Memphis Grizzlies: Is the draft lottery ruining the NBA?

The NBA lottery was supposed to end the incentive to lose games but has become a reason for even more teams to consider tanking rather than win.

The NBA is rising in popularity compared to the NFL and MLB. They’re the most popular sport among young viewers as well which bodes well for the future of the league.

So why am I suggesting the lottery has ruined the NBA?

Possibly “ruined” is the wrong word, but what else can explain what is happening around the league right now? The Memphis Grizzlies are a bad team. They have lost a tremendous amount of their salary cap to injury. They have inexperienced players hauling big minutes at PG, SG and SF. The Grizzlies have only one player who is able to create shots off the dribble consistently, and they tried everything in their power to get rid of him this week.

And they are in danger of finishing eighth from the bottom in the league.

That’s right. The Memphis Grizzlies could easily finish in the eighth spot of the lottery. Inversely, the team could finish in the 23rd place in the standings.

Finishing there would give the Memphis Grizzlies only a 2.8 percent chance of winning the top pick in the draft. Right now, they’re just one win away from falling into that 8th spot too.

The interesting thing is the Grizzlies are only one win ahead of Sacramento for the worst record in the league.

You read that right. Currently there are only three games separating the worst team in the league from the eighth worst team. Chicago is currently in the 8th spot for the lottery at 20-36. Sacramento has the worst record at 17-38.

So there are eight teams already with not a single reason to win games the rest of the season, and the All-Star break hasn’t even happened yet.

The Knicks, who just lost their star Kristaps Porzingis for the season, and the LA Lakers, who just traded away Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr for Isaiah Thomas, are in the ninth and tenth spot respectively. Neither team is seriously considering making the playoffs either. The eight-team logjam could get even more crowded.

When a third of the league is actively trying to lose as many games as possible before the All-Star break, the league has a problem.

How It Began

Back in 1950, the NBA wasn’t popular. To help build up the fans interest, the league established a Territorial Pick rule.

The rule allowed a team to pre-emptively take a college player in their territorial region (50 miles) in exchange for their first round draft pick. Notable players such as Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Tom Heinsohm, Gail Goodrich, Dave Debusschere, Bill Bradley, Walt Hazard and Jerry Lucas were acquired in this manner.

That all changed in 1965 as the league adopted a coin flip to determine tie-breakers and did away with the territorial pick system.

This system worked well enough for almost 20 years until the Houston Rockets appeared to deliberately lose games to ensure they would have a shot at one of the two top picks in the upcoming draft. Houston won the coin flip and selected Ralph Sampson, the 7’4” University of Virginia star. The following season Houston, along with Chicago, appeared to make certain strange moves down the stretch to surpass Cleveland, Indiana and the LA Clippers to finish with the worst records in their conference.

Houston again won the coin flip and selected Hakeem Olajuwon. A few years later, Houston won back to back NBA titles.

The Birth of the Lottery

The NBA was quick to realize that they had an integrity problem. Thus, they created the NBA Lottery system. The first lottery involved putting envelopes into a barrel. Commissioner David Stern pulled out the unmarked envelopes in the order of the draft. All of the non-playoff teams qualified for the lottery. In 1985, that meant a mere seven teams. Golden State, Indiana, the LA Clippers, Kansas City Kings, Atlanta Hawks, Seattle SuperSonics, and the New York Knicks were those teams.

The hometown team, New York Knicks, won the lottery and selected Patrick Ewing. Many conspiracy theories have revolved around that lottery suggesting that Stern wanted the Knicks to win the pick. Golden State, the team with the worst record in the NBA, received the 7th pick.

By 1987, the NBA changed the lottery so that it only involved the first three draft picks, so teams with the worst records wouldn’t be unduly punished in the lottery. This did seem to reduce the feeling of unfairness in the lottery.

The league began expanding and with that expansion, the lottery began to grow more unwieldy. Also, the early lottery system didn’t seem to alter the perception that the NBA had fixed the system.

The Weighted Lottery

The league responded by introducing a weighted lottery system in 1990. This system was supposed to balance the perceived inequity of a truly bad team getting a high draft pick with the reality of teams being rewarded for deliberately losing games.

The weighted system didn’t stop Orlando, despite a 41-41 record, from winning the lottery in 1993. The Magic only had a 1.52 percent chance of winning, but it still managed to have the proper ping-pong balls drawn.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to people who understand statistics. Having a slim probability of winning means that there’s still a possibility. If a team has a chance, then eventually it’s going to happen. The fact that it happened so early in the process, however, was a black eye on the league.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to a number of curious (and opportunistic for the NBA) outcomes to attempt to create the feeling the lottery was rigged. Cleveland won their first top pick in the draft the same year that hometown hero LeBron James was in the draft. San Antonio went from a 52-win team to the lottery and drafted Tim Duncan. The Spurs have only been in the lottery three times also. Houston, with one of the largest Chinese populations in the country, won and drafted Yao Ming.

Then there are the teams who have had numerous appearances in the lottery and never won or won rarely. The L A Clippers lead the pack with 22 lottery appearances and three wins (Danny Manning, Michael Olowokandi and Blake Griffin). Golden State (20 appearances with one win) and Sacramento (20 appearances with one win).

The Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies have made 13 appearances in the lottery heading into this season and have never won. The Toronto Raptors have been in the lottery 15 times and never won. Both teams were ineligible to win the lottery in 1996, 1997 and 1998 due to their expansion agreement.

What Is Happening Now

This season has seen more teams jumbled at the bottom of the standings than any in recent memory.

To put it in comparison, the 2016-17 season ended up with five teams winning fewer than 30 games. It’s possible that as many as ten teams will fail to reach that mark this season. The most in recent memory was eight teams failing to win 30 games in the 2013-14 season.

The league issued a new proposal where the three worst teams get identical odds of the top pick. It’ll go into effect next season, but it may not really stop tanking.

By giving teams more incentive to lose rather than win, once a club is eliminated from serious playoff contention, there is no incentive to win. The worst record in the league will have a 25 percent chance of winning the top pick and is guaranteed no worse than picking 4th in the draft. The 8th place team has a 2.8 percent chance of winning the lottery and could pick as low as 11th.

By creating the lottery, which was supposed to end the motivation for tanking, the league has instead motivated many more teams to attempt to lose rather than win in their fans eyes at least. Weighting the lottery has simply extended it to include more and more teams.

The answer to the problem is difficult. Perhaps curtailing the teams eligible for the lottery from 14 to the original 7 and making the odds more balanced among those teams would help, but ultimately, the problem is simply in the nature of the game.

Basketball is a five-man game unlike football, soccer and baseball. One player can make a tremendous difference in a team’s outcome. As long as this simple fact remains, bad teams will continue to do what they can to improve, and that could mean sacrificing wins today for a transformational player in the future.