The NBA is currently facing some issues that they plan to address soon. One of them is whether or not there is a need to reform the lottery, which they will vote on later this month. Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey recently shared his thoughts about it, as he will also take part in the voting, and also discussed tanking, which some franchises have been doing to increase their chances of getting a top pick.
The 45-year-old front office executive made an appearance on Howard Beck’s Full 48 podcast at Bleacher Report, and first admitted that tanking is an NBA-wide problem. However, he said that it should not be the path a team takes, especially in avoiding to sign a free agent that will help them win additional games.
“It’s just bad for the league that a team in a rebuilding cycle has to think about ‘Maybe I won’t sign a free agent because, oh my goodness, that might win us a few extra games.’ … When you’re down in that rebuilding trough, you shouldn’t have to dream up more ways to be even s–ttier so that you can get the odds at a top player.”
Morey then moved on to the draft lottery proposal, and hinted that he will vote for it. He said that it will lessen the incentive for borderline playoff teams to purposely try to miss out on the postseason instead, in order to have better odds at landing the top pick.
“I think they’ll all choose the playoffs. We have teams in the NBA who haven’t made the playoffs in, like, 15 years right now. So making the playoffs is going to look really good to most of them.
“I actually think the problem of going from bad to extremely bad, and the fact that teams will have to take themselves out of free agency – which created a whole bunch of problems with the players’ union – I think that’s a much bigger issue than if you might see a team go ‘Hey, we’re going to win 40 games, maybe we’ll win 39 games [instead, to miss the playoffs.]’ You’re saying, ‘I’m going to give up $10MM+ in revenue from the playoffs and the down-stream [impact on] ratings and season tickets.’”
It’s quite obvious that the two issues go hand-in-hand, and will continue to lower down the level of competition in the league if no changes will be made soon. The NBA has tried to address it by moving the start of the season to lessen the number of back-to-back games teams will have, and not have their stars sitting out on some nights. However, it’s clear that they feel it’s not the only solution for it, which led them to scheduling a dialogue and having the need to have a vote for the reform of the lottery system.
The post Rockets news: Houston GM Daryl Morey talks about tanking, lottery reform appeared first on ClutchPoints.
