Why? The team who owns the rights gets to make the pick, as always, just like they get to trade it, too. The team whose record it is based on, no longer controls it after the trade. Very simple idea to stop tanking for the top picks. Clever. However, it only solves the top picks. it still doesn't really reward getting out of the lottery. It just prevents control of how bad you are. .500 / mediocre teams still get nothing from this. For that reason, I still favor my sealed-bid auction, whereby the amount of actual salary you get to bid on the picks is a combination of rookie scale slotted to your draft pick and any realized, salary cap space you have available. The combination is your total bid you can make on any pick. But if your sealed bid loses, you drop in order of all slots not bid on. If it wins, you must pay your rookie that amount. The Auction idea combines your draft slot with how fiscally responsible you are (ie how much salary cap space you have). It makes draft picks operate like free agency. You can surpass the rookie scale if you have the salary space to do so. So, in theory, a team with the #14 pick who has a ton of salary cap space can actually win a very high pick, but with risk of losing the bid. And the Union will like this too, because someone like Anthony Davis will get bid upon and paid much more than some stupid rookie scale.
Sure, there's SOME incentive to lose but the payoff is delayed so that none of the coaches/ players will see much benefit until nearly 2 years down the line....in which case half of htem won't even be on the team anymore. That's not nearly as bad as "hey let's tank this year so we can grab Tim Duncan in June and come back next season". It also puts some pressure on GM's - a total Hinkie (or Jordan Bobcats) tank plan with no end in sight becomes even more untenable because it presumes the owner/fans will tolerate a 3 year plan of suckage. THe reason why you still have some positive reinforcement for losing is because there's a general recognition that parity (not having franchises be perennial losers) is probably a good thing. It's good that the Lakers suck now and the CLippers are finally decent, IMO, which wouldn't be possible if the Lakers were just adding Blake Griffin after winning a title.
