Prior to the start of this season, the NBA made many changes in order to increase the competition of the league. Some of the major changes include altering the format of the All-Star Game, the league’s policy on resting healthy players and the draft lottery. The NBA also added the option for teams to sign players to two-way contracts.
The 2017 All-Star Game was a highly uncompetitive game with some of the world’s top players barely playing defense. Many fans believe the game was just used as a platform to show off some of the craziest dunks and three pointers instead of trying to win.
After breaking an All-Star Game record with 374 combined points scored by both teams, the NBA and NBA Players Association deemed it necessary to revamp the game.
Unlike previous years, two team captains will select their teams out of a pool of players voted in as starters and reserves. The player who receives the most votes in each conference will be the captain and can pick their players regardless of which conference they are in.
Each team will play for local charities as well, which adds incentive to win the game and take it more seriously. Each team will select a Los Angeles-area charity, which is where the game will be played, or a national organization where donations will be used to support local efforts.
Despite all of the benefits of these changes, freshman Jacob Dincin believes that these changes were not necessary and they may cause more issues.
“There’s also now a possibility of more NBA players possibly having beef with each other,” Dincin said. “Like for example, if you are one of the team captains’ really good friends, but you don’t get drafted by him or get drafted very late, some problems might arise.”
These changes will go into effect for the 67th NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles on February 18, 2018.
Also, the NBA Board of Governors changed the rules of the draft lottery. Previously, the top seed, or the team with the worst record in the previous NBA regular season has 25 percent of the lottery odds, the second seed has 19.9 percent and the third seed has 15.6 percent in the draft.
The new draft lottery will ensure that the teams with the three worst regular-season records will each have a 14 percent chance of winning the lottery. The odds for the remaining teams in the 14-team lottery will be reduced gradually after the top three.
This change was made to reduce the number of teams that intentionally tank every season. Certain teams purposefully lose most of their games in order to get a top draft pick to rebuild their roster for the future.
As more teams have resorted to using this strategy, the league has become less competitive and engaging for fans. The NBA hopes if the odds for a top pick are slightly lower, then less teams will purposefully strive for terrible season records. These lottery changes will go into effect for the 2019 NBA draft
Additionally, the NBA has created the option for teams to sign players to two-way contracts. Under a two-way contract, a player is technically signed to both the NBA team and the developmental league (G League) team associated with a certain city. These players can play on both teams, but they spend most of their time in the G league since they can spend no more than 45 days with the NBA team.
These contracts allow players to earn a higher salary than they would earn if they were only in the G league and their contract with an NBA team gives them a secure connection to a professional team.
Kent Lacob, general manager of the Santa Cruz Warriors, believes that these contracts benefit players as they will have a larger roles with NBA teams.
“It cements in place the opportunity to have guys in a development situation where they really are connected to the NBA organization and affiliate organization,” Lacob said in an interview with SB Nation.
Along with these changes, the NBA has also reduced the number of back-to-back games, eliminated instances where teams play four games in five nights, changed the policy on teams resting healthy players in high-profile games and rescheduled the trade deadline to before the All-Star break rather than after.
NBA President of Operations Byron Spruell fully supports the changes that have been made over the offseason.
“These changes were necessary to improve the competitive incentives for our teams,” Spruell said in a public statement.
