The NBA Lottery is one of the strangest draft processes in modern professional sports. Someone thought it would be a good idea to take the worst teams in the league and instead of simply giving them priority for the order of picks based on their records, they decide to put it all into a lottery so the rightful losers don’t land where they are supposed to. And in the very first year they attempt this there is a conspiracy that the pick was rigged so the big market Knicks could actually be good again with Patrick Ewing.

There has been a long history of strange behavior and weird decisions made by the NBA over the years. From the lottery pick to many of the events surrounding Michael Jordan’s retirements. The fact that this system exists in the first place is something that only confuses me. It may give extra excitement and gambling in the mix of the offseason, but it happens during the playoffs anyways and can only lead to more people getting screwed over from bad luck on the draw then anything else. It only makes teams more likely to tank as the best shot at the first pick can only come from having the worst record, as opposed to focusing on the priorities of the team and the next season as opposed to the chances of lottery balls.

The notion of having a draft as the best way to introduce new players into the league has its own issues and possible changes, but I do not see how the lottery does anything positive for either the teams involved or the new players that are ready to join the NBA. The amount of volatility in the Lottery leads to more teams trading picks and pieces across the league to try and get some edge in the future, given the uncertainty of the odds. Sometimes that can lead to successes like The Process with the 76ers, but other times it can leads to problems like what the 76ers were in right before The Process started, without any star players or any picks to rebuild from in the next few years. It took some major risks to get the team to where they are today, but this uncertainty about a team’s standing in the draft can lead to some major changes that could leave a team completely aimless for years.

For a small amount of excitement and perhaps a small bump in ratings, the NBA Lottery does nothing to truly help the worst teams in the league turn themselves around with young talent. The drafts in other sports work like they do for a reason.