Why the NBA's new draft lottery will lead to 'crazy results'
Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor breaks down the notable takeaways from the league’s new protocol that was announced on Thursday. Check out the full conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Lottery reform has been approved, and there are a couple new things in there that haven't been previously leaked out over the past month since the 3-2 lottery system was first revealed.
Just a quick review for people who might be unfamiliar with the 3-2-1 lottery system.
We are moving from 14 to 16 teams.
Those two additional teams are gonna be the loser of the seven versus eight play-in game.
So that team is going to receive one lottery ball, because with the 3-2-1 lottery system, the way it's gonna work is there's a relegation zone for the bottom three teams.
If you're in the bottom three of the league, you get only two balls in the lottery.
The teams that finish fourth to 10th of worst record are gonna get three balls, which comes with roughly an 8% chance of landing the number one pick.
The next group of teams is gonna receive two balls, the same amount as the bottom three teams, and then those play-in teams I already mentioned are gonna receive one.
The t-- The NBA is gonna draft or v- or draw for all 16 of these picks.
The bottom three teams can only fall as far as to number 12.
Every other team can land everywhere else.
So there is gonna be a hell of a lot of randomness in the draft lottery for the next three years because that's what the NBA has decided to do.
This is a three-year trial for the 2027, 2028, and 2029 drafts, and then after that, they're gonna reevaluate and figure out what they wanna do.
But we are gonna get some crazy draft lottery results.
And what's we learned today, and this is very interesting for a few different reasons, we learned that the NBA is going to reverse the order of the top 16 for the second round.
This is interesting because let's say, for example, you end up with the 16th pick and you own, also own your second round pick.
That means your pick in the second round is gonna go to 31.
You're gonna have the first pick in the second round.
So one of the criticisms of the 3-2-1 lottery system has been, does it create incentive to tank at the edge of the playoffs now, an even greater incentive?
Because if you look at the, the lottery odds, the way they break down, y- like if you're the, the sixth seed and you don't feel like you have any shot of making it to, to, to make a playoff run, you might rather lose a few games towards the end of the year, get the, get into the nine spot, drop out of that, and hey, you get a 5.4% chance of getting the number one pick, and you get a really good chance as well of just landing in the top five or landing at the eighth pick or the ninth pick because they draw all 16 of them.
And that's the big difference this year.
And not only that, if you still land number 16, guess what?
You also would get the 31st pick.
And so there's a greater incentive now to be in the lottery, and that's something that's a bit unexpected that was not previously discussed, at least publicly.
I'm sure
