Will the NBA’s new lottery reform help or hurt? Here’s an argument for both sides.

On Sept. 28, the NBA’s Board of Governors approved Adam Silver’s new draft lottery reform, allowing the worst 3 teams in a given season to have an equal chance at the No. 1 pick in the draft. It’s not a new conversation — in fact, the league originally voted on it in 2014, when enough teams voted no to surprise the league and get the proposal shot down.

The reform will make the NBA draft lottery easier to win for teams that finish outside of the bottom three in the league, a measure that would be intended to fight tanking.

After this news broke that this would be voted on again, former 76ers vice president of basketball strategy Ben Falk and current Rockets general manager Daryl Morey each hashed out arguments for and against the proposal. It’s actually quite neat seeing two people so connected to the league discuss the topic publicly. Here are their respective sides laid out mostly in their own words.

Here’s Falk’s argument, which we’ll sum up at the end of his tweetstorm.

We’ll cut Falk off a little bit early, since this goes on for another seven tweets or so. The gist of it is covered here.

When Falk describes the value of draft picks, he’s not joking: There’s nothing more valuable than a star player on a rookie year deal, and using a first-round pick on a franchise player can virtually guarantee that he’ll spend eight years with your team. It’s that incredible amount of team control that makes front offices value the draft immensely. Here’s one more Falk tweet with an example that illustrates his point:

Make the draft lottery more difficult for bad teams to win? It won’t stop tanking — it just means teams with bad-but-not-awful records will start losing on purpose late in the year. If they can get into the No. 4 to No. 8 range, then perhaps they’ll be the team picking first overall. The teams at the very bottom continue to be stuck in mediocrity, even if they’re not explicitly tanking anymore, while teams that see the draft as a weapon will still try to lose if it benefits them.

Here’s the counterargument from Morey:

It’s true — a team on pace to finish with, say, the 26th-worst record should absolutely try to finish even lower. Most fan bases see any bottom-10 finish as more or less the same thing — only a playoff race really amps up the drama. By spreading out the likelihood of winning the lottery, at least teams must give up on a playoff run to pursue a higher pick. That’s a conscious choice — and one that not every team will make.

Still, some teams will make it — maybe most teams, to be honest, especially if it’s a good draft class. The allure of having eight years of a top prospect who could become fundamental to your franchise is too big. Likewise, there’s too much danger of those same prospects not being available on the open market because they’re under another team’s control so long.

But both sides agree: Silver’s potential lottery reform is intended as a temporary solution, not a permanent one. You might think it will hurt, or you might think it helps. It won’t fix tanking or the draft, though. That’s a problem the NBA is nowhere close to solving.