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The NBA is considering a proposal to eliminate the draft lottery as we currently know it in favor of a draft wheel.

The draft wheel would allow team to cycle through every draft slot and be guaranteed one top-six pick every five seasons and at least one top-12 pick in every four-year span.

The system is designed to protect against teams attempting to be bad or letting themselves be bad for a high draft pick.

The concept has gained traction in the higher levels of the NBA's league office and could be proposed to owners sometime in 2014, according to sources.

Others have expressed early opposition to the proposal.

Via Zach Lowe/Grantland

Thanks for a **** article with little facts and no explanation

Ok so what happens if the league adds a team or 2 in expansion?

what happens if a team already at the top (i.e. the Heat) are scheduled to get the #1 pick because a wheel spun says so.

how is that at all fair to the fans routing for a team trying to crawl back up from the bottom

I do not want to see The Lottery go.

FlightBrothers wrote:how is that at all fair to the fans routing for a team trying to crawl back up from the bottom

Competition ain't fair.

On the topic of fair, how fair is it that incoming draft picks, who are statistically for more likely to be all-stars and future HOF'ers are forced to be relegated to the dregs of the league for their first several years?

How fair is it that talent is forced to go to clubs who have shown, on a consistent basis, an inability to manage it?

Shouldn't we want to see the best product possible?

Suddenly this is a BIG problem??!! Tanking? WTF. I think you should get rid of the stupid lottery and just go based on records. Only four times since the modern lottery has been inact since 1985 has the worst team ever gotten the number one pick. The last being 2004 Orlando Magic.

First off, people really need to click through to the actual article before commenting. There is no way this wiretap report is going to give the whole picture on this dense issue.

That said, as fan of the small-market Cavs, I like this idea. I see where the issues could be in regards to the small-market/big-market dynamic, but I think the CBA is working towards eliminating that.

The thing I like is that a team like the Cavs isn't going to have to be god-awful to get the No. 1 pick. Yeah, FAs don't typically look to Cleveland, but the CBA is trying to level things out, and this will make it so that the front office will always being trying to put together a good team.

The reason the Cavs (or whoever) tank is because that's the best way for them to get top talent. With this system, they can still get top talent without having to do that.

There might be some bad hypothetical situations that could arise, but overall I think this is an interesting idea. Not saying it's definitely the best approach, but I like what I see here so far.

This would be terrible.

while you are at it, fix the all-star voting system!

this will be great to watch when miami heat big 3 is about the end then they get the #1 pick

I am all in for eliminating the draft lottey system. Fix the all star voting system also. Its STUPID imo to be letting fans set the starting lineups.

FlightBrothers wrote:what happens if a team already at the top (i.e. the Heat) are scheduled to get the #1 pick because a wheel spun says so.

how is that at all fair to the fans routing for a team trying to crawl back up from the bottom

Odds are they trade it for a player or a later pick in the draft, and Miami isn't going to be on top of the league forever, just keep that in mind.

And the chances of All-Star voting being fixed are slim to none, them removing fan voting would show that they don't really care for the fans opinion on things (I hate the All-Star voting system also.) They would have to give the fans something to decide for All-Star weekend other than the Slam Dunk Contest.

when they say draft wheel what I believe it means is this.

So let's say it went into effect for 2015 and your team was one of the ones in the first tier.

2015- random pick in top-6
2016- random pick in 7 thru 12
2017- random pick in 13 thru 18
2018- random pick in 19 thru 24
2019- random pick in 25 thru 30
2020- random pick in top 6
etc...

Of course this doesn't take into account possible expansion beyond 30 teams and the main part of the lottery is to try and put talent on bad teams to make them competitive. How many of the past NBA drafts have had star players in the top-3 picks? The 2014 draft is going to be a rare outlier and to think a crappy NBA team in a bad market can get good with having 1 top-6 pick every 6 years and HOPING that one year happens to be a "good" draft is ridiculous.

rpn123321 wrote:Suddenly this is a BIG problem??!! Tanking? WTF. I think you should get rid of the stupid lottery and just go based on records. Only four times since the modern lottery has been inact since 1985 has the worst team ever gotten the number one pick. The last being 2004 Orlando Magic.

That would encourage more tanking.

moofs wrote:

FlightBrothers wrote:how is that at all fair to the fans routing for a team trying to crawl back up from the bottom

Competition ain't fair.

On the topic of fair, how fair is it that incoming draft picks, who are statistically for more likely to be all-stars and future HOF'ers are forced to be relegated to the dregs of the league for their first several years?

How fair is it that talent is forced to go to clubs who have shown, on a consistent basis, an inability to manage it?

Shouldn't we want to see the best product possible?

This type of thinking is exactly why the NBA will never live up to other professional sports. So basically you want the same teams playing year in and year out for the championship rather than have a level playing field with more parody? The NBA would thrive a lot more in more markets if smaller market teams were able to compete just like in the NFL. You talk about talent going to clubs that are in the dregs of the league, but what happened to the days when players wanted to stand alone and lead a team on their back? Now we have a bunch of cry babies dictating where they go to play and having 2 or 3 super teams. That is just boring. Nobody wants to see the same **** every year.

AJWest05 wrote:I am all in for eliminating the draft lottey system. Fix the all star voting system also. Its STUPID imo to be letting fans set the starting lineups.

Derrick Rose and Rajon Rondo are within the top 6 returns for back courts players yet THIS YEAR: one played average at best for a short time, while the other one has yet to step foot on court during an actual basketball game. Not saying they shouldn't be on there, but it should be players that are actually active and have shown to be all stars in the CURRENT season.

Completely agree with the all-star voting needing a change.

This idea is the worst thing that I have ever heard of for the NBA. The NBA already forces you to spend 90 percent of you cap space which creates untradeable contracts. CV, Ben Gordon, and the like. The NBA no wants to kill competitive balance. This league is out of control. Under this awful idea, the two teams in competition for the NBA championship could get the top two picks. This league just wants the rich getting richer. LA, NYC, and other big league cities get even stronger. This sport is getting terrible quickly.

StikWitEM wrote:

moofs wrote:

FlightBrothers wrote:how is that at all fair to the fans routing for a team trying to crawl back up from the bottom

Competition ain't fair.

On the topic of fair, how fair is it that incoming draft picks, who are statistically for more likely to be all-stars and future HOF'ers are forced to be relegated to the dregs of the league for their first several years?

How fair is it that talent is forced to go to clubs who have shown, on a consistent basis, an inability to manage it?

Shouldn't we want to see the best product possible?

This type of thinking is exactly why the NBA will never live up to other professional sports. So basically you want the same teams playing year in and year out for the championship rather than have a level playing field with more parody? The NBA would thrive a lot more in more markets if smaller market teams were able to compete just like in the NFL. You talk about talent going to clubs that are in the dregs of the league, but what happened to the days when players wanted to stand alone and lead a team on their back? Now we have a bunch of cry babies dictating where they go to play and having 2 or 3 super teams. That is just boring. Nobody wants to see the same **** every year.

You can never have the parity in the NBA that you have in the NFL, NHL, or MLB(well not so much because of spending there) because one superstar has more impact in basketball than any of those other sports. Maybe with the exception of if you had a goalie on the level of Dominik Hasek in his prime in the NHL, but even then the offense has to score some goals.

Adrian Peterson since he came into the league has been either the best or 2nd best RB in the entire league every single season. Where has that got Minnesota? You have to be smart with building your entire team.

In the NBA you need your 1 mega-star and then usually a 1-B and then you're a contender. But there's not very many of those guys out there and those guys when they become FAs often bolt to one of the lucrative major markets. Barring something like lifetime contracts and allowing 1 MAX contract per team with the next highest paid player at half the salary of your MAX contract you can never have anything approaching parity in the NBA. You are always going to see haves and have nots. Removing the lottery basically makes it even harder for a have not to luck out and get a star for 3 or 4 years until they bolt to another team.

VC720 wrote:

rpn123321 wrote:Suddenly this is a BIG problem??!! Tanking? WTF. I think you should get rid of the stupid lottery and just go based on records. Only four times since the modern lottery has been inact since 1985 has the worst team ever gotten the number one pick. The last being 2004 Orlando Magic.

That would encourage more tanking.

Who cares, my point is tanking doesn't work anyways as it is. There is a very slim chance right now that the worst team each year gets the number one overall pick. Tanking is a choice teams can choose to do if they want, as in any league. It's the owners profit margin that will hurt when no one shows up to watch them play. Teams aren't looking to tank from year to year. My feeling is if your a terrible team with the worst record, you deserve to get the first choice in the draft. Simple as that.

I think the NBA needs to focus their efforts somewhere else in order to improve the game. Not letting all-stars in their prime join the same ball club should be a start towards curbing unfair competition.