[GRANTLAND] The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Whee

tl;dr

Why are they trying to make it so complicated?

What is really wrong with the current system? Is there really excessive tanking that goes on? I don't really see it. It just seems like the terrible teams are really just that bad.

If they don't want the worst team in the league to have as great of a chance then just go back to the 1993 lotto system.

 

don't just do away with the lottery. do away with the draft.

 

I just hate the annual "sell off our decent parts" event of the NBA, with about 25-33% of teams just jockeying for draft order. That's what it feels like.

And the lottery itself, again, is just embarrassing to the league. It's nearly wrestling-esque, cringe-worthy.

One thing I've always wondered about -- I know it's too crazy -- would be ranking teams based on their last 25 games. As in, if you go on a crazy year-end run, you get the first pick, and if you go 0-25, you get the last pick.

Would make the end of the year super-competitive. Good teams would be tempted to no rest their Lebrons and Duncans. Bad teams would be frothing and fighting to get every possible W, especially for a good draft class.

 

As others said, star players would opt early or wait to ensure they get on better teams. However, these said star player will eventually do the same thing anyways.

 

That's an example. Team A can be the Kings, Bucks, Raptors, Jazz or another bad team (in 30 years it could be any team really) and Team B (the year after's #1 pick) could be the Lakers, Bulls or Knicks.

 

The bad teams can try as hard as they want. The good teams will still crush them.

I think the equal weighted lotto would be the best.

 

Not a real factor for the top of the draft. The driving factor for these kids at teh top of the draft is $$$$$.

When you get down the 12-30 then there can be some playing around, etc. But very, very few kids are going to take the chance of staying in school an extra year, losing a year of earnings, and taking the risk of injury ending their careers to get picked by the Lakers instead of the Hornets.

This idea may have a little bit more validity if a kid is in the middle of the first round but probably not much more validity and at the top of the draft the percentage of kids that it would make a difference with is maybe, maybe 0.5%.

 

I suggested some kind of a rotating draft order regardless of records. I guess somebody listened. :grin:

 

To the extent that a player choosing to stay for another year in order to get drafted by a "desirable" team is even an issue, there is a relatively easy way to address it:

Each year, the teams picking in the top 3 is to hold a "mini-lottery" some time after the deadline for declaring for the draft. This mini-lottery decides which of the 3 teams drafts #1, 2 and 3. You can even put together the order of the "wheel" in such a way that each year the top 3 has a big market team (top 10), a medium market team (11-20), and a small market team (bottom 10) so you don't end up with a year with New York, Brooklyn and the Lakers followed by New Orleans, Charlotte and Milwaukee.

I suppose that a player might wait a year (and risk injuries and bad performance-- we've seen quite a few guys draft stock actually drop in one year to know that this is not a risk-free proposition) to "choose" Lakers over Milwaukee, but I kind of doubt that a player would choose a 33% chance at being drafted by the Lakers over some 33/33/33% distribution of 3 teams of various market sizes.

 

If a team gets the #1 in a down year, like 2013, they will still have picks 6 & 7 in 2017 & 2018. Stars mostly come from the top 7 picks, anyway, so it evens out sooner. The real loss is not having #1 the year Tim Duncan or Anthony Davis enters the league. (Or having each of those top 7 pick years totally suck.)

I like the idea more than the current system. The wheel awards a top 6 pick every 6 years and 2 top 12 picks in consecutive years every half decade. It pushes teams to build in a manner similar to the Pacers and Rockets. Both maintaining cap flexibility and clever scouting will be heavily rewarded. And, just like now, some teams will trade their top picks for win now talent.

Sure teams will work to clear cap, but the Rockets have shown that having cap flexibility does not mean losing games.

 

The biggest problem isn't the worst team gets the top picks, it's that the middle of the road teams feeling like they HAVE TO TANK to improve (see Rockets 3 years ago). This leads to fire sales that piss off most fans.

Here's my proposal that I think will both still allow the worst team to have the best shot at the draft while discouraging tanking unless you're absolutely sure you're the worst team.
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Slots 1 to 4:
Lottery number 1

Completely based on the lottery today, you have the best chance to get the top 4 pick by having worst record.

Slots 5 to 8:
Lottery number 2:

Reverse Lottery, the 14th pick gets the the highest chance at lottery for the 4th pick and so on and so forth.

Slots 9 to 30:

Going completely by record.
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Why it works:

The worst team still get the best shots at the franchise player, but you're giving incentives to the borderline playoff teams to try. It ensure teams in all situation to play hard and trying to win.

 

Also, I think "tanking" is an issue for this league. And this is first and foremost a matter of fan perception.

Right now, it seems that more than half of the fan bases in the league are at least debating whether their team should tank or openly rooting for their team to tank. Basically if your team is .500-ish or lower and doesn't have a top 10 superstar or is at the risk of losing one to free agency soon, you have a faction of your fan base wondering (and often reasonably) whether you should just blow it up and start over.

I don't have the financials to prove it, but I don't think it's good for the league's overall income (gate attendance, TV viewership, etc.) if so many fans have an incentive to root for their team to lose. Do fans looking forward to his team getting a high pick actually watch the games being played by this year's players (who are crappy and often won't be on the team going forward)?

And fans are increasingly smart to how the NBA works-- guys like Morey (whose team actually refused to tank) and ESPN reporters (they even have a "tank rank feature" on their website) have openly discussed tanking being the higher probability way to enter contention, and GMs like Hinkie have put the strategy into practice. The more such discussions persist, the bigger problem we have.

 

couldn't have said it better myself.

 

Tanking is an issue because it is basketball. Pre-selecting where the LeBrons go won't change anything except eliminate bad markets only viable chance to get a LeBron.

 

What you say makes no sense. Care to elaborate?

 

Not really. The Adelman era Kings teams didn't really use a top 3 pick to get their core guys. The same with the mid-2000s Pistons. And of course this year's Rockets has 2 elite players without using a high pick to draft either of them-- and while Houston is not a "bad market," it was not good enough in those years when Morey kept getting rebuffed, either.

Location is a factor, but it can be overcome.

 

I think he's just bitter because Memphis has been very bad at drafting.


OKC had the 2nd, 4th, and 3rd. (and traded for another 4th)


Memphis had the 4th, 3rd*, and 2nd in the same drafts.

 

The caveat they say is that nothing can be put into practice until all current draft pick trades have been executed.

Quick! Nets give us your 2022, 2024, and 2026 first rounders for Asik!

I am against this system btw. Anything that holds other teams' bad GMs accountable and prevents a Prokhorov or Dolan from shooting himself in the foot by overspending or making a bad trade with Morey is something I am against.

Three cheers for a libertarian NBA!!!

 

So what is everyone's opinion on the equal weighted lotto? The NBA used to have it until people started crying conspiracy. It pretty much kills tanking and rewards good teams who might have just missed the playoffs.

 

conspiracy cries have never stopped, so I say go for it again.

While, I would not be opposed to the 30 year cycle, I don't think the nba will ever do it, because it would be lost excitement that the nba can drum up every year with the lottery.