GM McDonough applauds NBA’s draft-lottery changes

FLAGSTAFF – At Monday's media day, Suns General Manager Ryan McDonough got a chuckle out of the assembled crowd when he said Phoenix employed “strategic resting” of its veterans late last season.

Point guard Eric Bledsoe didn’t play the final 15 games of the season. Center Tyson Chandler had an even longer break: He didn’t get on the court the final 25 games. Phoenix’s record those last 15 games was 2-13, including an 11-game losing streak in which they lost just one game by fewer than six points.

The Suns never said so, but their intentions seemed clear: They were trying to lose as many games as possible to get a higher pick in the NBA draft.

The strategy didn’t work – Phoenix got the fourth pick and selected Kansas forward Josh Jackson – but in a draft lottery system that rewards the very worst, the Suns were trying to win by losing.

“If you’re in February, March and April and the playoff hopes have faded, you have some tough decisions to make, and they’re not fun decisions to make,” McDonough said.

The issue of tanking – or strategic resting – became such a hot-button issue for the NBA that on Thursday the league’s board of governors passed draft lottery reform that will begin with the 2019 draft.

Here’s how it works: Under the current system, the team with the worst record has a 25 percent chance to get the No. 1 pick, the team with the second-worst record has a 19.9 chance, and the thirdworst team has a 15.6 chance. Under the new model, the three teams with the worst records will share a 14 percent chance of getting the No. 1 overall pick. In addition, four teams, instead of the current three, will become part of the lottery draw. Although the new rules could negatively impact a rebuilding team such as the Suns, McDonough applauded the changes.

“Personally, I think it’s a positive step for the league,” he said. “You never want a team to have an incentive, even a marginal incentive, to lose games and not put their best team on the court and not try to do as well as they can. The way the odds were set up I think you can make an argument that, I don’t want to say that behavior was encouraged, but it had the potential to be rewarded. The way the new, smoother odds look, I think and hope teams will compete and try to win as many games as they can because the odds are more balanced.”

Also part of the new reform: Increased odds for teams at the bottom of the lottery of getting the No. 1 pick. For example, the team with the seventhworst record currently has a 4.3 percent chance of drafting No. 1. The system starting in ’19 increases that percentage to 7.5 percent.

Some NBA executives already have said they’re concerned that will only encourage more teams to tank, but the new system could benefit the Suns. In 2021, they get Miami’s unprotected firstround pick as part of the 2015 trade that sent point guard Goran Dragic to the Heat.

“It adds a little variance in there for us,” McDonough said.