The NBA is getting closer to changing the NBA Draft lottery rules once again. According to Sam Amick of The Athletic, the "heavy front-runner" among the three proposals Adam Silver brought forth earlier this season is one in which 18 teams would be in the lottery, with the bottom 10 teams all having an 8% chance at the No. 1 pick, and the remaining 8 teams splitting the other 20% among them.
If the Chicago Bulls are finally entering their rebuild phase like they seem to be, this is kind of a bummer.
As it stands right now, the four worst teams in the league each have a 14% shot at the top pick in the draft, the fourth and fifth-worst teams both have an 11.5% chance, and the sixth-worst team in the league gets a 9% chance.
In other words — if this rule does pass a vote among owners, and the Bulls finish in the bottom-six among teams in the NBA next season, they will be entering next year's draft lottery with worse odds than if the rule was never changed.
Is it small potatoes? Maybe — but if they finish in the bottom four of the league next year, they'll be getting a six percent dock in their odds, which is considerable; that's a near-50% drop from 14 percent!
The Bulls refused to tank for so many years, and the year they finally (likely) decide to embrace losing, this happens. What did fans in Chicago do to deserve this?
Bulls might need all the help they can get going forward
Of course, lottery odds are a very small part of a team's rebuild. Even if the Bulls do get some high draft picks in the next few years, they still have to actually make the picks. Good odds in the lottery don't help a rebuild along, good players do, and the front office has to find those good players.
But it's not rocket science that higher draft picks more often yield better players, and the Bulls might be starting their rebuild at more of a disadvantage than rebuilding teams of past years.
Whether these anti-tanking measures will actually work is another question. If anything, it might cause more teams to tank just to get in the bottom 10, but I at least see the foundation of what the league is trying to do. I talked a while back about which of these measures could help the Bulls... And it wasn't this one. Granted, that was pre-firing of the front office, so things have changed now, but this "solution" doesn't feel like a win for the Bulls.
Add us as a preferred source on Google