Flattening the odds in the NBA's draft lottery, a change passed Thursday by an overwhelming 28-1-1 vote of team
Authentic Keith Tkachuk Youth Jersey owners, will not end tanking and may not reduce it much. The league knows that; it repeatedly characterized the proposal as "an incremental step" toward more potential tweaks, sources say. The NBA is concerned about egregious tanking from teams that are already awful -- the sort of tanking that generates think pieces and angry tweets. The reform seeks to accomplish that by cutting the odds that the worst teams win the best picks. Under the current system, the worst team has a 25 percent chance of nabbing the top pick. The second-worst team has a 19.9 percent shot. Starting in 2019, the three worst teams will have an equal 14 percent chance at the most coveted asset in basketballThe very best team in the lottery will have the same miniscule 0.5 percent chance of skyrocketing to the top of the draft, and the same paltry chance of landing in the top three. The teams in the middle each get a big probability bumpThis is a less dramatic version of a flattening proposal that failed in 2014 amid resistance from small-market teams that feared it nipped away at their only path to acquiring superstars. That fear remains in some corners, including (presumably) in Oklahoma City, the only franchise to vote no -- and one that, as the Sonics, tanked for stars. In other news: Russell Westbrook has still not signed his extension. The league has a legitimate interest in its worst teams not feeling
http://www.officialwinnipegjets.com/Adidas-Kyle-Connor-Jersey as if they have to get any more embarrassingly bad in order to secure improved lottery odds. The NBA does not want to relive Trust The Process, even though the architect of the most aggressive -- and most coldly rational -- multiyear tank job in league history was ousted precisely because of the scheme's naked aggression. It would kindly prefer the Suns not send Eric Bledsoe home for two months; new rest regulations, also approved Thursday, may take care of that. Reform may change team behavior on the fringes. Bledsoe types may play more. The next version of the Sixers might be more open to signing a couple of stable veterans, even at the "risk" of winning a couple more games. April basketball will be a little less bad. But there will still be bad teams, and bad teams will still have reason to lose games. Some less-bad teams might have even more reason to lose games, especially late in the season. No league can legislate away rebuilding. Wins are a zero-sum game. A reverse-order draft, even one warped a bit by lottery odds, encourages losing. As long as the best young players go to a subset of teams at the bottom of the league, those teams will chase high picks. You could argue that the league shouldn't have a reverse-order draft at all. Some of my colleagues, including the estimable Kevin Arnovitz, have argued for the abolition
http://www.atlantafalconsauthorizedstore.com/hats of the draft. Mike Zarren, assistant GM of the Celtics, proposed a complex wheel system in which teams semi-randomly rotate between all 30 draft slots year-by-year. Some have argued the best teams should select first as a way to incentivize winning, or that all 30 teams should participate in a lottery with equal odds of landing in any spot. Whether you prefer those solutions or not -- I don't, though the wheel intrigues -- they would actually eradicate tanking by snapping the connection between team record and draft position. That is the sort of systematic overhaul it takes. "I don't know what the final solution is," Mark Cuban, the Mavs' owner, told me in 2014, when the last attempt at lottery reform bit the dust. "But I don't think only changing the draft will be the ultimate answer." Teams tank for many reasons. A lot are organic, the product of an inevitable rise-and-fall cycle to which none -- not even the Spurs, tankers for Tim Duncan -- are immune. They tank because in basketball more than any sport, singular superstars drive winning, and the only fail-safe way to get one is to draft very high in the right year. That is the best way to keep them, too; rookie first-round picks enter the league on four-year, cost-controlled contracts, and then proceed into restricted free agency -- where incumbent teams can match any rival offer. Barring a David Kahn-level snafu, a team that drafts a superstar gets him for
Hoodie Jersey seven or eight years. Make good choices during that time, and you should be able to convince that superstar to stay longer
