Time to scrap the NBA lottery
E SPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth breathlessly introduced the team representatives for the NBA Lottery Show on Tuesday night. You’d have thought she was announcing the dignitaries to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
Hubbarth had to dramatize the names. This was a 30-minute show with 75 seconds of drama. Ever how long it takes to open 13 envelopes. And this lottery show had better theater than most, considering there was much at stake. Would the stately Celtics get the overall No. 1 pick? Would the dysfunctional Lakers keep their high pick?
It’s all madness and it must all end. Not because of 30 minutes of faux drama. Because of the damage it does to the NBA season.
The NBA lottery is an abject failure. It does not do what it was intended to do — promote parity and help woebegone franchises lift themselves from the muck and mire. In some ways, it does the opposite, as with Boston getting Brooklyn’s pick, which turned out to be No. 1 overall.
And the lottery exacts a huge price. Competitive integrity. Far too many teams quit trying, either during the season or in some cases before the season. Far too many teams tank, which is a black eye for a league that is built on competition.
We’ve roasted the NBA for the environment that produced Kevin Durant jumping ship to Golden State, wiping out several stages of competitive balance. And we’re all
aquiver over stars being rested, making a mockery of some games. But the biggest competitive scandal in the NBA today is not the Warriors’ dominance or a superstar in street clothes. It’s the number of teams that don’t try to win.
The Lakers, in particular this season. The Suns, too. The 76ers for several years now. Others, who give up the ghost on making the playoffs and decide to take their chances with ping-pong balls that could overcome long odds and give a franchise a fortune-changing high pick.
Never mind that lottery chasing is fool’s gold. Never mind that lottery chasing rarely works. Never mind that Golden State nor Cleveland nor San Antonio nor Boston nor Houston nor Toronto nor the Clippers nor any current elite team found success via tanking.
The Seattle SuperSonics, who became the Thunder? No. Rebuilding is not tanking. Sam Presti didn’t gut his roster and sit out players in hopes of getting a better draft pick. The lottery ball fell his way in 2007, assuring Seattle of either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, so Presti traded away Ray Allen for justdrafted Jeff Green and veterans Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West.
The Sonics then played Durant and Green each 80 games in 200708, had a bad record (20-62), got unlucky in the lottery when they fell to fourth and settled for Russell Westbrook. The rest is Oklahoma history.
That’s not what some teams are doing these days. The Lakers and Suns and others have been shutting down players with plenty of season left, in an overt mission to lose games and improve their lottery chances. The Sixers have been shutting down players before the season begins. Philadelphia literally has spent four years trying to lose as often as possible.
It’s an abomination. And it’s time to stop rewarding losing.
It’s time to adopt the wheel as the new model for draft order. The wheel is a system proposed in several forms in which the draft order for 30 years is set. Each team gets each of the slots – one through 30 – once over the next 30 years.
You can set it up with the current losing teams getting high picks in the near-upcoming seasons, but eventually they will be in the teens and 20s. You can make it random. Sixth, 24th, 15th, third, 28th, seventh, etc.
But the wheel would eliminate the incentive to lose. And there should never be an incentive to lose. Trying to lose eats at the heart of the game.
Heck, in some ways, the wheel would help dysfunctional franchises. Like the Nets. Get rid of the lottery, and Brooklyn would know exactly what it was trading when it sent three first-round picks to Boston for the aged Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
Sure, the wheel could be cruel. The worst team in the league might pick last some year. The best team in the league might pick first. But with the lottery, the top-seeded (in the East) Celtics are picking first. So how could the wheel be much worse?
The wheel would give smart teams more information. The wheel would give less-intelligent teams less rope to hang itself.
The only loss would be a May lottery show, which stretches 75 seconds of drama over 30 minutes and Walt Frazier’s wardrobe is the highlight of the night.
The gains would be massive. More legitimate basketball. More competitive games. No tanking. No trying to lose. Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok. com/berrytramel.