Unpredictable NBA lottery results are a feature, not a bug

When the Dallas Mavericks leapfrogged 10 teams to get the No. 1 overall pick Monday night, it was a very unlikely outcome. But it's also exactly what the NBA encouraged when it adjusted the lottery odds six years ago.

Dallas got the No. 1 pick and a chance to take Duke freshmen Cooper Flagg, an outcome that only had a 1.8 percent chance of happening. It's unlikely, but much less likely than it would have been before 2019, when the 11th-worst team had a 0.8 percent chance at the top pick.

That's when the NBA, in an effort to reduce tanking, removed the incentives for being a truly bad team. Instead of the worst NBA team having a 25 percent chance at a top pick, second-worst a 19.9 percent chance and the third-worst getting a 15.6 percent chance, the three worst teams all get a 14 percent chance, with the odds declining by 1.5 percent at each spot until the 14th-worst team gets a 0.5 percent chance.

The NBA was motivated to make this adjustment after some truly egregious tanking earlier in the previous decade. The 2011-12 Charlotte Hornets (then known as the Bobcats) went 7-59, losing nearly 90 percent of their games. The Philadelphia 76ers openly got rid of their best players to be as bad as possible, going 47-199 from 2013-16. The superior odds of being the NBA's absolute worst team instead of second-worst were enough to inspire an annual race to the bottom.

Now, a team can blatantly tank and end up with the NBA's worst record, like the Utah Jazz did, and still end up picking fifth. That's brutal for Jazz fans, but why should they be rewarded for losing games on purpose? On the flip side, the Mavericks could have packed it in after injuries to Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis, but instead they tried to win games and ended up making the play-in tournament final.

Teams trying to lose on purpose cheats NBA fans, whether they're buying tickets or watching on TV. If the most blatant tankers get unlucky in the lottery, is that unfairness? We think it's justice.