NBA Draft Lottery System

The Lottery

Since the NBA Draft Lottery was last week and the Nets (worst team) got the #3 pick, the T-Wolves (2nd worst team) got the #4 pick, and the Kings (3rd worst team) got the #5 pick, the argument has opened once again about whether or not to get rid of the lottery completely. As it is now, the NBA Draft Lottery works as follows: It is essentially for the top 3 picks in the draft involving the non-playoff teams. Each team has a certain percentage of winning each of the top 3 picks. The worse your record, the better your chances (the worst record has a 25% chance of getting the #1 pick). The first 3 picks are randomly drawn and picks 4-14 are in descending order of record based on the teams remaining. For example: New Jersey had the worst record in the NBA this year. This means that they can do no worse than #4 because if they don’t get top 3, they have the worst record out of the teams remaining. Conversely, the Houston Rockets, who had the best record out of the non-playoff teams, either get a top 3 pick or the #14 pick, nothing in between, 
because they would have the best record of the teams remaining.

Lottery Haters

There are many critics of this system who suggest the NBA go to the pre-1985 system/current NFL system where the picks in the draft are based solely on record, i.e. worst team gets the first pick. The argument is that the worst team in the league should be awarded the best pick in the draft in order to help prevent them from being the worst team the following years. In doing so, this helps guarantee that the worst team in the league does not have to continue being the worst team in the league and will essentially get the most coveted player in the draft, helping them in the quest to get better.

Here to Stay

I believe that the lottery system is fantastic and that we should absolutely not switch back to the way it was. Probably the biggest thing the lottery does is help prevent tanking. This stops a team who has a chance to have the worst record in the league from benching their best players and losing games on purpose because in the lottery, nothing is guaranteed. In fact, since the weighted lottery system was instituted in 1990 (from 1985-1989 the non-playoff teams were randomly drawn with no weighted percentages based on record) only 3 times has the team with the worst record gotten the first pick. This makes sure that the teams know that nothing is guaranteed and that purposefully losing games is not rewarded. Is it fair that a non-tanking team with the worst record doesn’t get the first pick in the draft? Probably not, but that’s just the way it is, you can’t make exceptions because trying to tell whether or not a team is losing on purpose is a slippery slope.

Hidden Treasure

Keep in mind that even though a team gets the #1 pick in the draft, that certainly doesn’t mean they are guaranteed the best player. There have been plenty of busts at the #1 spot (Kwame Brown, Michael Olowokandi, and Greg Oden is vastly approaching this list) as well as great players who weren’t selected #1 (#2: Jason Kidd and Kevin Durant, #3: Michael Jordan, #13: Kobe Bryant). Although nobody will say that they don’t want the #1 pick, history has proved that sometimes it is a blessing in disguise and that the talent pool in any given year is definitely not limited to the first player picked in that draft.