Bill Simmons' fan-friendly solution to fix the NBA

[sk7326]

One idea I have been messing around with to seriously disincentivize tanking is even more radical than his idea with the draft lottery:

Reduce the ENTIRE draft to 10 picks.  Only the lottery teams have a chance to participate and equal chance to get the #1 overall pick.  If we accept that there are only really a few guys with consensus impact, those are the only guys who should be competed for.  Losing games has no impact on your ability to get the #1 overall pick - and even moreover, losing games has no impact on your ability to get a Top 10 player of ANY kind. 

This also frees up the chancier talent - the guys that teams scouting and development and evaluation folks make or break their jobs on - for all of the GMs.  An older team might not want any of their rookies ... and this prevents teams like Phoenix who are too cheap to keep their picks from selling them off or burying them in Europe.