Gold Plan

The Gold Plan is a draft-order mechanism in Planet Money vs. the NBA’s tanking problem where eliminated teams improve draft position by winning after they are out of playoff contention. The episode says the plan was developed by Adam Gold and adopted by the [[ProfessionalWomensHockeyLeague|PWHL]].

The plan’s appeal is that it reverses the late-season incentive. Instead of asking bad teams to lose for a better pick, it gives fans and players a reason to keep competing after playoff hopes are gone.

Key Claims

• The Gold Plan keeps games meaningful after elimination by attaching draft value to wins.
• It preserves a weak-team path to better picks without making current losses valuable after elimination.
• Very bad teams may still struggle to earn the top pick if they are too weak to win after elimination.
• Teams might try to game the system by losing early enough to be eliminated sooner.

Connections

• Adam Gold, Jaina Hefford, and Professional Women’s Hockey League - named designer, explainer, and implementation case.
• Sports Draft Incentive Design, Sports Tanking, Draft Lottery Tradeoff, and Draft Wheel - mechanism-design context.
• Sports Entertainment Flywheel and League Stakeholder Alignment - late-season fan and governance implications.