I get that they want to discourage tanking, but there HAS to be other methods out there. This does make things more exciting but at this point just let every team have an equal chance (in theory).
Well, let's see.
The NBA originally had "territorial" picks -- a team could forfeit their first-round pick and select any player who played college ball within 50 miles of their home arena.
The Philadelphia Warriors argued that Wilt grew up in Philly so they should be allowed to take him -- the NBA agreed. The Warriors acquired a total of seven picks in this fashion -- including from 4 of the Big 5 schools (all but Drexel).
The Cincinnati Royals argued that they were the only team in Ohio so they should be allowed to take OSU's Jerry Lucas -- and the NBA agreed. Cincinnati also acquired the Big O this way as well.
In the Mid 60's the NBA did away with Territorial picks and replaced that with a system where the first overall pick was a coin flip between the two teams that were the worst in their conference. This system ended after the Houston Rockets tanked two years in a row to get Ralph Sampson & Hakeem Olajuwon (Bill Fitch was coach).
The lottery system then came into being -- originally all lottery teams had an equal chance, but that just encouraged more tanking, so they went to the ping pong ball system with the worst team having a 25% chance.
The Sixers irritated a lot of people with their crass tanking, so now they've cut the chance for the worst team to 14% -- yet people still think the tank is a viable strategy.
In reality there IS no "fair" method for the draft. 30 teams want Zion. 1 will get him. Whichever team gets him has a BIG advantage -- same in 2003 when we got LeBron.
Baseball, football and Hockey are all different because you need so many more players, but in basketball having "THE GUY" means everything. There's no way the NBA can make even most teams happy -- because the essence of the NBA is domination by a few over the many.