The NBA's New Lottery System Is a Nightmare and This Simulator Proves It

Last night, Adam Silver and the NBA dropped their new "3-2-1" Lottery Reform plan, and it's already clear this thing is going to be a disaster. The whole idea is supposed to stop tanking, but instead it's so complicated that most people will just give up trying to understand it. That's where a hero on Twitter named Dylan Jackson stepped in and built a Lottery Simulator to show exactly how broken this system actually is.

The Simulator Shows Teams Getting Destroyed By Randomness

When you actually run the numbers on this new plan, things get weird fast. In one simulation, teams sitting in the 2, 5, and 6 spots dropped all the way to the bottom of the lottery, while the Nets fell to 10th and the Wizards landed at 11th. Meanwhile, a team from the 10 spot jumped straight to number 2. For teams like Sacramento, Indiana, Memphis, and Brooklyn, this kind of unpredictability is basically a death sentence. These aren't exactly free agent destinations to begin with, and when the lottery punches them in the gut like this, you get stuck being terrible forever.

Good Playoff Teams Are Winning the Lottery

Here's where things get really frustrating. In another simulation spin, the Phoenix Suns, who just made the playoffs, landed the first overall pick. The whole point of a lottery is supposed to help the worst teams get better, not hand top-10 talent to teams that are already winning games. In that same scenario, the Hawks, another playoff team, were getting the Pelicans' pick as well. The bottom four teams in that spin couldn't pick higher than eighth.

And in a third simulation? The Warriors, as a Play-In team, grabbed the number one pick while Oklahoma City took number two. That's chaos. That's exactly what you don't want from a lottery system that's supposed to level the playing field.

The System Doesn't Actually Stop Tanking

This is the real kicker: Silver's plan was built to prevent tanking, but instead it just created a system so broken that bad teams can't even catch a break. The randomness is so extreme that you could have the worst team in the league land in the middle of the pack while a winning team strikes gold. If that doesn't create unpredictability and frustration, nothing does.

The Suns game tonight will be here before we know it, but right now, the bigger story is whether the league is about to turn its lottery into a complete coin flip.

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