Here's my 2 cents.
Let me have a go at it:
First, in order to adress any imballance between the conferences I say we must TOTALLY disregard the actual playoff appearance, and give lottery chances to the lower half of the league (i.e. the
15 worst teams, with the smallest number of wins) even if some of them may be ranked 5th or 6th in their (pathetic) conference, and get their share of post-season action, while in the stronger conference, some bottom dwellers (even in the 11th or 12th place) may not be eligible to participate in the lottery even though they can only dream of the playoffs.
It's very plain: Playoff participation and lottery participation simply shouldn't be mutually exclusive, nor should they be connected or linked in any other way!
The lottery is designed to ballance the league, so it should only be effected by the strength of teams, regardless of their conference affiliation. The playoffs action, on the other hand, MUST have 8 teams in each conference, simply to form the brackets of head-to-head elimination series (8=>4=>2=>1).
So, the lower half of the league gets that lottery boost, while the upper half doesn't. Clear and simple.
Now to the actual odds:
In order to reduce the incentive to tank I would indeed make the odd-curve considerably less steep.
Something like:
#1 - 12.97%
#2 - 12.07%
#3 - 11.16%
#4 - 10.27%
#5 - 9.37%
#6 - 8.46%
#7 - 7.57%
#8 - 6.67%
#9 - 5.76%
#10 - 4.87%
#11 - 3.97%
#12 - 3.06%
#13 - 2.17%
#14 - 1.27%
#15 - 0.36%
Total: 100.0%
What say you?
Should I file for a patent on this one?
Well, consider this format patent-pending, (with this very post being my publicly made patent-claim).