J. Kyle Mann

It's going to be some...

Not randomized, but wheel-like system where teams cycle through the picks and you sever the connection between record and draft order altogether.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I think it's more likely that a bunch of fairly dramatic tweaks to the current lottery system happen.

All of those tweaks, by the way, could amount to at least weakening the connection between team record and draft order.

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.