The theme of the past few years for the Philadelphia 76’ers seemed to be; put bare minimum talent on the hardwood, and try to compete for a top draft spot in June. Well, apparently, I might not have been too off-base with that observation. The NBA held its annual meetings in Las Vegas last week, and one of the topics discussed was changes to the draft lottery system. Reportedly the Sixers were less than enthused about the proposed changes.
The Sixers are strongly opposed to the league’s planned changes of balancing out lottery odds so that the worst team or teams wouldn’t necessarily mean having the best chance at landing the top pick.
How would these new changes work? The league discussed involves a weighting system where at least the four worst teams would have the same approximate 11 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick. Currently, the worst team has a 25 percent chance of gaining the top overall pick. Therefore, tanking wouldn’t necessarily reward you with more lottery balls and greater odds to get the top selection.
