The NBA put out its long-awaited rules designed to curb tanking through lottery reform. The rules are a little complicated, and include provisions that not only flatten lottery odds -- out is the old system of tons of ping pong ball combos, in is the 3-2-1 system where teams get (wait for it) three, two or one ball each. Next year, though, we'll see new wrinkles like a "relegation zone," where the three worst teams actually lose a ping pong ball. There are (minor) rules that restrict pick protections, and rules that limit how many seasons consecutively teams can draft in the top five.
All of these are designed to remove the most obvious incentives to lose on purpose. Obviously the league can't keep teams from being bad. A certain amount of teams are going to suck every year, even when they're trying not to.
What the league can do, however, is remove incentives for teams to lose on purpose, so more teams on more nights are actually attempting to win the game. This is likely where teams like the Lakers, who don't frequently find themselves in position to tank, will see the greatest difference. Standings in a conference as competitive as the West shouldn't be determined substantively by whether a team happens to play a lesser squad in November, before the tanking starts, or in March when they've thrown in the towel.
There will surely be unintended consequences, and the League will have a chance to tweak or even scrap these rules after the 2029 season. But a new era in NBA drafting is upon us, and folks will be very interested to see how next season is impacted by it.
HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky
SEGMENT 1: New rules! New rules!
SEGMENT 2: Did the NBA get it right? How do these new rules impact the purple and gold?
SEGMENT 3: More on how the new rules -- and layoffs in El Segundo -- impact the Lakers.
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