NBA Draft lottery reform must be part of widespread change, not end goal

Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA draft lottery is quickly approaching, which means we are just days away from having familiar angles pop up about tanking, rewarding losing and the system as currently constructed. Marginalizing the incentive to lose is a good thing, but a quick fix to the draft lottery will do nothing to disincentivize the importance of the draft. Not without fixes to other elements of the equation, anyway.

Owning a professional sports franchise is by its very nature a luxury, though it’s hard to explain that to the billionaires who call the shots. It is in their nature to look at the bottom line, or they wouldn’t have accrued the wealth necessary to purchase a team in the first place. Tanking sucks for fans, but if they were still willing to pay up for bad product — as many fans of NFL teams do — owners would be leery to shake up the status quo.

With tanking at the forefront of NBA reform conversation, writers and analysts have shared alternatives to the current lottery over the last couple seasons. Grantland’s Zach Lowe has been out in front of the story more often than not. Over the last couple years, he’s reported several alternatives floated around by league executives, ranging from the expanded lottery shot down in October to the outwardly puzzling wheel draft.

The wheel proposal in particular — which suggested a league operating on 5-6 year collective bargaining deals had the conviction to enact a change with a 30-year cycle — highlights the absurdity of draft reform. Considering something whose effects would be unknowable until two playing generations shifted through the league indicates that owners are willing to do anything to change the status quo. That’s a dangerous, irrational mindset, particularly when the lottery is just one piece of a larger equation.

As player salaries spun out of control in the late 90’s and early 2000’s thanks to wild spending from established and burgeoning franchises alike, owners reacted by kneecapping free agency in an effort to stop short-term bleeding. The implementation of maximum salaries and progressive limitation of contract length will never stop bad deals from happening, and can only functionally limit the time they last.

The primary legacy of that reform is the difficulty of competing earnestly in the free agency market. There is no option for a losing team to offer additional money and years to free agents at the top of the market, effectively shrinking the suitors to the player’s current team and a select list of contenders. Instead, teams on the downturn must choose between shopping in the bargain bin or (likely) overpaying for mid-tier talent. It doesn’t matter if you fall ass backwards into the abyss, as the Milwaukee Bucks did in 2013-14, or gear up to game the system like the Philadelphia 76ers, the free agency market for bad teams is rough.

Without a truly free market in which to bid, teams at the bottom must maximize return from the draft to become relevant. Yet unlike in the other major American sports — save hockey’s lottery for the top spot — the worst teams are not guaranteed their choice of up-and-coming talent. Recent suggestions for change to the lottery drive even further away from that idea of giving the worst franchises first choice of top talent.

For as much as the NBA bloviates about competitive balance, they don’t show much interest in promoting and strengthening the league from top to bottom. It has always been a league of haves and have nots, dating back to the domination of Russell’s Celtics, leading into Bird vs. Magic, passing the torch to the Unstoppa-Bulls and rotating titles between future Hall of Famers today.

The national TV slate reflects that ethos, brimming with already-branded stars and big-market draws, even as teams like the Knicks and Lakers provide the entertainment value of ingesting Ipecac. Human supernovas like Anthony Davis — a recent No. 1 overall pick whose unibrow is one of the most recognizable “features” in the league — are relegated to the backpages while the kinks are worked out. There’s no time for the beginning of a star’s character arc when we can watch a decrepit Kobe Bryant chuck for 36 minutes.

And we’re not quite done!

All of this is at odds with devices implemented by the NBA to keep drafted players with their original teams. Restricted free agency rookie deals and five-year max offers exist to ensure draftees on bottom-feeding teams stick around long enough to impact the franchise. This assumes, however, that the players acquired by bad teams are talented enough to do so. Numerous studies and cursory observation of the league will tell you that level of skill and physical prowess is only available at the top of the draft, save for a few exceptions. What good is the ability to hang onto players you drafted if those players don’t move the needle enough to pull you out of the basement?

This is not to say changes to the draft would be a cynical attempt to create an oligarchy, but the NBA has historically failed to consider or consistently ignored the domino effect of reform. Even if the NBA were to find the magic formula for the draft and free agency, it would take a fundamental change of basketball to mute the present-day impact of the draft. Given minute allocation and the size of NBA rosters, one player can shift a team’s fortunes unlike in any other sport.

If free agency was a reasonable talent acquisition pool for all 30 teams, a lottery shift would make sense. But as it stands, the draft is the only realistic, reliable means through which bad teams can improve. The NBA doesn’t have a draft lottery problem or a tanking problem, it has a supply problem. And unless a solution for that issue comes alongside changes to the draft lottery structure, we’re all just wasting time.