An alternative draft system for the allocation of player draft selections in the national basketball association

The issue of 'tanking' is a growing trend in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and is often the topic of debate. 'Tanking' is when a team lose games on purpose in order to improve their draft position. Previous research has been conducted on the incentives teams have to win games under the current NBA weightedlottery system. The research has suggested that non-playoff bound teams do not have an incentive to win games under the current draft system, leading to the system being heavily criticised. With this in mind, the aim of this research was to implement a draft system that would reward non-playoff bound teams for winning games that are deemed to be 'unimportant' with respect to making the playoffs. The calculation of 'unimportance' is based on the probability of a team making the playoffs after the completion of each game of the season. A variety of approaches were then examined to help derive a score for 'unimportant' and unlikely wins. The results found evidence that non-playoff bound teams would have an incentive to win games late in the season under this alternative draft system. As well as exploring incentives to win, we wiii explore the attractiveness of this system as well as evaluating past draft picks to examine the reward teams could have obtained under this alternative draft system.