Phx-Suns.Net

Maybe I missed it, but haven’t really seen the NBA’s new lottery proposal discussed in here.



Thoughts?

I think it likely kills the game to game tanking that was running rampant this year, but it does lend itself to teams tanking out of the play-in or playoffs…I think that risk is less though.

A quick TLDR for the article:

Worst 3 records get 2 lottery balls each
Teams 4-10 get 3 each
11-14 get 2 each
Teams 15 and 16 get 1 ball

They will draw all 16 picks(though there is a caveat that the bottom 3 teams can’t drop below 12, so I assume they are automatically given that pick if they haven’t been selected in the first 11 picks). There’s no difference from being 4th worst or 10th worst.

They also won’t allow getting the 1st pick in consecutive years and not allow 3 consecutive years in the top 5.

Enhanced punishment ability as well for the nba if teams are caught tanking. Up to removing lottery balls or taking picks away completely.

I just don't think tanking is that big of a problem. To me, this is all a way too complex solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist. And I don't think this is even being talked about if it wasn't the "NBA, now brought to you by DraftKings, etc..."

I do agree that gambling is likely playing a big factor…but I absolutely think it’s a big problem. But I also realize you have to be an nba fan and not just a single team fan to care that much.

It just bugs me that teams pretend to be bad and get rewarded for it…it’s like if the government came out and said they would give the poorest people a million dollars, so a bunch of people quit their jobs and “give away” all their money for a year so they can get the million dollars…then their money comes back and they got a million dollars.

Teams are gaming the system and the NBA needs to stop it. I prefer different methods, but this will work well enough I think.

I also think it helps us…not as much short term as our picks are limited, but it absolutely gives us a better chance to rebuild quicker. Will be easier to get lucky from mediocrity and don’t have to blow it all up to get a high pick.

Here’s how the new lotto could impact our upcoming picks…

In 2027 we get the worst of Utah/Minny/Cleveland. Most likely one of those teams will be a top 7 seed, but there’s a world they are all 8 seeds or lower and in that case we would actually get 1 lotto ball…we’d get whichever teams ball was drawn last.

In 2028 we have our own pick, but I believe Washington and Brooklyn have swap rights on it. It might be Memphis… but again, if those teams and us are all 8 seeds or worse(seems very possible), we could have a lotto ball.

In the future, you basically get a 2.7% chance for every lotto ball(though as teams balls are selected, that number goes up as balls will be removed from the drawing). A 9 seed would have 2 lotto balls and a 5.4% chance at the 1st pick(and something like a 25-30% chance at a top 5 pick). If you land in that 4-10 range, you’d have an 8.1% chance at the top pick and somewhere in the vicinity of 40-45% chance at a top 5 pick.

You no longer would get stuck in no man’s land. If you have a 40 win team, you aren’t penalized for keeping it together, in fact that’s the team that will have the best odds in the lottery. It encourages building a team that is at least competitive over tearing it down to nothing. I have to believe Ishbia is all for this as he’s not a guy that was ever going to tank and that’s who it benefits.

Maybe the solution is to eliminate the NBA draft altogether.

You could still have a rookie salary scale and have a league panel of scouts rank the top players 1-30 to receive "first round contracts" and 30 more for "second round contracts" paying a salary corresponding to their ranking. Let the rookies sign with whatever team as long as they have cap space. (you could either assign a cap number that equals the first year of their contract or the average salary of the contract). Let teams use their own cap space to add a first round rookie, but also create a "rookie exception" for each team based on their team record (or record over a certain number of games or seasons), with teams limited to four signings each year (with a limit of two "first round" players and teams over the cap being allowed to sign no more than 2 second round players). The total designated for the players signed by a team cannot exceed the total being paid to the top player.

For instance, Victor Wembanyama is entering the draft. Everyone wants him of course, but if a top team wanted to so sign him (4 years, $55 million) they would have to be $12/$13.75 million under the cap. To clear space teams would have to renounce unrestricted and restricted free agents until they had space to sign Wembanyama and then couldn't re-sign the renounced players for at least a year. Basically make the rookies available to every team, but make it hurt a little to clear the cap space needed.

Let's look at a team like the Suns - they're a middle of the league team record-wise for the last three years and won't have any practical cap space because they have free agents they want to re-sign. So let's say the league rookie pool formula gives them $6 million to spend. This would eliminate them from signing the top rookies unless they had cap space and if they use cap pace they would lose their rookie pool.

Eliminating the draft probably would scare a lot of people who think the richest franchises would sign all the top rookies, but it's the exceptions and Bird rights that really allow the rich teams to spend more. Find a way to set up the system so that high-spending teams would be limited in what they could spend and it would work.

I think tanking is a problem when teams are sitting guys and actively trying to lose games and doing it for years in a row. It sucks but they've been incentivized to do because of the system in place. So the trick is to incentivize winning somehow. Not sure if this completely fixes the problem. Teams will still try to be bad and hold out their best players.

I do hope FOs work harder to put good teams together more quickly via trades and FA. But even some are still taking their instructions from ownership.

This is messed up. How many times have we been down this road? They keep thinking they can make the system work if they can just find the right weightings. Stop tweaking the weightings and fix the concept. Tweaking the weightings hasn’t satisfied anyone yet. This time won’t be different.

The NBA must've seen my post a few weeks back about restricting #1 picks back to back and not allowing top 5 picks three years in a row.

Just ditch the lottery and have it determined by their records over the last 3 years -

WAS - 50-196, 203
UTH - 70-176, .285
BRK - 78-168, .317
CHA - 84-162, .341
NWO - 97-149, .394 [to ATL]
MEM - 100-146, .407
SAC - 108-138, .439
CHI - 109-137, .443
DAL - 115-131, .467
IND - 116-130, .472 [to LAC]
MIA - 126-120, .512
MIL - 129-117, .524
GSW - 131-115, .533
LAC - 143-103, .581

The only think I think you might tweak is move the play-in losers [CHA, GSW, LAC, MIA] to the 11-14 picks.

I think this new tanking proposal is pretty good. No system is perfect, but I think this one gets closer to punishing and rewarding the right teams. It has several qualities I like:

- Very worst teams aren't rewarded
- Teams at/near the play-in can still get a good pick
- Much flatter lottery for everyone
- More of the picks are in the lottery (not just top 4)

I think it has a few flaws. I think any system with large "cliffs" between one position and another will inevitably have teams jockeying for position across that boundary. So that large gap between the bottom-3 teams and the next group concerns me a bit; wish it were a bit more of a gradual slope after the 3rd-worst team. And I worry a little bit that this new system may disincentivize teams from trying for the play-in, but I think teams do want to go to the playoffs enough, and the payoff isn't large enough, that they won't do too much of that.

I don't agree with the sentiment that tanking is not a problem. I think it's really bad for the league that a nontrivial share of games involve one or two teams that are not genuinely trying to win. And I do think that trying something new, while imperfect, is much better than just leaving things as they have been.

How about we just ditch the idea of giving the top picks to the teams that demonstrate need by losing?

My scrip proposal addresses this naturally. You don’t get the top rookies by losing, you get them by saving your scrip. If you win with the players you find shopping in the bargain bin, there’s no reason to punish you for it. If you spend big and still lose there’s no need to compensate you for it; you live with what you bought, so spend wisely or you could be stuck with that Durant-Booker-Beal core for years.

Cap wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 29, 2026 6:51 pm

How about we just ditch the idea of giving the top picks to the teams that demonstrate need by losing?

My scrip proposal addresses this naturally. You don’t get the top rookies by losing, you get them by saving your scrip. If you win with the players you find shopping in the bargain bin, there’s no reason to punish you for it. If you spend big and still lose there’s no need to compensate you for it; you live with what you bought, so spend wisely or you could be stuck with that Durant-Booker-Beal core for years.

I’m all for scrapping the system completely, but it doesn’t seem like that’s ever going to happen

Mori Chu wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 29, 2026 6:25 pm

I think it has a few flaws. I think any system with large "cliffs" between one position and another will inevitably have teams jockeying for position across that boundary. So that large gap between the bottom-3 teams and the next group concerns me a bit; wish it were a bit more of a gradual slope after the 3rd-worst team. And I worry a little bit that this new system may disincentivize teams from trying for the play-in, but I think teams do want to go to the playoffs enough, and the payoff isn't large enough, that they won't do too much of that.

Well that jockeying between the bottom 3 teams and the next group is intentional…the bottom 3 have worse odds so the jockeying is in the reverse direction…trying to win.

This isn’t working. We need a lottery.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to weight it.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Cap wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:38 am

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

That's me trying to bench press.

ShelC wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:55 am

Cap wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:38 am

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

That's me trying to bench press.

Adding on those heavier and heavier weights, am I right?!

Cap wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:38 am

This isn’t working. We need a lottery.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to weight it.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

I wouldn’t call what they did just changing the weights. I’m not saying it’s perfect and won’t get adjusted later, but they completely flipped the model.

Their goal was to stop the widespread every game tanking we saw this year…this new process does that. I don’t think that’s even debatable…there’s now zero incentive for it.

Cap wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:38 am

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to weight it.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

Oops, that didn’t work. We need to change the weights again.

My inner monologue while dieting.

What if you made it an auction style and just give teams more points to spend based off their last 3 years like Bobster said. Let teams bid on each draft pick. Any points unused can rollover to the following year or be traded.

As long as the opportunity for top picks is tied to losing, there is incentive for losing. The overall strength of that incentive is determined by the strength of the relationship between losing and pick opportunity; exactly who gets how much incentive to lose is modified by tweaking the weights, and it can even be made locally negative at the price of making it stronger elsewhere.

The only way to kill the incentive for losing is to kill the relationship between losing and opportunity. That’s just math.