J. Kyle Mann

Is that...

Is that dangerous for teams who need to sell hope, for small market teams who need to sell hope?

How do you feel about that kind of principle?

So...

One path that you could take in redoing all of this is the more conservative path, which is keep some connection to the reverse order draft, the bad teams pick first draft, but chip away at some of the tanking mechanisms that currently exist.

So that is the protected picks reform that people are talking about.

So we don't have a Utah, Washington situation again.

That's the after March 1st or whatever date you get credit for winning instead of losing.

in the lottery.

Because like when they flattened the lottery odds six, seven years ago, that was the point to chip away at the value of just abjectly bad tanking.

It was also extremely predictable that it would result in teams tanking for spots like seven, eight, nine, 10 in the lottery.

So predictable that I wrote it the day that the lottery reform was passing for ESPN.com.

My point being that as you're doing all of those things,

you are weakening the connection between record and draft order, but keeping it somewhat.

And history suggests teams are going to find ways to game the system, no matter where you put the lines and the incentives.

So I find myself more open to at least gaming out.

What does it look like if there is no connection at all between record and draft order?

Either way you do it, you could do things to de-emphasize the importance of the draft.

And I've talked a lot about this.

Like you could eliminate restricted free agency so that players are more free to choose where they want to go right away in their careers instead of seven, eight years down the line.