The concepts (not yet finalized proposals) were presented to the league’s board of governors by NBA executives earlier this week, the people said.
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The people spoke on condition of anonymity because none of the details have been shared publicly.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday he hopes a special owners meeting will be held in May to vote on changes to the lottery, promising the league would fix the tank issue. And one of the people who spoke to the AP on Friday said the concepts will almost certainly change or at least be modified in the coming weeks, with the possibility that more ideas will be presented to owners as well. The league’s general managers, for some time now, have also been brainstorming ideas for possible changes.
ESPN first reported that the concepts were shared with the governors.
“I’ll say it again, as I’ve said before, this is not a new issue in this league,” Silver said this week. “You can go back to the ’60s, when coin flips were used to determine who got first pick, and then to the ’80s, when a draft lottery was created. That lottery has been modified four times since then. It doesn’t seem to be working optimally where we are now.”
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The changes, whatever they are, will not be implemented for this year’s lottery, which will be held in May.
The current rules
The 14 teams that do not make the NBA playoffs go to the lottery, where a combination of four ping-pong ball numbers is drawn to decide the order of the top four teams in the draft.
The teams with the three worst records have a 14% chance of winning the top pick, and none of the teams with the five worst records can finish lower than eighth in the lottery. The odds of earning the top pick gradually decrease for the other 11 teams outside the top three, from 12.5% ​​for the team with the fourth-worst record to 0.7% for the team with the 14th-worst record.
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“Incentives need to be set,” Silver said. “We’ll fix them. I’m looking forward to that.”
Concept 1: an 18-team lottery
The 10 teams that do not make the playoffs and the eight teams that make the play-in tournament will go to the lottery. The bottom 10 teams would have an 8% chance of winning the lottery and the odds would decrease from there.
This is the scenario where the 18th worst team (a playoff team) could still win the lottery. You would have a 1% chance of winning.
Concept 2: The WNBA model
The WNBA lottery is for the worst teams over a two-season span, not just the previous season. An idea the NBA is considering would be similar to that.
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But the NBA would also have a minimum limit for wins: the current idea is 25 wins per season. It would mean that if Team A won 31 games in two seasons, they would have the same chance of winning the first pick as a team that won exactly 50 games in those two seasons. That floor would be set to not give teams any incentive to try to lose every game.
Concept 3: Better odds for more teams
A third idea being presented is one in which the five worst teams would have an 11% chance of winning the first pick, instead of the current three-team model with 14%.
There would also be some pick protections in that model, preventing the worst teams from falling too far in the draft.
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NBA AP: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA