Why Grizzlies Were the Only Team to Vote Against New NBA Draft Lottery Rules

On Thursday, the NBA’s proposed draft lottery overhaul became official.

The league’s Board of Governors voted to pass the “3-2-1” proposal today that commissioner Adam Silver has been touting as the answer to tanking over the last several months. The basic idea is to flip the current lottery structure on its head and give lesser No. 1 pick odds to the bottom-three teams in the NBA; right now the three worst teams have a much higher chance of winning the lottery than anybody else. This will purportedly prevent any teams from losing on purpose by taking away the incentive to finish the season with the worst record possible.

There are multiple other new rules that accompany that overhaul, however. The lottery is now expanded to include the teams who lose in the play-in tournament. Silver, as commissioner, now has significantly more authority to punish teams he judges to be tanking; he can give out heftier fines and has the ability to change the draft order at his whim if he feels a team violates the rules. Most importantly of all the additional changes coming along with the lottery changes itself—a team’s first-round pick can no longer land in the top five for three straight years, nor can a team pick No. 1 in two straight drafts.

Despite the glaring pitfalls inherent in these dramatic changes instituted on a whim due to a particularly egregious tanking season, the new rules passed with a vote of 29–1. The lone holdout? The Grizzlies.

Why was Memphis the only team to vote against the lottery proposal? Because of the organization’s decision to trade Jaren Jackson Jr. at this year’s trade deadline.

The Grizzlies were finally forced to give up on the JJJ/Ja Morant era after another injury-plagued campaign for the former star point guard and traded Jackson Jr. to the Jazz in February. The return was sizable, as it should be for a 26-year-old Defensive Player of the Year: four players and three draft picks. Two of those picks are for the 2027 draft. One originally belonged to the Lakers. The other will be the “most favorable” of the Cavaliers, Timberwolves and Jazz. Looking beyond the significance of trading JJJ from an on-court perspective, it’s clear the Grizzlies were willing to bet that one of those two ‘27 picks wound end up high in the order, and the last pick (the Suns’ 2031 first-round selection) was the sweetener.

But the new lottery rules posed a problem. Once Utah picks No. 2 in June’s draft, the franchise will have selected in the top five of two consecutive drafts; the Jazz had the No. 5 pick in ‘25. Which means, according to the proposal that just passed with flying colors, the Jazz’s pick for the ‘27 draft cannot land in the top five—even though the pick belongs to Memphis, should it be better than Minnesota’s and Cleveland’s. Which feels like a near-certainty.

Doesn’t seem very fair, does it? The Grizzlies traded JJJ with the expectation that the Jazz’s pick could land in the top five. It’s a risk, but obviously Utah’s recent track record of losing many games every year suggests it was a decent bet. But three months after agreeing to that trade, the NBA will no longer allow that pick to land in the top five. That would have changed the calculus quite a bit for Memphis, given the franchise was offloading one of its key players. Trading Jackson Jr. for an unprotected Jazz pick that could land anywhere has appeal. Trading Jackson Jr. for, at best, the No. 6 pick is a completely different matter.

The Grizzlies had further incentive to vote against this proposal considering what the JJJ trade signified. Memphis is entering a rebuilding stage and will need to find top talent in the draft now that Jackson Jr. is gone and Morant’s trade value is six feet under. A group of anonymous players said the franchise was at the top of their no-trade list in a poll conducted by The Athletic a few weeks ago after LeBron James openly stated he didn’t enjoy playing there. The draft is the life raft for organizations such as this one, and the new rules just made it a lot harder to land top talent unless they win some games, but not too many, but not too few.

But the top reason they voted no was the Jackson Jr. trade. He’s a 26-year-old star defender who seemed happy enough in Memphis to wear a Grizzlies jersey for his entire career. The team traded him anyway for a lottery ticket from the Jazz—a lottery ticket that can no longer win the lottery under any circumstances.

A tough development for Memphis.

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