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Will Guillory: Adam Silver is in attendance for tonight's game at Toyota Center
Shams Charania: I have a quote from Adam Silver according to my sources on a recent league call that I was told. He said, "We should have a system where you should hate to lose. It shouldn't be a badge of honor to lose. Losing should be uncomfortable." And that's what is set up now. The first relegation of the bottom teams in the NBA, the first of its kind in American pro sports. And when I look at this model that the NBA has come up with, if Adam Silver could relegate teams to the G-League, he probably would. You look at the soccer model, but you he's not going to do that. But what you're going to see now under a new proposal that the NBA is zeroing in on, it's a 16 team lottery reform to curb tanking. May 28th, owners have to vote on this. But this is now something the NBA is zeroing in on. Flattened odds, 16 teams all being part of a a lottery drawing and penalizing the bottom three teams. Those bottom three teams. And whoever finishes with the three worst records in the NBA, right, has have the least amount of lottery balls for the number one overall pick.
League officials informed their 30 top basketball executives this week that new anti-tanking reforms will go into place next season, a source briefed on the call confirms to Sports Illustrated. The reform, which has been called the “3-2-1 lottery” will expand the lottery to 16 teams, flatten odds and create a relegation zone where the bottom three teams will be penalized with fewer lottery balls for the No. 1 pick. ESPN first reported the NBA’s proposal.
Under the new system, the lottery will be expanded from 14 to 16 teams to include the loser of the seven-seed vs. eight-seed play-in game. Teams that do not qualify for the playoffs or play-in tournament but stay out of the relegation zone—designated as spots four through 10—would get three lottery balls each. Teams with a bottom-three record would land in the relegation area and would have just two lottery balls. Those teams would have a floor of the 12th pick while the rest of the 13 lottery teams could fall as far as the 16th pick. There could be minor changes to the format, sources tell SI. On the call with league officials, some executives expressed that the floor for a bottom-three team should be no further than the 10th spot. Others think it should be even lower.
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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 area -- 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.
Shams Charania: NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on a recent Competition Committee call, according to sources: "We should have a system where you should hate to lose. It shouldn't be a badge of honor. Losing should be uncomfortable." The new change is not as drastic as relegation to a lower league -- but a penalty for being at the bottom. Many league executives understand this may be an overcorrection, but one the majority believes is necessary.
Shams Charania: 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.
Marc Stein: The NBA, I'm told, continues to target 2027-28 as the planned inaugural season for launching NBA Europe. Commissioner Adam Silver and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum have made it clear they hope to collaborate with the EuroLeague rather than compete against it and the NBA has announced that it held talks today with EuroLeague representatives at FIBA headquarters in Switzerland. It's believed that more than 20 existing European basketball and football clubs, including teams currently in the EuroLeague, have lodged bids for NBA Europe franchises.
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The next step toward NBA Draft reform will take place on Tuesday, when league officials are hosting a general managers’ meeting on Zoom that was added to the schedule as a way for all 30 front offices to continue taking part in this pivotal process. Yet according to league and team sources, a heavy frontrunner has emerged among the three proposed solutions to curb the widespread tanking problem that put such a stain on this season: Option No. 1, in which 18 teams would be part of the draft lottery (rather than the current 14) and the bottom 10 teams would all have an 8 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick. The remaining odds — 20 percent in all — would be divided among the remaining eight teams. In the current system, the bottom three teams all have a 14 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick and the odds decline from there.
Nothing can be finalized until at least 23 of the league’s 30 owners vote at next month’s Board of Governors meeting, and tweaks to the various proposals are still expected to be made along the way. Still, league and team sources say Option No. 1 has all the momentum and appears likely to win out. And as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made clear during a GM call in mid-February, when he expressed a deep concern that tanking was doing serious damage, the forthcoming changes will be implemented by next season.
It is urgent to avoid another chaotic situation like the one that continental basketball already experienced in the 2000-01 season with the Euroleague coinciding with a newly created FIBA Suproleague, which fortunately only lasted a year, or to avoid another situation like the recent Superleague, now in basketball , where we already have the experience of football, where it did a lot of damage and led to the ridicule of some clubs , clashing with each other and also with their fans . It's time to avoid confrontations and conflicts, to set aside pride, to build bridges, and to explore potential synergies in order to reach a consensus between the parties. With this mindset , Chus Bueno, CEO of the Euroleague, and George Aivazoglou, NBA Managing Director for Europe and the Middle East , will attend the meeting. Aivazoglou is carrying out this task on behalf of his boss, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver .
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver confirmed the league plans to paint the NBA Finals and Larry O’Brien Trophy logos on the courts this year after being criticized for using decals and virtual signage last season. ESPN in October first reported the change would occur. During an appearance Wednesday on the “Pardon My Take” podcast, Silver recounted the controversy from last spring, saying, “We had the decals. The decals were slippery, the guys didn’t like those. We then started putting them on virtually. … The people in the arena said, ‘Where’s the branding? Where’s the Finals fanfare? Now we’re back to old-school painting those logos on the floor. They’re safe.” Podcast co-host Dan Katz said, “We’re big believers in that. The NBA Finals should feel special” (“Pardon My Take,” Netflix, 4/22).