Before you get too excited about trying to build through the draft, you need to take the NBA’s new lottery rules into account, according to an excellent piece from Jonathan Tjarks of The Ringer.
A good example of this is the Cavaliers. They finished with 19 wins in each of the past two seasons — and ended up with the No. 5 overall pick both years, anyway.
The Cavs have tried to sell the idea that they’re happy with their picks. But let’s face it, Darius Garland (2019) ain’t Ja Morant or Zion Williamson. And when you finish with the second-worst record in the league, you’d like to believe you can get one of the top two prospects.
The Knicks also missed out on Zion and Morant, despite finishing with the worst record in 2019. The Warriors finished with the worst record last season. At least they landed at No. 2. But owning the top pick means controlling the entire draft.
Anyway, it’s very evident that the worst record leading to the top pick is not how the weighted lottery works these days, as Tjarks explained — and teams can no longer tank and tank and tank their way to the top.
“The team with the worst record used to have a 25 percent chance of getting the no. 1 pick, and couldn’t fall below no. 4. Now, the teams with the bottom three records have the same 14 percent chance at no. 1, while the worst team can slip all the way to no. 5,” Tjarks wrote. “Winning the lottery always came down to the bounces of ping-pong balls. But now the benefits to losing are lesser than before. The days of the quick fix in the draft are over.”
The NBA has tried for years to come up with a successful plan to discourage tanking and keep teams playing hard until the end. Adam Silver even recently instituted a playoff “play-in” tournament that gives the 7-10 seeds a a reason to stay excited.
And once teams finally figure out that tanking no longer does a whole lot for you in terms of draft position, well, maybe they’ll be forced to be smarter about how to build a winner.
“The top of the 2021 NBA draft is loaded with potential franchise players, including Oklahoma State point forward Cade Cunningham, USC big man Evan Mobley, and G League Ignite guard Jalen Green,” Tjarks wrote. “But the worst teams in the NBA can’t bank on landing any of them, no matter how much they lose. The league changed the lottery odds before the 2019 draft to make it more likely for those teams to slip to the middle of the draft order, effectively devaluing a full-out tank.”
