What if there was a Dramatic Change in the Lottery

For Arizona sports fans, Shane Doan is one of the most visible stars the Valley has ever had. But while he plays in the NHL, he has an idea about the NBA Lottery that would be very interesting if put into practice.

This season the Suns were at the center of the discussion about tanking in the NBA. By trading P.J. Tucker while benching Tyson Chandler, Eric Bledsoe, and Brandon Knight, Suns brass worked harder to lose than at any other time in their 49-year history. By losing the Suns obviously gave themselves the best opportunity possible to land the top pick in the June Draft – though the franchise’s image took a hit in the process.

However, what if the league celebrated winning to earn the best draft pick, instead of losing?

Doan recently discussed a plan on Burns and Gambo’s show on Arizona Sports 98.7 that as soon as a team was officially eliminated from the playoffs, they began accumulating points per win the rest of the way. The team with the most points (thus the most wins) would receive the number one overall pick. The team with the second most points would get the second pick, and so forth.

An extra incentive to win could be placed on games between two teams who both had been eliminated already when faced head-to-head by giving the winner of that matchup two  points instead of just the one. As you will see, this would have shifted a few of the final draft positions, although not too dramatically.

Below is the order that would have occurred if this plan were to have been implemented this season (obviously in reality a few teams including the Suns did not play to win after their elimination so this is a bit skewed). As a note, there were several ties, so the team with the worst record was given the higher pick.

Strangely enough in both columns the Nets (or this season the Celtics) would still retain the first-overall pick because from the date of their elimination (which was March 8, nearly three weeks before the second team in the league was eliminated, the Suns), they won more games than any other eventually eliminated team (9) plus three head-to-head victories against teams that were also eliminated at the time of their game (including one against the Suns).

For the Suns, who tanked to lose, this system would not have worked out that well for them if implemented after the fact. With only two total wins after their elimination from playoff contention on March 21, the Suns, who have the second worst record in the league, would have basically been screwed by this system – although they would have either landed with the 4th or 5th pick (by coincidence) which could actually be where they land if they were to lose the lottery in May.

There is another way to make this period of the season even more competitive by giving teams with better records the higher spot in the tie breaker. In this case by legitimately punishing teams that lose, the Suns would have really been hurt by dropping as far as eighth in the draft in the basic column, although sneaking back up to sixth in the system that rewards winners in double-elimination games.

One interesting thing to note is that for the teams who were not eliminated early such as the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat who were eliminated on the final day of the season, the first system lines up the back-end of the draft order pretty much exactly how the draft order will play out in reality. In the second system of course the team’s with the most wins in this system are weighted more heavily and rise in the draft order, but even still, their draft location is at least within the realm of where they would have traditionally picked.

Even with this system there could be a caveat when a team might intentionally still try to lose. In rare situations teams who have traded their first-round pick might try to screw the team who now owns it. Technically in this system the Nets could have done that to the Celtics. By losing out instead of winning nine games, the Nets’ pick could have hurt the Celtics’ draft spot significantly.

For the Celtics’ and Nets’ situation, one way of countering this could be that the owner of the pick adds points to their column by counting their own wins and that the wins of the original pick’s owner are discounted – although this would be to the detriment of the other eliminated teams since the team holding that pick is presumably much better than the rest fighting for top picks.