New Lottery Changes will make it Harder to Build Through NBA Draft

Big changes are coming to the draft space.

Jun 25, 2025; Brooklyn, NY, USA; Cooper Flagg poses with NBA commissioner Adam Silver after being selected as first overall by the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images | Brad Penner-Imagn Images

There’s a few options for team-building in the NBA, some of which are highlighted by the impending Finals matchups.

The Knicks did so on the trade market, grabbing all of Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges through various trades. The Spurs, fresh off a Game 7 win over the OKC Thunder, did so through the draft, utilizing three top-five picks in a row to grab franchise-altering talents.

With recent changes to the NBA Draft Lottery, the latter will be much harder. And teams could start to pivot mid-way through rebuilds.

The lottery changes, spurred by the league’s desire to eliminate tanking — positioning a team to lose on purpose in order to get better draft picks — offer more randomness into the draft as a whole. Which allows for less planning on a decision-maker’s end.

The former system, which ran from 2019 to 2026, saw descending odds and a tiered system that wouldn’t allow teams below a certain spots. The worst team in the league couldn’t get worse than the fifth pick. Now, under new rules, that team can fall all the way to No. 16. 

Even more, for the first time in NBA history, teams will also be punished for losing games. The bottom-three teams in the league will enter the “relegation zone", getting a worse chance at the top pick opposed to teams No. 4-10 in the reverse standings. 

All of the teams in that range will have an 8% chance at the No. 1 pick, the most the odds have been flattened in league history.

Those changes can be seen in a recent simulation done by NBA Draft on SI, where the theoretical results were much more wild than reality.

That randomness will make it much harder to prep for available draft talent. Where the Thunder, Pistons, Spurs and Rockets once knew they’d be leaving with a certain range of draft picks, teams will now have a much wider range entering lottery-day. Those teams were likely planning on seasons where they could earn top-five picks, which can't be planned for in the new era.

Some will likely be lucky enough to see consistent success and good luck in rising on lottery day, but others will certainly be harmed by the changes.

The draft will still infuse the league with talent time and again, but the changes will force new strategies, incorporating more randomness than ever before.