The Sixer Sense
Fansided

Philadelphia 76ers rebuilding process won’t be replicated in NBA

By Bret Stuter

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 16: The lottery drawing begins inside the lottery room during the 2017 NBA Draft Lottery at the New York Hilton in New York, New York. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2017 NBAE (Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 16: The lottery drawing begins inside the lottery room during the 2017 NBA Draft Lottery at the New York Hilton in New York, New York. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2017 NBAE (Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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Reason II – The worst NBA team will have no better than a 14 percent chance at the top NBA pick beginning in 2019

The 2018 NBA Draft is the last year of 25 percent odds to the last place team for the top NBA pick. Beginning in 2019, the bottom three teams all share a 14 percent odds of getting the top pick. While some may say “so what?”, the difference is huge.  The NBA market, like every professional sports market, is tied to the love-hate relationship of parity.  Parity in sports means that over the span of time, all things being equal, each team has an even chance of succeeding.

But in the NBA, nothing could be further from the truth.  Teams which lose in the NBA may be poorly managed, but once down, the system keeps that team down.  The reason is the free agency market. Elite players can choose which teams they wish to play on based on their playoff projections.  Teams which were lucky enough to find an elite player can overpay based on the NBA-CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement). That means teams without much hope of the NBA playoffs and without an elite player in their ranks are shut out.  Their only chance of success was the NBA Draft.

NBA stacked the deck, and the draft

We’ve already proven how difficult drafting for future success can be with the existing rules. But the new rules which go into effect in 2019 create even more hurdles via deteriorating odds in the NBA Draft. Now teams once assured a top-four pick will now face a top-five scenario. And teams once blessed with a 25 percent chance at the top-pick must now face the less exciting future of a 14 percent chance.

Those favorable odds are now distributed over more bad teams.  Conceivably, the worst team in the NBA could be shut out of a top-three draft pick for several years. In fact, the worst team in the NBA has a 47.9 percent chance of landing the fifth pick in the NBA Draft, while the team who just missed the playoffs still has a remote chance of the top-pick.  So the bad will find an even greater struggle to improve, as rebuilding via the draft is even more shallow than before.