NBA analyst Michelle Beadle applauds the WNBA for having a more strategic approach, compared to the NBA, for the draft lottery system.
With the 2026 All-Star break now here, the optics around the NBA standings are hard to ignore.
Several teams are already resting key players or declining to consistently field their strongest available lineups. Around the league, the conversation has quietly shifted from playoff pushes to lottery positioning — even though the regular season still has significant runway left.
That dynamic became the centerpiece of a recent discussion on the “Run It Back” show, where longtime broadcaster Michelle Beadle offered a sharp contrast between how the NBA and WNBA handle their draft lotteries.
Beadle did not mince words when comparing the two systems.
Considering the league reformed its lottery in 2019 — flattening the odds so the three worst teams each hold a 14 percent chance at the No. 1 pick — the expectation was that tanking would diminish. Instead, the strategy appears to have simply evolved.
Rather than chasing the absolute worst record, teams now aim to remain within the bottom tier, where a jump into the top four remains realistic. The Dallas Mavericks provided a vivid example last year, moving from 11th in lottery positioning to secure Duke sensation Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick.
Since the 2019 reform, 11 of the 28 top-four selections have gone to teams that entered with the seventh-worst odds or lower. In other words, in just seven years, the NBA has recreated a level of lottery volatility that once took decades to accumulate under prior formats.
Beadle used that backdrop to highlight what she views as a smarter approach across the aisle.
The WNBA does not rely on a single season’s record to determine lottery odds. Instead, it combines the records from the previous two seasons. That structure makes it far more difficult for a franchise to deliberately bottom out for one year simply to chase a generational prospect.
In Beadle’s view, that design prioritizes fairness over opportunism.
“How about the WNBA, by the way, they combine the record of the past two years for the lottery,” Beadle said.
She followed that observation with a pointed remark that quickly circulated online.
“It's so weird that the women are figuring things out faster than the men.”
Her comment landed at a time when the WNBA continues to surge in visibility and influence. As the league grows, so does the scrutiny — not just of its players, but of its governance and competitive structure.
The two-year lottery model ensures that genuinely struggling teams are positioned to receive meaningful help, rather than rewarding a single-season plunge. It reduces the incentive for short-term maneuvering and instead ties lottery benefit to sustained performance trends.
By contrast, the NBA’s flattened-odds system has preserved unpredictability — but perhaps at the cost of clarity. Teams no longer need to be historically bad to secure elite odds. They simply need to stay within reach of the bottom cluster and hope for upward movement.
Beadle’s broader point was not about diminishing one league to elevate the other. It was about structural design and incentives.
As conversations around tanking continue to resurface each February, the contrast she drew is becoming harder to dismiss. In some respects, the WNBA’s administrative framework may be doing exactly what the NBA hoped its reform would accomplish: discouraging manipulation while protecting competitive balance.