Stefan Bondy: There’s no point in having NBA lottery teams finish the regular season. Here’s what to do instead.

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NEW YORK — It’s early May, normally the time of the conference semifinals, and the NBA still has no idea when or if it will play again.

There are all kinds of proposals floating around about location and format, but conflicting interests are the giant flaw for anything involving the resumption of a regular season. Nets owner Joe Tsai acknowledged disagreements at the highest level.

“Think about this: the Los Angeles Lakers or the Milwaukee Bucks, they’re in first place when the season got suspended. There’s a chance of them going for the championship. Of course, they want to play,” Tsai said at a virtual seminar at Stanford, according to Netsdaily.com. “The players want to play. The ownership wants to play.

“Then, there are other teams, if you’re in 28th place, maybe this season isn’t that important. So there’s a difference of opinion among the owners as well.”

Indeed, the idea of gathering lottery-bound teams for a minicamp to play a few meaningless games is utterly asinine. The NBA has enough problems motivating its players to suit up (don’t get us started). The benefit of playing, of course, is money. There are TV contract stipulations to fulfill, and the NBA is a huge business with no current revenue stream.

But it’s understandable if enthusiasm is sapped for organizations without a title chance.

“For teams like us, it makes no sense to even get started,” an assistant coach on a lottery team told the Daily News. “I understand you’re trying to get the TV money, money is important for the league because everyone’s taking a hit. But I don’t see how it works.”

Another coach explained why restarting during a pandemic is a time bomb.

“Let’s say I’m playing your team, you have a guy who tests positive — which is going to happen — and so our two teams are knocked out for 14 days,” he said. “And maybe you have the guy who was infected, and you played a back-to-back and played someone the night before, so that team’s going to be affected. So already you have three teams that have to sit for 14 days. It only has to happen one time and everything is screwed up.”

LeBron James wants to restart. And that makes sense. He’s 35 years old and has an opportunity for a fourth title. The validity of the 2020 champion, if it’s ever crowned, is another story.

But a team like the Knicks — which is unable to open its practice facility near the epicenter of COVID-19 — can only look forward to the draft lottery. Which brings us to a suggestion:

Assuming the NBA is committed to bringing to all 30 teams back for a resumption, it should separate into two tournaments. One includes the 16 teams that would’ve made the playoffs, with the purpose of crowning a champion. The other 14 teams then play to win the draft lottery.

On the surface, a tournament to decide the draft order seems silly. We understand. But the NBA has already turned its lottery into a huge event with wide interest. Fans openly root for their team to lose during the regular season because it enhances their chances of the No. 1 pick. In my tournament, fans get to cheer victories that will lift their team up the lottery standings. If it adversely affects the worst of the worst like the Warriors (15-50), Timberwolves (19-45) and Cavaliers (19-46), tough luck. They shouldn’t have been that bad.

The format is flexible, subject to time constraints. It could be a round-robin style, or a best-of-seven series. Eventually, though, the entire draft order will be determined by the results of this tournament.

The obvious flaw is motivating players to compete for a lottery position. For some players, the reward is drafting a player who could eat up their minutes next season and serve as a replacement. But it’s not much different than asking players to serve as tune-ups for the playoff teams. Perhaps Adam Silver can add monetary incentives, which isn’t far-fetched considering the commissioner proposed a $1 million prize for each winning player of a mid-season tournament.

Thinking outside the box is required at times like this.

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