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NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated at a press conference Wednesday that the NBA needs to “do something more extreme” to address tanking than the lottery reforms it has implemented in the past. According to ESPN, the league presented three proposals at its board of governors meetings this week, and each would indeed represent a significant change to the system:

  • Option A: An 18-team lottery, including the Nos. 7-15 seeds in both conferences, with flat odds (8%) for the teams with the 10 worst records. Every pick would be drawn in the lottery, rather than just the top four. 
  • Option B: A 22-team lottery, including the Nos. 7-15 seeds in both conferences and the teams that lose in the first round of the playoffs. The lottery order would be determined by each team’s cumulative two-year record, like in the WNBA. There would be a “floor” for win totals for lottery purposes — if it’s set at 25 games, for example, then any team that finishes a season with fewer than 25 wins will be credited with 25 wins for that season when determining its two-year record. Only the top four draft picks would be drawn in the lottery, just like in the current system. 
  • Option C: An 18-team lottery, including the Nos. 7-15 seeds in both conferences, with flat odds for the teams with the five worst records. In this system, there would effectively be two lotteries: The first drawing would determine the top five picks, and the second would determine the 13 picks that follow. The teams that finish with bottom-five records and aren’t drawn in the first lottery would be guaranteed a pick no worse than 10th.

Are these “extreme?” Not in comparison to, say, Mike Zarren’s “wheel,” which would completely divorce draft position from team record. In any of these systems, bad teams would still have a better chance of winning the lottery than good teams. The point here is to give teams less incentive to be outright terrible, even if it means there’s an increased likelihood that great teams will end up with great picks.

Silver stated Wednesday that “it seemed unanimous in the room that we needed to make a change and we needed to make a change for next season,” adding that the league plans to hold another board of governors meeting in May to vote on a specific proposal.

“I think this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level,” Silver stated. “It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league. It’s one that we take very seriously. We are going to fix it, full stop. I want to say that directly to our fans.”