The best tanking solution: No team owning their own 1st round pick?
After reading the NBA’s proposals to fix tanking, I still feel like they do not really solve the issue of tanking (teams still incentivized to lose) and will make it more difficult for bad teams to improve by flattening the odds. I still think the best solution would be a system where no team owns their own draft pick. Full credit to u/JarJarsBallsackEyes for this idea that he posted to the Bill Simmons sub a few weeks ago. https://np.reddit.com/r/billsimmons/comments/1r2z9j8/halfbaked_tanking_solution_no_team_owns_their_1st/?sort=confidence
Basically, his idea was to completely nix the draft lottery (worst team gets the first “pick”, second-worst team gets the second “pick”) and to replace it with an event where teams are actually picking whose first-round draft pick they own for the NEXT season’s draft. So, for example, the Jazz were the worst team last season, so they could pick any of the other 29 team’s draft pick to own for the next season. Let’s say they picked the Wizards because they were the second-worst team, so now they own the Wizards pick for this season (which would be good for the #3 pick right now). But because the Wizards do not own their pick, they would not be actively trying to lose their games and would not be benching Alex Sarr for random reasons.
No one would be incentivized to lose with this draft system, because no one actually owns their own pick. But the worst teams will still be able to improve because the team that they picked will still likely be bad the next season.