Yesterday the NBA draft lottery took place to great fanfare and surprise. Only one of the bottom three teams record-wise got a top 3 pick, and it was only the third. This draft especially has a "clear top two" in Zion Williamson and Ja Morant, meaning one of those two spots were all-important. But with the lottery that we got, none of the teams that clearly needed the help of these two game changers, won't get them. This, combined with the Lakers managing a top 4 pick despite being a top 4 seed in the West at one point has shed some negative light on the system.
The lottery and the draft itself are weirdly diametrically opposing concepts. The draft is meant as a tool to competitively balance teams, to allow the worst teams to pick the best prospects so that they can dig themselves out of the basement. It doesn't ensure this however, and still leaves room for good and bad front office management. As a system, it works decently well, and is used in every major american sport. The lottery system throws this for a loop, by having the non playoff teams all enter into a pseudo-random system. All teams in the lottery have a chance at a top 4 pick, with de-escalating odds depending on record. Besides those top 4 picks, every team has various other picks they could possibly get, the better you did, the worse the other picks in your pool are. For instance, the Sacramento Kings, the best team to miss the playoffs, had a 95.2% chance to get the 14th pick, along with the tiny percentage to get any of the top 4. The lottery system is obviously to combat tanking, or intentionally losing games to secure a better draft slot. This is only used in the NBA, every other sport is a straight record vs. pick relationship. But the question is, does the lottery work or matter?
While the Cavaliers and the Suns were "punished" for being bad this year by defying odds and ending up without top 4 picks, why? Weren't they punished enough for being bad with low attendance and general misery? And without the benefit of a Morant or Williamson they may be bad for a long while. While tanking is bad, the difference between a bad team and a tanking team is thin to none. The 76ers, the darling of the tank, were legitimately awful. Sure they could've done better by keeping some assets instead of dealing anyone that had any semblance of value, but the facts remains, they were terrible. The players did not intentionally throw games, and such action could be punished by the commissioner. In fact, even with the 76ers not really intentionally throwing games, Hinkie was punished anyways. And, the lottery doesn't really do much to disincentive losing anyways. Even though the NBA has the lottery, they are the ones with the tanking problem. The worst teams will still be the worst to get better odds. All it does is make a low chance to basically ruin the concept of the draft through sheer chance. It doesn't really reward doing better, as the odds for a Sacramento type team to get a top 4 pick are astronomically low. But it punishes teams at the whims of fate that were bad and couldn't necessarily help being bad. There is also a weird concept of certain teams deserving or not deserving better picks. But the Lakers, who were a mess, wound up with the 4th pick against odds. Did they deserve better? The Kings, who were 1 step away from the playoffs were a dumpster fire for years, did they? Did the Cavaliers who got 3 number 1 picks in five years deserve theirs?
The Lottery is a well-meaning but totally ineffectual system. It arbitrarily rewards or punishes team for little reason besides luck. It harms the basic principle of the draft, and doesn't even really do what it's meant to do in stopping teams from tanking. It's time to do away with the lottery, and either find a new system or accept the draft for what it is.