will make \u201csubstantial\u201d changes<\/a> to the NBA draft lottery next year. <\/p>\nSilver mentioned possibilities including disconnecting the draft order from records.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be a major shock to the system,\u201d Silver said. \u201cNot to forecast where we\u2019re going, but I\u2019m an incrementalist.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation requires something much more than incremental moves. Silver has correctly acknowledged that the current process leads to misaligned incentives. The only way to change that is to make draft order depend on something other than record. A straight lottery with all teams getting one ping-pong ball in the hopper would do that.<\/p>\n
The ultimate way to align incentives would be to turn the draft order on its head, giving the champion the first pick and the worst team the last. That would absolutely remove any and all temptations to lose games on purpose.<\/p>\n
For the NBA, the problem is that some teams have accepted short-term losing as a cost of long-term business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a destigmatization around certain behaviors and I think that\u2019s a broader societal issue,\u201d Silver said. \u201cI think in other aspects of society, the guard rails have come off a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam, please don\u2019t blame society for your team\u2019s business decisions. Blame your teams for prioritizing getting better players later over winning now. <\/p>\n
Still, to the extent that societal expectations have changed, the NBA isn\u2019t a follower. It\u2019s at the front of the freaking line.<\/p>\n
For the NFL, it\u2019s important to be thinking of ways to get ahead of the problem before it fully and completely becomes one. If\/when the season expands to 18 games, it will only become more likely \u2014 and more obvious \u2014 when teams choose to engineer a lost season in the direction of a draft-day win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA\u2019s tanking problem won\u2019t be easily solved. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver nevertheless plans to implement potential solutions.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-508393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}