1st Proposal
In the first proposal, sources told Charania, 18 teams --the bottom 10 that miss the play-in tournament, and the eight that qualify for it – all will be part of the draft lottery•
The bottom 10 teams will all have an equal 8% chance of moving up in the lottery, with the remaining 20% of the odds being split among the eight play-in teams in descending order from 11th through 18th.
All 18 spots would be drawn as part of the lottery in that format.
2nd Proposal
In the second proposal, sources told Charania, 22 teams - the bottom 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament, the eight that qualify for it and the four playoff teams that lose in the first round – will all be included in the lottery, and will be ranked according to their record across two seasons. The last part, weighting teams by their record across the prior two seasons, is how the WNBA weights its lottery system.
Under that system, each team would need to reach a minimum win total floor in each season, to mitigate the need to lose every game possible. For example, if the minimum floor for an individual season was 20 wins, a team that went 14-68 would be 20-62 for lottery purposes. And if a team wins 40 games one season and 20 games the next season, it would go in as 30 wins for the lottery.
In this system, the top four spots would be drawn as part of the lottery, as is currently.
3rd Proposal
The third proposal is a “5 by 5” method, sources told Charania. In this one, the same 18 teams from the first proposal – the bottom 10 that miss the play-in, plus the eight that make it – would be entered into the lottery.
The teams with the five worst records would then all have the same odds, with them descending from there, and there would be a lottery drawing for each of the top five picks in the draft.
After those five picks are selected, there would be another lottery drawing for the remaining 13 teams. If any of the teams with the five worst records didn’t land one of those top five spots – like last season, when the teams with the first (the Utah Jazz), second (Washington Wizards) and fourth (New Orleans Pelicans) worst records all moved back to 5th, 6th and 7th, respectively - the lowest they could wind up in the second lottery drawing would be 10th, preventing a bad team from falling too far down the draft board.
TAG@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I like the proposals. Assuming the league defines a “winning team” not as the team that wins a game but as the team that wins the championship (or the Emirates™ NBA Cup), it makes sense that the 10th worst team and worst team have the same lottery odds, since both have a 0% chance of winning. It also makes sense to let play-in teams randomly move up in the draft, since it can pull a team out of endless mediocrity. I don’t like that the 11th worst team is likely going to have much lower odds. I imagine teams that are headed for the 10th seed in their conference will try to tank down in the standings. A 5% chance of getting the first pick in the draft is probably better than getting to be the visiting team in 1-2 playoff games.