The proposed changes to the NBA’s draft lottery format to more evenly distribute the odds among the 14 non-playoff teams failed to get enough votes, according to multiple reports Wednesday.
The final vote at the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting reportedly was 17-13 in favor of the reform that falls short of the required 23 votes needed to push the change through.
The reform plan was to discourage the idea of losing on purpose to increase a team’s odds in the lottery.
According to ESPN, the reforms would have given the league’s four worst teams identical odds (around 11 percent) of winning the No. 1 pick, with the fifth team having about a 10 percent chance and the rest of the teams with declining odds.
Under the current system, the team with the worst record has a 25 percent chance at the No. 1 pick and the second-worst team has a 19.9 percent chance. Each subsequent team’s odds decline slightly
Only four teams with the worst or tied-for-worst record have earned the top overall pick since the league’s weighted lottery system was adopted for the 1985 draft.
