Why the proposal for NBA Lottery reform was turned down

Playing it safe. That, in essence, was what owners decided to do when they turned down a proposal to change the lottery system to discourage teams from tanking – or losing on purpose – in order to get a better chance of securing the top draft picks.

Expected to pass reform by a lopsided vote of 28-2 at the worst just two days earlier, the owners could only muster a 17-13 vote in favor of change, falling short of the required 23 votes to approve the proposal.

Oklahoma City GM Sam Presti must have succeeded convincing other teams to vote against the proposal as he quietly lobbied his fellow GMs and executives using the small market-big market argument.

In the end, the small anti-reform group, which was previously made up of only Presti and the man against whose team the whole shebang was aimed at, Philadelphia’s Sam Hinkie, rode the tide of the great unknown to prevent the pro-reformists to reach the required minimum number of votes.

“Several teams started to wonder about unintended consequences and voted ‘no’ to be able to do further study,” one owner told Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, who, along with Grantland’s Zach Lowe, had expected the change proposal to be carried overwhelmingly by the Board of Governors during their meeting last October 22.

“I think, in essence, the owners were concerned about unintended consequences,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver himself said. “I think we all recognize we need to find the right balance between creating the appropriate incentives on one hand for teams to, of course, win, and on the other hand allowing the appropriate rebuilding and the draft to work as it should in which the worst-performing teams get the highest picks in the draft.”

(RELATED: Tankers beware, NBA Draft lottery changes are coming)

Under the proposal, which is ostensibly designed to discourage the idea of tanking but is, in reality, aimed at cutting down Philadelphia’s blatant strategy of deliberately getting bad to increase its chances of landing the best talent in the draft, the lottery odds system would be flattened out. This would be done by giving the league’s four worst teams an equal 12 percent chance of getting the first pick, with the next two teams after them having only slightly worse odds at 10 percent. The decline would be more gradual from there, with the No. 7 team getting an 8.5 percent chance, No. 8 seven percent, No. 9 5.5 percent, and No. 10 four percent. 

The top six spots would also be drawn in a lottery, in contrast to the current system that only has the top three being drawn. The team with the worst record could thus fall as low as seventh, and the second-worst team as low as eighth.

The current system has the team with the worst record holding a 25 percent chance of getting the top pick, the club with the second-worst mark 19.9 percent, and each subsequent team’s odds declining slightly the lower it gets up to No. 14. The worst team, however, may fall only as low as fourth, and the second-worst no lower than fifth.

That, it turned out, will still be the procedure for now after 13 teams voted against the reform proposal, which far surpassed the mere eight needed to block it. The 13 teams that voted “no” are Philadelphia and OKC, as expected, and also included San Antonio, Phoenix, New Orleans, Detroit, Miami, Milwaukee, Utah, Washington, Atlanta, Charlotte and Chicago.

The anti-Philadelphia sentiment was really strong, but even those who hated the way the 76ers have brazenly tried to lose voted with them simply on the overriding concern about how such a reform could hurt small-market teams. With other changes coming into the league as the new $24 billion TV contract kicks in two years from now – which will in turn increase the salary cap and change the way revenue sharing among big-earning teams and those which do not earn is done – the negative voters decided to stay on the safe side.

In these voters’ minds, Presti has made his point clear: The big-market teams would want such a change in the lottery system made because it will give them another advantage over small markets in securing top talent. Big-market teams already have an advantage signing superstar free agents and an advantage trading for them because those players are far more likely to sign a contract extension with them. And if these same big-market teams get better access to the top players in the draft, that advantage will further be multiplied.

One GM who understands such a concern but whose owner voted for a new system told Yahoo Sports: “Everyone is too focused on Philly, on one team in one situation. The only chance for a lot of teams to ever get a transformational player is through the draft, and eventually we are all going to be in the lottery, in that spot. The teams that’ll drop from two to eight, or three to nine – that’s just going to take the air out of those fan bases and franchises. They’ll get little, if any chance, to improve. We are going to see more big-market teams who just missed the playoffs jump up and get a great young player at the top of the draft. And people are going to go ‘What the (expletive) just happened?’”

The executive certainly knows what he’s talking about. Since the lottery system was adopted for the 1985 draft, only four teams with the worst record or tied for the worst mark have earned the top overall pick, just two of them in the last 24 years. These are the LA Clippers, who were the first team to do it in 1988 and took Danny Manning, the then-New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets in 1990, giving them the chance to draft Derrick Coleman, the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003, which enabled them to grab LeBron James, and the Orlando Magic in 2004, which got them Dwight Howard.

And one should not forget what happened in the last four years, when the Cavs themselves won the lottery three times, the last time this year when they just had a 1.7 percent chance of getting the top pick but got it anyway. They then used it on Andrew Wiggins, who, combined with last year’s No. 1 choice, Anthony Bennett, enabled Cleveland to acquire All-NBA forward Kevin Love to team with James and star point guard Kyrie Irving, the top pick they got in 2011.  

Imagine if the odds for that scenario get even higher? Lowe says the proposal would have “injected more randomness” into the lottery, reducing the chances of teams to plan the way OKC he says did it for Kevin Durant and discouraging tanking to a certain extent. But it would have also increased the likelihood of a “solid” team near the bottom of the lottery lucking out, like the Cavs did over the last four seasons.

“In the end, teams felt rushed trying to approve a major change at a time when so much other stuff is changing,” Lowe observed. “The lotto anxiety was especially acute among small-market teams. Their thinking is simple: Non-glamour teams are never going to draw superstar free agents, especially if the big boys have cap room every summer and no qualms about overspending. The only way the non-glams can get superstars is to draft them, and the only reliable way to do that is to finish at or near the top of the lottery.”

Lowe says it was in reality a “stunning defeat” for the NBA, which he said expected to “ride the tide of anti-Sixers sentiment to an easy win.” Some executives have made no secret of their belief that Philadelphia, by compromising its ability to win for what it hopes will be a successful run in the long term, has “violated the sacred obligation” of every team to compete as hard as it can at all times. They feel that the Sixers’ brazenness, which is part of a strategy devised by Hinkie and approved by their ownership, has compromised the integrity of the league.

The Sixers’ strategy simply involves drafting pieces they can use as a foundation for the future but at the same time remaining bad to enable them to obtain some more pieces the succeeding year. In this year’s draft, for example, the players they obtained – No. 3 Joel Embiid and No. 12 Dario Saric for whose rights they traded – are potentially great players but will not play for them for quite a while, defeating the purpose of the draft which is to get better. In fact, the earliest Saric, a 6-10 forward, can join the Sixers is 2016, when the first two years of his contract with Turkish league powerhouse Anadolu Efes are completed.  

Embiid, meanwhile, is expected to miss at least the first four months or so of the 2015 season in a campaign following one in which Philadelphia’s previous first-round pick, Nerlens Noel, also missed the entire season because of injury. There are some in fact who feel that Embiid could be sidelined the whole campaign – partly because of a stress fracture in his right foot that’s not expected to heal quickly and partly because Philly will deliberately hold him back – thus raising the possibility of the Sixers not playing any of their top picks this year.  

It is the perception that some teams, because of such schemes, are not necessarily trying to win that the league is concerned about, and Lowe says it “sought to squash the perception” that there are, therefore, irregularities involved in building NBA teams.

Silver himself expressed his concern in this regard.

“I don’t necessarily disagree with the way it works now,” he says. “I’d say from a personal standpoint, what I’m most concerned about is perception out there right now and frankly the pressure on a lot of our teams, even from their very fans, to somehow underperform because it’s in some people’s view the most efficient and quickest way to get better. I think that’s a corrosive perception out there.”

The league, of course, wants the public to see that small-market teams are not disadvantaged by the lottery system, as exemplified by Indiana and Memphis, two teams that haven’t had exceptionally high draft picks but which have done relatively well vis-à-vis big-market ballclubs. San Antonio and OKC are two more small-market clubs that have, on the other hand, successfully built their teams through a high lottery pick (Tim Duncan in 1997 and Durant in 2007) and have maintained their cachet with sound management.

So what happens now that lottery reform has been put in the backburner, at least for now?

Lowe says the NBA is likely to revive it again particularly with the new TV deal on the horizon. “Would not be surprised if issue reappears at All-Star break or some other time when the entire Board of Governors can get together,” he tweeted.

If and when that time happens, most, if not all teams, would have hopefully been more informed of the nuances of the proposed reforms to be able to judge them better, and thereby be in a better position to make a decision that’s best not only for themselves but, most of all, the entire league and its fans. That’s the way the great Red Auerbach decided on things whenever an issue came up before that affected his Boston Celtics.  

“Would it be good for the Celtics? Maybe not, but as long as it’s good for the entire league, then I’m all for it,” Auerbach used to say. And so, it must be, for the rest of the teams now.

SHORTSHOTS: Chicago is the only big-market team that decided against lottery reform… Cleveland exercised the fourth-year option on starting big guard Dion Waiters worth $5.1 million.  The 6-foot-4 Waiters was the Cavaliers’ first pick in 2012, the fourth overall. He averaged 15.9 points and 3.0 assists last season… Phoenix cut center Earl Barron, a former PBA import. The seven-foot journeyman, now 33, has played 124 NBA games for seven teams in seven years, averaging 4.9 points and 3.7 rebounds. Other cuts before the NBA opening on October 28 (October 29 in Manila): Australian forward Joe Ingles by the LA Clippers; center Bernard James, forward Ivan Johnson and guard Doron Lamb by Dallas; and center Aaron Gray by Detroit… NBC Sports’ Kurt Helin says Jason Richardson may have played his last season. The 33-year-old guard, who missed all of last season after knee surgery, has suffered a stress fracture in his right foot and may not be able to play at all this year for Philadelphia… Also likely having played his last game is two-time league MVP Steve Nash, who will be sidelined for the entire season because of nerve damage in his back. The 40-year-old Nash played just 15 games for the Lakers last season and 50 before that, his first in LA. This would have been his last season with the ballclub… Incoming sophomore guard Victor Oladipo, the second overall pick in the 2013 draft, is out for a month with a facial fracture suffered in practice. Already missing all of Orlando’s preseason with a sprained medial collateral ligament along with teammate Channing Frye, the 6-4 Oladipo was hurt after taking an inadvertent elbow during a drill. More injuries: OKC guard Anthony Morrow, out at least four weeks for a sprained left MCL; and New York forward Andrea Bargnani, out for at least the first three games with a hamstring injury… US District Judge Michael Shipp granted a temporary restraining order to the NCAA, the NBA, NFL and other major pro sports leagues last week prohibiting Monmouth Park, a New Jersey racetrack, from accepting sports bets over the weekend as planned. The ruling is a blow to New Jersey’s desperate effort to help its ailing gaming industry after four Atlantic City casinos have closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. The state believes Las Vegas-style sports betting would provide a spark and has been battling the leagues for more than two years. But the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) prohibits states from “authorizing, operating, advertising, promoting or licensing” sports betting in all but four states: Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon… Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen has donated a mammoth total of $100 million to the fight against the deadly Ebola disease. Allen, also the Seattle Seahawks owner, said that among the initiatives he’s supporting is the development of two medevac containment units that the US State Department can use to safely evacuate health workers who become infected. He’s also working with the World Health Organization to increase its capacity for handling the logistics of transporting international aid workers. Money will also go to the University of Massachusetts Medical School to help provide decontamination and lab equipment to Liberian hospitals, as well as to community outreach and education in Liberia.  Props to you, Mr. Allen. – Rappler.com