Adam Silver explains new lottery system

Adam Silver

The NBA has decided on the fix for teams “tanking” in the regular season to increase their lottery odds. On Wednesday, league commissioner Adam Silver called into Stephen A. Smith’s radio show to dicuss the plan moving forward.

“What we’ve essentially done, and we have a proposal that we’re going to be bringing to our team owners at the end of May, and that is to create essentially a system of flat odds, so that you have no particular incentive to be bad,” Silver said, via ESPN.

“There’s even something we’re calling draft relegation, that if you’re one of the bottom three teams in the league, you’ll actually have worse odds than teams that sort of are four through up until teams make the playoffs.

“We’re still playing a little bit with the system there.”

Silver also confirmed that the league could punish teams it deems are overtly tanking.

“And also ultimately additional authority for the league office that if we do see that type of behavior where there’s a sense that teams aren’t going all out to win, that we can actually take away draft lottery balls, we can change the order of the draft,” Silver said. “Teams have to know it’s not just about paying a financial fine, which they may think is worth it in order to get a top pick, but that it’ll directly impact their ability to get a top draft pick.”

The new system will be in place for three years.

“The system that we’re going to be putting in front of our teams will be in effect for three years,” Silver said. “What we’re telling our teams is, the term people use is it will ‘sunset.’ In other words, this is going to be a new flat-odd system. It’ll be in place for three years and will give us time for additional study to see whether there are other creative ways to better distribute players.

“And it’ll also give us an opportunity to see how our teams respond to the system, because one thing I’ve learned, whether it’s new provisions in the collective bargaining agreement, new provisions in the draft lottery, which as you know we’ve changed many times over the years, the teams are incredibly innovative and creative at coming up with ways to work the system.”

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