NBA Pursuing Rule Change Involving NBA Draft

Not only in the NBA, but in all sports, the act of “tanking” has taken a whole new meaning among franchises. Within basketball, while your record doesn’t necessarily correlate to your draft position, tanking has proven to be a very efficient strategy for a few NBA front offices.

As first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski, the NBA is scheduled to come together once again in order to reform the NBA Draft process.  While the league has attempted to create reform before, there has been very little sign of progress in terms of a change of rules.

According to league commissioner Adam Silver, he would desire to make tanking “less appealing to teams”, perhaps by giving them lower odds at a higher draft pick. The elephant in the room is obvious: How do you develop that process, as well as gain the approval of other NBA executives?

According to sources, the NBA has pitched a concept in which the worst three teams would share a 14% chance of receiving the #1 overall pick in the Draft. I suppose the elephant in the room is “how this makes tanking any less appealing?” 

In order to gain final approval to any decisions, the NBA would need to file a formal recommendation to the Board of Governors in order to receive clearance. If this pitch does get pitched and passed by the Board Of Governors, then the change could be implemented as early as 2019. 

Is there a current issue with the NBA Draft process? Sure, I’m one of the few that are against tanking as a whole. Is there a way around the tanking process? There may be, but there is not one answer that all 30 franchises will agree upon. In all fairness, if the league files for a formal recommendation at all, it will likely be a solution that is not popular among certain parties.

Looking for more sports news? Go check out AOSN, a proud partner of The Athletes Hub: http://theaosn.com/amp/