The pros and cons of the new NBA draft lottery reform - ESPN

Adam Silver made it clear that changes are coming to the NBA draft lottery.

«It seemed unanimous in the room that we needed to make a change and we needed to make a change for next season,» Silver, the NBA's commissioner since 2014, said at the league's board of governors meeting in March.

«Incentives need to be fixed. We will fix them.»

On Thursday, the board will vote on — and all but certainly pass — a new anti-tanking reform called the «3-2-1 lottery,» a fairly revolutionary overhaul of the system designed to immediately curb the league's annual race to the bottom and incentivize more teams to compete late in the season.

Here's a rundown of the pros and cons of the new lottery format, and what they could mean for the future of the draft lottery and NBA roster and asset management.

All types of measures have been discussed throughout the league's generation-long battle with tanking, including radical fixes such as giving the best teams the top picks or even abolishing the draft entirely.

But though there is no perfect system — unlike in many European sports leagues that feature promotion and relegation, losing NBA franchises have no incentive to stay out of the standings basement — this proposal should blunt the most extreme cases of taking.

This season, the Washington Wizards lost 27 of their final 28 games to ensure the league's worst record at 17-65. Their two high-profile additions — Trae Young in December and Anthony Davis just before the February trade deadline — played a combined five games as the franchise chased a guaranteed top-five pick.

Similarly, the Memphis Grizzlies finished the regular season 5-28 to sink to sixth worst in the league — much like the Philadelphia 76ers did down the stretch of 2024-25 in