The NBA's New Lottery Plan Is a Disaster and This Simulator Proves It

Adam Silver just dropped the NBA's new "3-2-1" Lottery Reform plan and yeah, it's a mess. The commissioner promised it would stop tanking, but one Twitter user built a simulator that shows the exact opposite is happening. Run the numbers a few times and you'll see why this idea might be the worst thing the league has cooked up in years.

The Plan Sounds Smart Until You Actually See It Work

Here's the thing about complicated NBA rule changes: they're hard to picture. Percentages, odds, detailed language about lottery positioning, all of it just blurs together. That's where Dylan Jackson came in. This hero on Twitter built a Lottery Simulator based on Silver's new plan and did fans a massive favor by making it visual. Once you see how this thing actually plays out in practice, it stops sounding like a reform and starts looking like chaos.

Three Spins That Show the Real Problem

The simulator ran a few test scenarios and the results are brutal. In one spin, teams in the 2, 5, and 6 spots got moved to the bottom of the lottery while a team from the 10 spot jumped all the way to number 2. The Kings, Nets, and Wizards got hammered while good teams moved up. That's the opposite of what a lottery is supposed to do.

Then there's the Phoenix scenario. A playoff team lands the number 1 pick. The 1, 2, 3, and 4 worst teams in the entire league all pick no higher than 8th. That's backwards. The whole point of the lottery is to help the worst teams get better, not hand draft ammo to teams already making the playoffs.

And here's where it gets wild: imagine the Warriors landing the first overall pick next season despite being a Play In team, with Golden State and Oklahoma City taking the top two picks. The chaos that causes isn't preventing tanking. It's rewarding winning while burying the teams that actually need help.

What Comes Next

Silver created this plan to fix the system, but the simulator shows it might make everything worse. Bad teams get stuck in the middle. Playoff teams get lottery luck. The whole league gets more unpredictable in exactly the wrong way.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.