Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. My name's Trevor Lane on today's show. We're going to take a look at the new rules hitting the NBA, tanking reform. Now the law of the land. What does it mean for the Lakers and the value of their draft picks on the trade market? Plus, Austin Reeves, a little bit of buzz about his free agency for us to talk about. And I've got some Q&A coming from our channel members.

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Let's start with the new rules coming in with the 3-2-1 lottery,

as they are calling it.

The three lottery balls, two or one is the system for the 16 teams that will now be part of the draft lottery.

So effectively, why is all of this happening?

Well, it's being done to combat tanking.

It's being done by the NBA to remove any kind of incentive for an NBA team to lose basketball games.

And if that is indeed the overarching goal, I think they did a nice job at that.

There is really no reason to lose any basketball games, the exception of perhaps you

could say if you are in the play and there's actually a little bit of incentive to lose

the first 7-8 play-in game and then get one ping pong ball, one lottery ball towards getting that number one overall pick.

Of course, the way this is now weighted, though, the bottom three teams actually get penalized for being the three worst teams in the NBA.

They get just two lottery balls, whereas the remaining

non-play-in teams, which is the remaining seven teams, they get three. So you do lose a hefty percentage

if you are one of the three worst teams in the NBA. And then you've got flattened lottery odds

from there. What is the ultimate result of this going to be? Well, it's probably going to be a lot

of teams that are typically in the zone that we would have referred to as from there. What is the ultimate result of this going to be? Well, it's probably going to be a lot of

teams that are typically in the zone that we would have referred to as the treadmill teams, teams that

are in spots that you simply do not want to be in for decades now. The NBA has been a league where

you either want to be really good or really bad. The worst place to be is in the middle.

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