Adam Silver's New "3-2-1" Anti-Tanking Reform Not Only Doesn't End Tanking, It Also Hurts The Bad Teams While Incentivizing More Teams To Tank

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While the rest of us are focused on the NBA Playoffs and actual basketball, Adam Silver and the NBA dropped their official anti-tanking reform idea, dubbing it the "3-2-1" lottery proposal, and you'll never believe this but it's absolutely awful. I'm going to warn you, these are long tweets with a lot of confusing information in them, so if you're like me and are a moron, take the time and read them over a few times

The "3-2-1 lottery" proposal, named to represent the number of lottery balls per team, would expand the lottery from 14 to 16 teams. Teams that do not qualify for the playoffs or play-in tournament but stay out of the relegation zone (spots four through 10) would receive three lottery balls each. Teams with a bottom-three record -- the relegation zone -- would have just two lottery balls but have a floor of the 12th pick while the rest of the 13 lottery teams could fall as far as the 16th pick. The 9th and 10th play-in seeds in each conference receive two lottery balls each while the losers of the 7-8 play-in games receive one lottery ball each. In addition, no team would be able to win the top pick in consecutive years or be able to win three consecutive top-five picks. Teams also would not be able to protect picks in the 12 to 15 slots going forward.

High-ranking officials across the NBA believe this new anti-tanking reform will de-incentivize losing while drawing lottery balls for all 16 qualifying teams. It also incentivizes winning, particularly during the second half of the season, as the teams ranked near the bottom three would want to get out of the relegation zone while teams above them work for victories to stay out of the relegation zone.

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If Adam Silver's goal with this whole thing was to make things so complicated that you need 10,000 words to explain it which would force people's heads to explode, well then I guess job well done. We had gotten snippets of this idea as different proposals were leaked so some of the details aren't all that new, but having read through things, I have some concerns.

For starters, how does the NBA not understand that adding more teams to the Lottery and flattening the odds even more does not remove tanking…..it increases the pool of teams that will be tanking? We JUST saw this happen in the current system when they flattened the top of the lottery, so how did that go? Oh, it didn't solve anything? You idiot, I bet you didn't consider what would happen if you made it possible for more teams to tank now did you? 

Then we have the issue of playoff teams being allowed into the Lottery. Great idea Adam! Let's just put this idea into action with a scenario that currently exists. The Sixers made the playoffs this year, but the Thunder owns their pick. So under this system, the Thunder could go back-to-back as Champs and then win the Lottery or land a top 3 pick via the Sixers. That's definitely going to help the situation Adam, you moron! 

The whole goal of this was to prevent teams from losing on purpose, correct? OK, so let's say you are in the 7/8 Play In game. What exactly is the incentive for that team to win that game and get into the playoffs, if losing it gets them an extra ping pong ball? Why wouldn't you tank that game on purpose, get into the 9/10 matchup, and then win out to still make the playoffs? How's that for the integrity of the game?

Then of course there's the problem with the teams at the top. So, under this new system it's basically impossible for bad teams to improve via the draft? You could see your pick drop all the way to 12? If you aren't a free agent destination, big players aren't even hitting the market in free agency which makes trading for one even more expensive, how does Silver expect these teams to improve if playoff teams can jump them in the Lottery? So teams just have to stay bad forever, but you want more parity and competitive balance while the rich get richer? 

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What I found pretty funny was this line

 In addition, no team would be able to win the top pick in consecutive years or be able to win three consecutive top-five picks

Oh, so you mean right after this….

Michael Gonzales. Getty Images.

Now no other team can be built like the Spurs? That seems pretty fair! Surely there's nothing suspicious about that. Wemby just to happened to make his way to the Spurs, he proved to be the real deal and then they just so happened to keep landing in the top 3-4. But now, no other team can ever have that same "luck" as they go into their rebuild. Good plan! 

Admittedly, I'm a moron, but I just don't see how this solves any tanking issue. Bad teams are going to always be bad, and will stay bad the harder you make it for them to improve. As long as there is an incentive to lose (which there still is with the flattened odds), more teams will lose. If you're a team on the fence under this system, it's still in your best interest to lose, which is tanking. So what exactly does this solve? 

You kind of have to hand it to Silver and the NBA. For something that really wasn't even a problem to begin with, they somehow found a way to make it 10000000x worse. Just wait until a good playoff team lands a top 3 pick, all hell is going to break loose and we'll be right back here with more "reform" ideas when in reality they should just go back to how things were before the most recent flattened odds. Tanking is ALWAYS going to exist, so just get over it. It's not that big of a deal, and it's only gone off the rails this year because it's a generational draft. That's not the case every season, so this all feels like a bit of an overreaction and overcorrection that the league will eventually have to address again in a few years.

But good job Adam, you nailed it!