Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban predicts 'number of trades will explode' with NBA's new anti-tanking plan

The NBA has finally revealed its new anti-tanking plan, and no one can say the league was afraid of rocking the boat.

The league’s planned proposal went public on Wednesday and reportedly has the support of a majority of teams, with an owners’ vote to approve it scheduled for May 28. The crux of the system is a new 3-2-1 structure of draft lottery odds, which will see 16 different teams have a shot at the first overall pick with one, two or three ping-pong balls in the basket.

Notably, the system penalizes the league’s three worst teams in the standings, giving them only two ping-pong balls (5.4% chance at the top pick) while every other team that falls short of the play-in tournament gets three (8.1%). The full breakdown:

The proposed system both simplifies and flattens the odds compared to the previous system, in which the bottom three teams all had a 14% chance at the first pick.

It will take years to fully see every consequence of the system, but one stakeholder already has a prediction. That would be Mark Cuban, former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks and current minority owner.

In a lengthy tweet posted Wednesday, Cuban broke down how he sees the league operating in a system where 14 different teams have at least a 5.4% chance at the top pick.

The biggest change, as he puts it: “the number of trades will explode.”

Essentially, Cuban argues that the value of a first-round pick just increased significantly, which will make teams more aggressive in trade talks. He even described a scenario in which a team is incentivized to not just bottom out, but to trade their current young players for a shot at, say, a Victor Wembanyama in the draft: