sunskerr wrote:New keeper rules for 2026 offseason.
Keep this in mind while drafting. It might seem intimidating to have all these new changes happening this year and next, but I'm confident this is all going to be much more fair, exciting, and even easier to keep track of.
1st-2nd: 7 keepers
3rd-4th: 8 keepers
5th-8th: 9 keepers
9th-12th:10 keepers
13th-16th: 11 keepers
Champion keeps 7 regardless of regular season
We are drafting until every roster has 15 players this offseason. These new keeper rules help promote rebuilding and retooling. For example, if you are a competitive team who finished 4th in 2025-26 season, slated to keep only 8, and you don't think you've got enough gas on your roster, maybe you think about getting some prospects in the 2026 offseason to add to your team. You'll finish worse in the 26-27 season, but now you'll be able to keep more players for the subsequent season in 27-28. So it kind of works well for mid-pack teams too.
This also seeks to emulate "salary cap" stuff without having to impose the burden of keeping track of salaries. Teams typically break apart very quickly now after competing and winning championships - so it will be harder to go back to back now.
Also remember in the 2026 offseason we will be using a new lottery system that is tied to the NBA's lottery system. This will be for non-playoff teams only. Teams in the playoffs will draft according to where they finished in the regular season.
You can now watch the NBA lottery live!
Because we are now tied to the NBA lottery, but they have 14 lotto teams and we have 8, it would be crazy for the 8th worst team (9th place) in our league to have odds equal to the NBA's 8th (6.0%) worst team. The NBA odds and our total odds are as follows:
NBA teams that will represent our teams at the NBA draft lottery in 2026:
16th place: NBA 1: 14.0% + NBA 6: 9.0% = 23%
15th place: NBA 2: 14.0% + NBA 7: 7.5% = 21.5%
14th place: NBA 3: 14.0% + NBA 8: 6.0% = 20%
13th place: NBA 4: 12.5% + NBA 9: 4.5% = 17%
12th place: NBA 5: 10.5% + NBA 12: 1.5% = 12%
11th place: NBA 10: 3.0% + NBA 11: 2.0% = 5%
10th place: NBA 13: 1.0% + no team added = 1.0%
9th place: NBA 14: 0.5% + no team added = 0.5%
So I have combined lotto balls for six of our lotto teams, sort of arbitrarily but the %s work out well. This means that, for example, if your team finishes 14th place this year (3rd worst), you are tied to the odds of the NBA team seeded 3rd and 8th (let's say the Wizards and the Hornets are 3rd and 8th in real life)... If either of those picks moves up, you get the higher of those two picks!
If one of your NBA teams doesn't move up, and nobody jumped in front of you, you will pick where you were seeded normally. If your 2nd NBA team moves up but does not move up past your 1st NBA team, then you ignore your 2nd NBA team. If both your teams got jumped by someone else's teams, then you have moved down!
To sum it up: basically every team that has extra odds will get the higher pick of whichever NBA team is representing them.
I will post which NBA teams will represent ours at the draft lottery beforehand so you know what to look for.
*commish reserves the right to modify these odds
Does one lottery result apply to both rookie and FA drafts?
