NBA reforms have brought the bottom up. Will they push the top down?

Here in the final week of the NBA regular season, much remains at stake. The West has six teams in a jumble from seed Nos. 3 through 8. Two of those teams will have home court advantage in the first round. Two will be in the play-in tournament. All of them have 46 to 48 wins. Five of them have exactly 32 losses.

The East is a little more settled: we've known for weeks who'd be in the top six and which four teams would battle out in the play-in, though the positioning of the Nos. 4-6 seeds has been pretty variable. The West play-in has been more sad than exciting, unless you like watching car crashes and thus have been paying close attention to the Suns.

All in all, having some stakes in the majority of games down the home stretch is good for the entertainment value of the NBA. So long as the league has a really long regular season, giving the teams something to play for is important.

Part of those stakes are owed to the play-in tournament itself. Consider this: without the play-in, the eight-team field in the West would have been settled long ago. Teams would still be battling for seeding – no one wants to finish No. 8 now, and no one would have wanted to finish No. 8 in a world without the play-in. But the drama is different: one of these good to very good teams will face single-elimination against the Kings or Mavericks next week. The stakes are higher with the play-in tournament. It also has given the Kings and Mavericks (and in theory but not practice the Suns) something to play for down the stretch.

The East would perhaps have had higher stakes without the play-in. As mentioned, the top six have been locked in for some time, as have the Play-In Four. In a world without the play-in, the stakes for the Hawks, Magic, Heat and Bulls – currently all within 36 to 38 wins – would have been elevated. Without the play-in, two teams would make the playoffs and two teams would face the disaster of missing the playoffs in a top-heavy East, which could lead to real offseason questions. (Arguably, all four teams should face major offseason questions regardless of final seeding.) There are still stakes: you'd much rather be Nos. 7 or 8 and get two chances for one win to advance, and home court even in a single play-in game is helpful. But the stakes are lower. There's simply less desperation when you know the postseason in some form is guaranteed.

The play-in tournament – a total victory of reform for the NBA – is again just part of the extended stakes for the NBA, though. Lottery reform is another. Yes, there has been a gross amount of tanking this season. The Sixers made an institutional decision to give up months ago in a rousing effort to save their conditional first-round draft pick. As such, the Sixers have been essentially irrelevant for most of the back half of the season. The Pelicans gave up after falling into an injury-created hole. The Jazz tanked so hard the NBA fined them. The Wizards never really tried. The Nets actively gave away veteran players because the team was too competitive. The Hornets never really tried once Brandon Miller went down to injury. The Raptors have famously benched starters in the fourth quarters of close games specifically to lose. There has been a gross amount of tanking this season.

And yet, there could have been more. Without lottery reform, the Spurs probably go full tank once Victor Wembanyama was ruled out. Without lottery reform, the Blazers might put Deni Avdija on ice at some point. The Bulls and Heat might have thought about further efforts to move down the standings after trading Zach LaVine and Jimmy Butler respectively. The tanking at the bottom could have gotten even worse.

Think of tanking in this way. Lottery reform flattened the odds significantly. The most noteworthy tank jobs now tend to come either in a race for those highest odds for the No. 1 pick – think the Jazz this year, and the Blazers last season – or when some other circumstance substitutes in different stakes. Examples here would be the Sixers this season, who owe their pick to the Thunder if it's outside the top six. The odds are flattened, but there's a cliff for Philadelphia: if the pick ends up No. 7, it goes to OKC, so it's imperative to get bad enough to boost the odds of keeping the selection. The conditions on their pick have de-flattened the odds: the Sixers aren't really focused on odds of No. 3 or 5, it is No. 6 (or better) or nothing. The same applies to the Mavericks two seasons ago, which made the Dallas tank job with the play-in still technically in play so notable: the Mavs weren't concerned with marginally increasing their odds in the flatten lottery environment. Pick conditions made it an all-or-nothing proposition.

It's the combination of lottery reform, which deters teams from competing for 65 losses since the odds don't improve significantly at the range, and the play-in, which provides an incentive for teams in the Nos. 9-12 range to maintain competitive spirit, that have brought parity up from the bottom. These reforms are now several years old and matured. The play-in was introduced in the bubble. The current lottery odds took effect in 2019. Both feel stable and normal now.

The next domino to fall is how the league's more restrictive salary cap and luxury tax system will impact the other end of the standings. Arguably, we've already seen one team be impacted by the system changes: the Minnesota Timberwolves, who pre-emptively traded Karl-Anthony Towns with an eye toward future tax and transaction issues. The Wolves were in competition for the No. 1 seed this time last year, and made the Western Conference Finals. Now they are in that pitched battle to avoid the play-in. Two or three more franchises could be faced with tough financial decisions in July: Boston is mentioned often given the enormity of their payroll, but a half-dozen other teams, including most of the best teams in either conference, are in the conversation as well. And eventually, the conversation will hit Oklahoma City as well.

Competitive balance is a stated goal of Adam Silver's regime. There was never any single silver bullet. The suite of reforms the commissioner has introduced has successfully brought up the bottom of the table for the most part, with some annual exceptions. Now the question is how strongly the latest reforms will bring the top down.

Scores

Kings 127, Pistons 117 | Box Score | Sacramento didn't have Keegan Murray and Malik Monk was knocked out of the game early as the Kings went down 18. The offense was going to have to come from the former Bulls buddies if Sacramento was going to come back. And so it did: DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine combined for 80 points to lead the Kings to a big victory. LaVine had 30 in the second half.

The Kings are one win or Phoenix loss from clinching a play-in spot. A winning season is still on the table if they go 3-0.

Sixers 105, Heat 117 | Box Score | Miami wins without Bam Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins. Still an outside if unlikely chance that the Sixers can tie the Pelicans for the fourth worst record – Philadelphia needs to lose three more games, and needs New Orleans to win two of four against the Nets, Bucks, Heat and Thunder.

Among the things the Sixers have learned this season: Quentin Grimes is a starter quality player, Lonnie Walker IV is an NBA player and ... Adem Bona is a rotation big? Good finisher and rebounder, at minimum. The turnovers are high and it's hard to tell much about defense with the team in this state.

Links

Another spectacularly informative round of Power Rankings from John Schuhmann.

No one is covering Luka Doncic's return to Dallas this week more thoroughly than Marc Stein. Here's Part 1 of a two-part FAQ-style piece. Here's Part 2.

An extension for Joe Cronin in Portland. The Blazers gained at least 14 wins year over year. In a season full of huge improvements, they definitely deserve some attention. Big summer for the franchise.

Kelly Dwyer on the teams of the Atlantic Division.

Adam Taylor on the outlook for Al Horford finishing his career in Boston.

Tom Haberstroh on the Clippers as a title contender.

The Ringer has a project looking at the top draft prospects.

The Ime Udoka quotes about his exchange with Steph Curry going into halftime of Sunday's game are some nice dry fuel for this rivalry. I'd love to see a Rockets-Warriors series for the first time since 2019. I'm not convinced either team would love it.

Schedule

All times Eastern. Games with stakes get asterisks.

Grizzlies at Hornets, 7*
Bulls at Cavaliers, 7*
Wizards at Pacers, 7*
Hawks at Magic, 7*
Pelicans at Nets, 7:30
Celtics at Knicks, 7:30, TNT* (sorta-ish?)
Timberwolves at Bucks, 8**
Lakers at Thunder, 8** – sounds like some players might rest here
Warriors at Suns, 10, TNT**
Spurs at Clippers, 10:30*

Be excellent to each other.