NBA: 5 huge takeaways from the Draft Lottery

The new lottery system is a mixed bag

This year, the NBA changed its draft lottery system, in an effort to discourage tanking or intentional losing.

In the past, the worst team in the league would have a 25 percent chance at the No. 1 pick, the second worst team would have just under a 20 percent chance, and so on. Now, the worst three teams each have a 14 percent chance and the odds for every lottery team are a lot closer than in the past.

On paper, yes, this does discourage tanking but it also has the potential to completely screw over teams that are just plain bad like the Phoenix Suns and Chicago Bulls were last year, for example. Teams may also be encouraged to intentionally drop out of the playoff race later in the season, instead of fighting for the 8th seed as this would help their lottery odds a lot more than it would have in years past.

This is just the first year of this new NBA draft lottery system and it provided plenty of drama and controversy but we’ll need to see how it plays out over the next few years before we make a permanent decision about how we feel about it.