This is interesting because I’ve been wondering about this for a long time myself.

Jeff Van Gundy offered a modest proposal and everyone laughed. Van Gundy was not joking.

Weeks before accusations could begin that teams were tanking games to improve their chances of landing either of the season’s celebrated college prodigies, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, Van Gundy offered a solution. Make the entire first round a lottery. One through 30. Put every name in a hat and let luck determine the draft order.

Right now, only the really crappy teams get solid shots at improving through the draft, so if you’re a team with decent management that manages to keep you in the middle, or moving up, then you’re never really going to get anyone of merit without getting lucky. By the same token, really good players who end up with perennially bad teams are just plain stuck until their rookie contracts run out.

I understand the notion of spreading the wealth and trying to level the laying field, but I think the teams who don’t dog it every season need to get a shot in the draft as well.