Stan Van Gundy advises NBA to eliminate the draft: ‘Remove any incentive to losing’

If the NBA has an issue with teams tanking for the draft, then Stan Van Gundy thinks they should eliminate the problem by eliminating the draft.

Shortly before the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, the league fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for removing seemingly healthy players from games. And it’s not just those two teams; the Brooklyn Nets, Sacramento Kings, and Washington Wizards have similarly made it clear by their actions that they’re tanking for better draft odds. How does the NBA fix its tanking problem? Stan Van Gundy joined Golic & Golic and suggested drastic draft reform.

“What we have to do is remove any incentive to losing,” Van Gundy said. “I think we too much try to denigrate the teams for say a lack of integrity or something. But look, everybody is just doing what they think is best for their franchise. And if you’re the Utah Jazz, the Sacramento Kings, what’s your route to getting one of the great players? They see it as through the draft, they want to maximize their opportunities. Even though we don’t like the outcome with the tanking, it’s hard to fault the teams.”

“I’d get rid of the draft. No draft. You still have the salary cap. If you want to go give Cooper Flagg $45 million a year coming out of college, do it; he’s a free agent. Everybody coming out is a free agent. With no draft, there’s no incentive to lose, there’s none at all.”

The initial concern is how good players would end up on bad teams in small markets. How are the Charlotte Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies, or Sacramento Kings getting good players without winning a draft lottery? And Van Gundy’s solution is to keep a salary cap for teams but eliminate the individual max for players.

“If you want to give 90% of your salary cap to one guy, great,” Van Gundy said. “If there was no individual max on players, you’d take those top 30 players in the league and spread them around the league.”

If there is a salary cap and the best players are earning more than $100 million annually, stars would have to consider less optimal teams and situations to find an organization that can pay them the most.

The other issue is whether the NBA is willing to give up the draft, which it has built into an annual event. But Van Gundy is probably trying too hard by getting rid of the draft altogether. The better and easier solution might be to keep the draft, but eliminate the incentive to lose by giving every non-playoff team the same or similar odds of landing the top pick.