Ditch the NBA Draft Lottery For Something Better
Teams tanking for a less than 14% chance at the top pick is horrible for the sport
Now that the NBA Draft is here, I thought I would offer a solution to two of the problems plaguing the NBA: tanking and doubts about the fairness of the draft lottery.
The NBA has suffered for decades from tanking. It’s a pretty gross spectacle whereby some teams’ front office management set up their teams to be as horrible as possible so they can win the fewest games possible. All for a pretty low chance (14% if the team finishes with the worst record) of gaining the top pick in the summer draft.
Some years, like 2025, feature a draft with quite a few good prospects, what the nerds call top-heavy. Some years, like 2024, the talent pool is shallow with no likely stars. Other years, like 2023 promise the draft lottery winner a potential generational player like Victor Wembanyama.
These teams try to lose games violating the basic premise of competition: always play to win. On top of that, these vultures continue to charge fans the full price for tickets, over-priced and mediocre food, parking, warm/flat beer, etc.
Problem #2: The tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theory kooks would have you believe that the NBA fixes the lottery so the best player goes to the team perceived to give the league the best marketing opportunity. This year these wackos insist Adam Silver convinced the Mavericks to trade Luka Dončić to the Lakers so he can take over as the fuel of the Lakers marketing machine when (if???) LeBron finally retires. In return the commissioner made sure the Mavericks won the lottery and the right to choose Cooper Flagg.
The basic idea to have a draft is an attempt to distribute talent in such a way that the best players are not concentrated on a small handful of the richest teams. Talent is spread out among the teams as evenly as possible to produce as much parity as possible. It’s thought that having more teams with a chance to win a championship creates broader interest in the league. That may be, but it is antithetical to competition.
Teams that understand how to compete and want to compete to win as many games as possible should be applauded and rewarded. The concept of a draft does not do that. Good teams that build good rosters, play hard most nights and win lots of games are penalized with lower draft picks. Why should bad teams who mismanage their rosters, play poorly most nights often giving weak effort, and lose lots of games be rewarded with high draft picks? This is backwards.
Maybe it’s an admirable idea to offer the worst teams first crack at the best of the incoming new players in the interest of competitive balance. But this has led to tanking which is disgusting and should be stopped. Tanking is the opposite of competitive and has no place in sport. It’s a dreadful look for the NBA. Unfortunately, other than teams giving Scouts’ Honor that they are trying their hardest to win every night there is no genuine way to police this.
Until now. The NBA should take the draft lottery behind the barn and shoot it dead. Then replace it with a tournament. The first pick in the draft should be earned by winning something, not backed into by losing the most games while giving fans an atrocious product for their full-price tickets.
The winner of this tournament would earn the first pick in the draft. The runner-up would earn the second pick. Third place gets the third pick and so on. The format of such a tournament doesn’t really matter.
But here is one idea: single elimination starting the Tuesday or Wednesday after the regular season ends with the ten teams who miss the playoffs and the play-in tournament.1 The six teams with the best records of these ten receive byes into the quarterfinals. The worst four records play in to qualify for the quarterfinals.2 This has been working well for the regular playoffs so it should work here as well.
Semifinal losers play to determine who picks 3rd and 4th. Selections six through ten would be determined by regular season record (better record = higher pick), no need to play games to determine these places. The rest of the drafting order would be determined as usual.
Teams with the better record should have home court advantage in each matchup.3
Here is how this concept would have worked in 2025:
Draft Tournament seedings
1. Phoenix
2. Portland
3. San Antonio
4. Toronto
5. Brooklyn
6. Philadelphia
7. New Orleans
8. Charlotte
9. Washington
10. Utah
I used a game simulator to see how this hypothetical tournament might play out.
Play-in game 1: Utah at New Orleans. Result: Pelicans 113, Jazz 108.
Play-in game 2: Washington at Charlotte. Result: Hornets 107, Wizards 84.
Quarterfinals
#8 Charlotte 73 at #1 Phoenix 95
#7 New Orleans 133 at #2 Portland 119
#6 Philadelphia 101 at #3 San Antonio 102
#5 Brooklyn 112 at #4 Toronto 127
Semifinals
#7 New Orleans 87 at #1 Phoenix 99
#4 Toronto 95 at #3 San Antonio 115
Third Place
#7 New Orleans 89 at #4 Toronto 97
Finals
#3 San Antonio 113 at #1 Phoenix 112
That’s ten additional games, so the NBA would surely make more money than for one silly draft lottery show.
And the first ten picks of the 2025 draft would have looked like this4:
San Antonio
Phoenix
Toronto
New Orleans
Portland
Brooklyn
Philadelphia
Charlotte
Washington
Utah
The Spurs would have earned that pick and not in the ironic meaning of that term.
What do y’all think? Let me know in the comments!
But wouldn’t this conflict with the NBA Playoffs? So what? I’m sure the schedule could be figured out in such a way that minimizes any conflict. Besides, this presents ten additional games of inventory to sell. I have no doubt that there would be plenty of interest in this package from the various media companies.
What would happen if teams in the draft tournament don’t have a first round pick that year because they traded it away? Good question because I’m not sure how motivated a team would be to play hard to benefit another team. Maybe such a team would simply be left out of the tournament and the competition proceeds with one fewer team. Or however many fewer teams that find themselves in such a position.
A neutral site format would have trouble selling tickets in my opinion.
I’m not going to put in the work to figure out which, if any, of these picks were held by other teams via trades.