{"id":1918480,"date":"2026-05-05T09:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1918480"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:30:08","slug":"nba-draft-lottery-reform-is-wonderful-and-long-overdue-for-the-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1918480","title":{"rendered":"NBA Draft Lottery reform is wonderful and long overdue for the league"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s a scene from an NBA team\u2019s front-office meeting that I was once told about. It happened more than a decade ago, but the outlines will be familiar to many people in the business, and it is still relevant to a present-day discussion.<\/p>\n

In this meeting, a team\u2019s GM was sketching a particularly convoluted get-rich-quick transaction scheme that seemed both incredibly risky and unlikely to be particularly fruitful (both turned out to be true), when a lower-ranking staffer asked a simple question: \u201cWhat if we just try to add good players and build the team?\u201d<\/p>\n

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The staffer, of course, was laughed out of the room, but that question still gets short shrift when we talk about teams\u2019 approaches to rebuilding.<\/p>\n

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For the most part, we\u2019re in a different, smarter era, but the draft lottery remains the ultimate schemer\u2019s scheme. Just debase yourself for half a decade or so with a full-on teardown that involves at least three years of going 18-64, and maybe the league will hand you Victor Wembanyama as a reward.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s funny is that, San Antonio Spurs aside, the tankers haven\u2019t exactly taken over the league. That is one reason I\u2019m extremely bullish on the league\u2019s proposed lottery reform<\/a>, which will vaporize any tanking incentives and revitalize what had become an atrocious on-court product for the final two months of the season.<\/p>\n

The cost is that some front offices feel like a tool has been taken away: the ability to brazenly tank into position to select an elite talent. Some have argued that this would hit small markets particularly hard, as they are not free-agent (or, more realistically, \u201ctrade demand before free agency\u201d) destinations.<\/p>\n

So, before we talk about the NBA\u2019s lottery reform, let\u2019s talk about the 2025 NBA Finals. It featured two of the smallest, least glitzy markets in the league \u2026 and it was also a matchup that relied very little on tanking or high draft picks to reach its outcome.<\/p>\n