepticism that the mechanics don't actually solve what they're supposed to solve.
[Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season]
The negative reaction to all of this isn't really about any specific proposal. It's a confidence problem. All season, rhetoric kept escalating, speeches were made about competitive integrity, and fines were handed out to Indiana and Utah as warning shots. And then when the moment finally arrived, what materialized was a workshop session.
From what I understand talking to sources around the league, these three concepts are a collage of ideas drawn from the conversations with the competition committee, front offices, and ownership groups. They can be combined, tweaked, and stripped for parts. Nothing is locked in. That's why they're called concepts and not proposals.
I find it easier to think about them as individual levers the league is deciding whether to pull. So here’s what’s on the table:
Flatten the odds: Trim the current 14% top odds down to 8% to increase randomness and decrease tanking.
Draw more picks: Increase the top 4 picks getting selected to 6, 8, or even 18 picks.
Expand the pool: Expand from 14 teams to 18 teams by including play-in teams or to 22 teams by including first-round playoff losers.
The WNBA model: Average records over two years to smooth out single-season.
Win floor: Credit teams with a minimum win total to stop a race to the bottom.
The 5-by-5: A tiered draw where the first five picks are drawn, then the next five picks, and teams with the five worst records couldn’t fall below 10th.
The Pre-Lotto Draw: Randomize a team's "floor" (the lowest they can pick) before the lottery even starts, for teams with flattened odds. This concept was not included in the leaked memos, but my sources in the league office and various front offices say it’s on the table as a way to remove the advantage of having the worst record, since your floor would be assigned by chance.
Individually, these ideas all make sense. I've played around with assembling a proposal myself — expand to 22 teams, draw 10 picks in a 5-by-5 format, flatten the odds, randomize the floor positioning — and it's just too much. You can't explain it clearly to anyone in one or two sentences. And if you can't do that, what are we really doing here?
The NBA Draft Lottery needs to be a massive event. Not something that confuses people while it's happening. That's the broader issue. Reviews take too long. The NBA Cup has games on one night and not the other. The season drags. You can't turn on a game and know who's playing because of the alternate jerseys. It's too much. So the lottery needs to be made simple. Do something that takes one sentence to explain, such as:
The NBA Lottery draws 10 picks, and the teams that missed the playoffs get 6% odds, while teams that lost in the first round get 2%.
Like it or not, that’s so easy to understand. And odds are both flattened and smoothened. There’s no reason to bottom out due to a randomized floor and no reason to tank out of the playoffs when your odds only move from 2% to 6%. Plus, two-thirds of the league have a reason to tune in, which makes it an event.
The NBA lacks events. It's a volume product. That's why the NBA Cup was created. That's why the play-in exists. The lottery should be next on that list — and it’s why I’ve said for years the league should pair it with a Playoff Draft, letting top three seeds choose their first-round opponent on live TV.
Look, fans understandably push back on including playoff teams in the lotto. Fans worry about a scenario where a top seed gets upset and then lands a franchise-altering No. 1 pick. But let's look at the math: top-2 seeds have won 93% of their first-round series over the last 25 years. When you combine a 7% upset chance with a 2% lottery chance, the nightmare outcome is a 0.14% probability. That is 1-in-714. Worrying about that outcome is like refusing to play a hand of poker because you're terrified your opponent might be dealt a full house on the opening draw — the odds for that are 1-in-694, nearly identical.
The NBA can’t build policy around something that might haunt us only once every seven centuries. They have to build it for the 99.86% of the time where the system creates a fairer system and a high-stakes event. If the new lotto system introduces more randomness, fine. As long as it's simple, watchable, and makes intentional losing less rational.
And with expansion likely coming in 2028-29, this doesn't even need to be permanent. The NBA has reformed the lottery four times already: equal odds in 1985, weighted odds in 1990, the ping-pong machine and 25% top odds in 1994, and the flattened 14% reform in 2019. Each fix created the next problem. Maybe this one will too. If that’s the case, then the rules can be changed once again.
But please, for the love of the game, this time around let’s make it something that anyone can understand in two seconds. Silver said Full Stop. The whole league is waiting to see if he meant it.
Continue reading...
