02.03.2026
The New York Times features a study on draft mechanisms
Researchers at the Universities of Bonn, Maastricht, and Tübingen have developed a new mechanism for the NBA draft. Their study is now featured in The New York Times.
Like other Major Leagues, the North American basketball league NBA has been organizing an annual draft for decades. This is an event where all 30 clubs can select and sign (pick) new players from colleges and abroad.
To increase competitive balance within the league over time, the worst teams of a season are given the best chance to pick the best players. In closed leagues such as the NBA, however, this can have undesirable consequences: teams that do not make it to the playoffs have an incentive to lose on purpose in order to increase their chances of getting the best pick. This behavior, known as tanking, threatens the integrity and attractiveness of the entire competition.
Kenneth Colombe (U Bonn), Mats Duys, Elias Tsakas (both Maastricht U) and Tim Pawlowski (IfS) have worked on allocation mechanisms for quite some time now. According to a recent commentary in The New York Times by John Hollinger (basketball analyst and senior writer for The Athletic), their newly developed algorithm has the potential to significantly improve the system.
Kenneth, C., Duys, M., Pawlowski, T., & Tsakas, E. (2026). A performance-weighted allocation mechanism for repeated contests. Executive summary
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