RealGM

Just two days ago, higher-ups with both the Sixers and the league office expected lottery reform to pass by a vote of either 29-1 or 28-2. Over the weekend, Thunder GM Sam Presti initiated a stealth lobbying campaign against the league’s proposed changes, outlined here, which would have smoothed out the odds across the lottery. Presti raised concerns that such reform, piled atop other coming changes, would hurt small-market teams. A bunch of those non-glamour teams — including the Spurs and just about every branch of the Spurs management tree — eventually came around to the Sixers/Thunder “no” side. According to sources, the vote was 17-13 in favor of lottery reform, but 23 positive votes were needed for the proposal to pass.

This is a stunning defeat for the NBA. The league expected to ride the tide of anti-Sixers sentiment to an easy win and install the newfangled lottery weighting system immediately. The Sixers had accepted defeat, even though they would fight to the wire against reform; they were already talking themselves into how reform might help them in a couple of years, when the new odds might aid them into a lottery win as a run-of-the-mill bad team in something like the eighth or ninth slot.