By David Aldridge | The Athletic, 2025-12-26 11:30:09
我无意炫耀，也并非想给NBA的圣诞派对泼冷水。
对联盟而言，摆烂是一个实实在在的大问题，其腐蚀性远超为了获得状元签而输球本身，其危害性要危险得多。NBA能够认识到这一点，并知道必须解决这个源自内部的危险，这是值得称赞的。（当然，这同时也是一种经济上的自我保护行为。）当多支球队在一个赛季里不以赢球为目标，而赌球和赌徒却围绕在他们周围时，这预示着一场灾难。因此，NBA试图采取措施，让更少的球队冒着年复一年输球的风险，我们不应将这些努力简单地视为作秀。
但在尝试“修复”乐透的20年里，联盟却始终在与风车作战。
试图让乐透变得某种程度上“更公平”，同时又阻止球队将其作为建队工具，这本身就是一个自相矛盾的目标——也是整个机制的致命缺陷。这个机制让乒乓球决定了价值数十亿美元球队的命运，而不是通过对基础设施、教练团队和球员发展进行重大投资，让你现有的球员变得更好。作为一支球队自力更生，而不是祈祷乐透好运，才是吸引大牌球员在自由市场或交易中加盟的更好预兆，因为更多伟大的球员会认为你的球队正是他们心仪的下家。
你要么全力以赴、真正地去竞争，要么就不是。这两种相互矛盾的方法根本无法调和。
根据报道，NBA最新的改革构想——包括冻结未来选秀权的顺位保护、在3月1日锁定乐透球队的顺位，以及限制一支球队连续两年获得前四顺位选秀权——并不能阻止球队摆烂。无论他们是整个赛季都在摆烂，还是中途开始“软摆烂”——当球队因伤病或战绩不佳而陷入困境时，他们会认为韬光养晦、来日再战是最佳策略，而不是去追逐附加赛资格。这正是费城76人队上赛季就选择了这种方式，以保住乐透区前六的位置。
如果弱队知道他们在3月1日就会被锁定乐透顺位，那他们在此之前又有什么理由去努力赢球呢？摆烂只会变得更加明目张胆和变本加厉。华盛顿奇才队和犹他爵士队本赛季再次表现糟糕，但他们的一些年轻人正展现出切实的成长迹象，因为他们获得了大量的上场时间，积累了经验和力量。但如果像他们这样的球队有动机尽早雪藏队内冉冉升起的新星以确保输掉更多比赛，那么即便是这些微弱的希望火花也可能被迅速掐灭。
这其中还有一个简单的公平性问题。现在，在圣安东尼奥马刺队凭借过去四年三次获得前四顺位选秀权（包括2023年的维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama)）将自己打造成一支初具规模的强队之后，你却想关上这扇大门？
必须尽可能清楚地声明，这不是圣安东尼奥的错，也不是对其好运的挖苦。在一代人的时间里，马刺队都是从上至下卓越运营的黄金标杆。是的，他们在最关键的时刻抽中了状元签——1987年，他们用状元签选中了戴维·罗宾逊 (David Robinson)，十年后，他们又选中了蒂姆·邓肯 (Tim Duncan)。但马刺队围绕这两位名人堂中锋配备了极具天赋和品格的球员，并培养了托尼·帕克 (Tony Parker)、马努·吉诺比利 (Manu Ginóbili) 和科怀·伦纳德 (Kawhi Leonard) 等一大批非乐透秀成为超级巨星。
他们现在正在做同样的事情。布莱恩·莱特 (Brian Wright) 接替R.C.·布福德 (R.C. Buford) 成为管理层的总经理——布福德仍以马刺体育娱乐公司CEO的身份参与其中——而在名人堂教练格雷格·波波维奇 (Gregg Popovich) 于2024年底中风后，米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 在上赛季初接过了教鞭。
当然，文班亚马是球队存在的基石。但马刺队并非只是将像斯蒂芬·卡斯尔 (Stephon Castle)（2024年第四顺位）和迪伦·哈珀 (Dylan Harper)（2025年第二顺位）这样的顶级新秀放在他身边。他们再次将内部培养作为成功的关键。
2020年以第11顺位被选中的德文·瓦塞尔 (Devin Vassell) 已成为关键首发。凯尔登·约翰逊 (Keldon Johnson) 是2019年首轮的倒数第二顺位。在他职业生涯的第七个赛季，他的投篮命中率高达58%，三分命中率达到39%。朱利安·尚帕尼 (Julian Champagnie) 是在2023年从费城76人队认领的裁员球员；在过去两个多赛季里，他在可能的185场比赛中出战了177场。
随着天赋的成熟，马刺队的战绩也逐步提升：在波波维奇执教下的2022和2023赛季连续取得22胜60负，上赛季在米奇·约翰逊的带领下大部分时间取得了34胜48负的战绩。
本赛季至今，马刺队取得了23胜7负的开局战绩，俄克拉荷马城雷霆队的五场失利中有三场是拜马刺所赐，其中包括圣诞大战的一场。他们的进攻效率排名联盟第五，防守效率排名第六。他们是一头正在成长的猛兽，已经闯入了NBA杯的决赛，在决赛输给纽约尼克斯队之前，他们先后击败了丹佛掘金队、洛杉矶湖人队和雷霆队。他们无疑看起来是卫冕冠军雷霆队的有力挑战者。
“如果我说这很容易，那是在撒谎，因为没人喜欢输球，”凯尔登·约翰逊周一表示。“但是，你知道，在所有的混乱和低谷中，你必须着眼于大局，并意识到我们这样做是为了一个更远大的目标。艰难的时刻不会持久。最终，我可以告诉你，我就是这一切的见证者。我只是全身心投入并信赖马刺队为我制定的计划。不仅是我，还有这支球队，我们已经在这里待了好几年了。我们团结一致，全神贯注，今年真的是一个很棒的赛季。我们一直在赢球，享受比赛，并且打出了很棒的篮球。”
所以，马刺队亲身参与了自身的重建过程。但他们也得到了很多帮助。每一个高顺位选秀权都让圣安东尼奥能更容易地动用未来的选秀资产来补强现在的年轻核心，就像上赛季马刺队在一笔三方交易中从萨克拉门托国王队得到德阿隆·福克斯 (De’Aaron Fox) 那样。
然而现在，NBA却想在圣安东尼奥身后关上大门，让那些几年前和马刺处境相同的球队陷入困境，无法像马刺那样迅速地提升阵容。（我曾公开表示：我主张废除乐透和选秀，让新秀们自由签约他们想去的任何球队。但这不可能发生。）
美国职业棒球大联盟（MLB）在其2022年与球员签订的劳资协议中修改了选秀规则，引入了覆盖MLB选秀前六个顺位的选秀乐透。MLB的乐透借鉴了NBA的改革，将战绩最差三支球队获得状元签的概率拉平至16.5%。但是，正如NBA提议未来要做的那样，MLB的乐透/选秀改革也限制了一支球队可以连续多年通过高顺位选秀权获益。
从联盟收入分成计划中获得资金的小市场MLB球队不能连续三年获得乐透签。而任何向收入分成计划缴款的球队或大市场球队，都不能连续两年进入乐透区。任何因上述两种情况而没有资格获得前六顺位选秀权的球队，在次年选秀的第一轮中顺位不能高于第10位。
你可以想象，在休斯顿太空人队于2010年代初通过摆烂送走明星球员——他们在2011-13赛季战绩为162胜324负，并因此在2012、2013和2014年连续获得状元签，还在2015年获得了第二顺位（作为未签下2014年首轮秀的补偿）和第五顺位，并用这些选秀权选中了几年后赢得世界大赛冠军的核心成员，如卡洛斯·科雷亚 (Carlos Correa)、凯尔·塔克 (Kyle Tucker) 和阿莱克斯·布雷格曼 (Alex Bregman)——之后，MLB如今试图自圆其说的做法在那些不得不尝试在全新规则下复制休斯顿模式的联盟垫底球队的球迷群体中反响如何。
禁止球队连续多年获得前四顺位，这难道不会鼓励更多球队摆烂吗？因为他们知道A、B或C队在前一年进入前四后，今年就没有资格再获得前四顺位了。这难道不会最终导致更多强队获得更多高顺位选秀权吗？而这完全违背了以战绩倒序为基础的选秀的初衷。
更糟糕的是，对于一个信誓旦旦希望让“实力均等”深入联盟骨髓的联赛来说：存在一个非常非常现实的可能性，那就是卫冕冠军雷霆队可能会在明年的选秀中获得状元签，因为他们拥有来自洛杉矶快船队的2026年无保护首轮签——这是2019年保罗·乔治 (Paul George) 交易带来的又一个彩蛋，那笔交易为俄克拉荷马城带来了谢伊·吉尔杰斯-亚历山大 (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) 和多个未来的首轮签。快船队本赛季初的崩盘让雷霆队处于一个难以想象的位置：为他们的冠军核心阵容再添一位顶级天才。
此外，如果爵士队2026年的首轮签掉出前八，雷霆队也将获得其所有权。
这不是雷霆队的错；他们深谋远虑。但如果，比如说，达林·彼得森 (Darryn Peterson)、AJ·迪班萨 (AJ Dybantsa) 或卡梅隆·布泽尔 (Cameron Boozer) 去了雷霆队，让强者更强，这对整个联盟的发展更有利吗？还是应该让那些连一个可以围绕建队和营销的明星球员都没有的球队得到他们？如果像奇才队（自2010年以来从未获得过状元签）、爵士队（参与乐透11次从未提升过顺位）或布鲁克林篮网队（在2023年球队解体后退出了大牌自由球员市场）在明年春天再次被拒之门外，无法通过选秀得到他们的SGA、约基奇或字母哥，他们该怎么办？
想象一支极其成功和受欢迎的乐队——比如U2——把德里克·特拉克斯 (Derek Trucks) 或H.E.R.招入麾下，就因为他们有这个能力，因为他们已经是传奇乐队，谁不想加入呢？也因为他们已经拥有全球粉丝，乐于接受这两位能把吉他弹出花的人。这会让U2作为一个团体变得更强、更有影响力吗？与The Edge进行吉他二重奏对特拉克斯或H.E.R.的职业生涯有好处吗？当然。
但对整个音乐产业来说，什么更好呢？一个更强大的U2，还是一个已经很伟大的U2，外加一支冉冉升起的H.E.R.或泰德斯基·特拉克斯乐队 (Tedeschi Trucks Band)，各自发出自己的声音，发展自己的粉丝群体？如果你想看特拉克斯或H.E.R.做他们自己的音乐，和他们自己的乐队一起表演，而不是仅仅与Bono同台即兴演奏呢？
NBA继续试图修复乐透，因为乐透持续未能实现其应有的功能——让球队迅速进出乐透区，为下一批需要立即帮助的球队腾出空间。也许问题在于乐透本身，而不是改革它的尝试。
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
点击查看原文：NBA's latest idea to fix the lottery continues to ignore the problem: the lottery
NBA’s latest idea to fix the lottery continues to ignore the problem: the lottery
This is not a flex, nor an attempt to drop coal in the NBA’s Christmas stocking.
Tanking is a real, real problem for the league, which corrodes in ways much more dangerous than just losing games to get the best chance at a top pick in the draft. That the NBA recognizes this and knows it has to address the danger emanating from inside the house is commendable. (It is, also, an act of economic self-preservation, of course.) Having gambling and gamblers around multiple teams not trying to win in a given season is a portent for disaster, and the NBA’s attempts to do what it can to make fewer teams run the risk of year-over-year losing shouldn’t be dismissed as show.
But the league, 20 years into its attempts to “fix” the lottery, continues to tilt at windmills.
Trying to make the lottery somehow “fairer,” while at the same time discouraging teams from embarking upon it as a roster-building tool, is a contradiction of purpose — a fatal flaw in the whole apparatus of letting ping-pong balls determine the fate of billion-dollar franchises, rather than significant investment in infrastructure, coaching and development to make the players you have get better. Standing on your own two feet as an organization, not praying for lottery luck, is a much better predictor of adding difference-makers in free agency and/or trades, as more great players think your shop is where they want to be.
But you’re either all in and competing for real, or you’re not. And there’s no way to reconcile those two contradictory approaches.
The NBA’s latest reported ideas for reform — freezing future draft pick protections, fixing the lottery teams in place on March 1 and limiting a team from having top-four picks two years in a row — won’t stop teams from tanking, whether they do so all season long, or via “soft” tanks begun midstream, as teams ground down by injuries or subpar results decide the best play is to live to fight another day, rather than chase the Play-In. This was the method the Philadelphia 76ers chose last season to keep a top-six spot in the lottery.
If bad teams know they’ll be locked into their lottery positions on March 1, why on earth would they try to do anything to win before then? The tanking would be even more obvious and egregious. The Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz are again terrible this season, but some of their young guys are showing real signs of growth, as they get big minutes and gain experience and strength. But even those small road marks of hope might be eliminated with the quickness if teams like them had an incentive to shut down their emerging players as soon as possible to ensure more losing.
There is also simple fairness. Now, after the San Antonio Spurs have built themselves into a budding colossus, with three top-four picks in the last four years, including Victor Wembanyama in 2023, you want to turn off the spigot?
This, it must be stated as clearly as possible, is not San Antonio’s fault, or a dig at it for its good fortune. The Spurs were the top-to-bottom gold standard for organizational excellence for a generation. Yes, they went No. 1 when it mattered most — in 1987, when they took David Robinson first, and a decade later, when it was Tim Duncan. But the Spurs surrounded those Hall of Fame centers with incredible talent and character, and developed a slew of non-lottery players, from Tony Parker to Manu Ginóbili to Kawhi Leonard, into superstars.
They are doing the same now, with Brian Wright replacing R.C. Buford in the front office as general manager — Buford is still involved, as CEO of Spurs Sports and Entertainment — and Mitch Johnson taking over for Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich early last season, following Popovich’s stroke in late 2024.
Wembanyama is the existential base, of course. But the Spurs haven’t just put elite prospects like Stephon Castle (fourth, 2024) and Dylan Harper (second, 2025) around him. They’ve again made internal development vital to their success.
Devin Vassell, taken 11th overall in the 2020 draft, has become a key starter. Keldon Johnson was the next-to-last pick in the first round in 2019. He’s shooting 58 percent from the floor and 39 percent from deep, in his seventh pro season. Julian Champagnie was claimed off waivers from Philly in 2023; he’s played in 177 of a possible 185 games the last two-plus seasons.
And the Spurs have gradually moved up as their talent matured: back-to-back 22-60 seasons under Popovich in 2022 and 2023, then a 34-48 campaign last season, mostly under Mitch Johnson.
The Spurs are 23-7 out of the gate this season, having given the Oklahoma City Thunder three of their five losses including one on Christmas Day. They’re fifth in offensive rating; sixth in defensive rating. They’re a growing monster, having reached the NBA Cup finals, after beating the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers and Thunder before falling to the New York Knicks in the title game. They certainly look capable challengers to the defending champion Thunder.
“I’ll be lying if I said it was easy, ’cause nobody likes losing,” Keldon Johnson said Monday. “But, you know, in the midst of all the chaos and all the down times, you’ve really got to look at the bigger picture, and realize that we’re doing this for a bigger reason. Tough times don’t last. And ultimately, I can tell you, I’ve been a testament to that. I really just lock in and buy into what the Spurs organization, the plan that they have for me. Not only me, but the team that’s here and been here for a couple of years. We just stayed together and locked in, and this year has just been a great year. We’ve been winning and having fun, and playing some good basketball.”
So, the Spurs have been present for their own re-creation. But they also got a lot of assistance. Each high draft pick made it easier for San Antonio to spend future draft capital more easily to supplement the young core now, as when the Spurs got De’Aaron Fox from the Sacramento Kings in a three-team trade last season.
Now, though, the NBA would like to close the door behind San Antonio, leaving teams in the same position the Spurs were in a few years ago in a bit of a predicament, and without the means to improve their rosters as rapidly as the Spurs could. (I’m on record: I’d get rid of the lottery and the draft, and let incoming players sign with whomever they wanted. But that’s not going to happen.)
Major League Baseball changed its draft rules in the 2022 collective bargaining agreement with its players, introducing a draft lottery that covers the top six picks in MLB’s draft. MLB’s lottery borrowed from the NBA’s reforms, flattening the odds for the top three picks in the draft at 16.5 percent for the top three teams. But, just as the NBA is proposing to do going forward, MLB’s lottery/draft reform also limited the number of years a team could bite from the draft apple with high picks.
Small-market MLB teams that get money from the league’s revenue-sharing program can’t have a lottery pick three years in a row. And no team that either pays into the revenue-sharing program or is a large-market team can pick in the lottery two years in a row. Any team ineligible for a top-six pick in either category cannot pick earlier than 10th in the first round of the following year’s draft.
You can imagine, after the Houston Astros tanked their stars off in the early 2010s — going 162-324 from 2011-13, and winding up with the top pick overall in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and the second (compensation for not signing their 2014 first-round pick) and fifth picks overall in 2015, and using those picks on key members of what would become a World Series-winning team just a few years later, like Carlos Correa and Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman — how well MLB’s attempts to now square the circle have gone over with fan bases of the league’s worst teams that had to try and build what Houston did, under completely new rules.
Instead of encouraging teams to compete, wouldn’t locking out teams from consecutive years in the top four just encourage more teams to tank, knowing that teams A, B or C, after being in the top four the previous year, are now ineligible for top-four spots this year? And, wouldn’t that ultimately lead to more good teams getting more high picks, which defeats the entire purpose of a draft based on inverse order of record?
Worse yet, for a league that swears up and down that it wants parity to bore as deep as possible into the league’s marrow: There’s a real, real possibility that the defending champion Thunder could get the top pick in next year’s draft, because of the unprotected 2026 first-rounder from the LA Clippers that the Thunder owns — yet another Easter egg from the Paul George trade in 2019 that brought Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and multiple future firsts to Oklahoma City. The Clippers’ collapse to start this season has put the Thunder in the unimaginable position of adding yet another marquee talent to their championship core.
And, as an addendum, OKC also gets the rights to Utah’s 2026 first-rounder if it falls outside of the top eight.
No fault of the Thunder; they planned ahead. But is the game served better if, say, Darryn Peterson or AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer goes to the Thunder, adding to their largesse, instead of teams that don’t have a single marquee player to build around and market? If the Wizards, who haven’t had the top pick in the draft since 2010, or the Jazz, who’ve never moved up in the lottery once in the 11 times they’ve participated, or the Brooklyn Nets, who got out of the marquee free-agent business after their team imploded in 2023, are iced out yet again next spring from adding their SGA or Jokić or Giannis via the draft, what are they supposed to do?
Imagine a wildly successful and popular band — U2, maybe — adding Derek Trucks to the band, or H.E.R., because it could, and because it’s already a legendary band, and who wouldn’t want to join it, and because it already has a worldwide following that would gladly accept people who can shred guitars like those two can. Would that make U2 even better as a group, even more influential? Would it be great for the careers of Trucks and/or H.E.R. to do guitar duets with The Edge? Certainly.
But what’s better for the music industry: an even greater U2, or an already great U2, along with an up-and-coming H.E.R./Tedeschi Trucks Band, providing their own sound and growing their own fan bases? What if you wanted to see Trucks/H.E.R. do their own thing, with their own bands, rather than just riffing with Bono?
The NBA continues to try to fix the lottery because the lottery continues to fail at what it’s supposed to do — get teams in and out of it, in short fashion, making room for the next group of teams that need immediate help. Maybe the problem is the lottery, not the attempts at reforming it.
By David Aldridge, via The Athletic