Some simple lottery changes would remedy what ails NBA

We would've had the last 3 1st picks, I like it

 

Make the lottery 22 teams deep. But allow no team to get number 1 twice in 4 years. Like the Cavs would have to wait until 2017 to be eligible for the first pick.

 

If you want to change the draft lottery system to reward the stronger teams, get rid of free agency (and shoe company deals) and equal out the big tv contracts and I am fine with it.

people are always worried about the wrong things in the nba. the lakers, heat, knicks, celtics have huge advantages over teams in free agency historically, and nothing is going to change that soon.

 

I definitely like the idea of changing it up to try and limit tanking.

It seems like in most scenarios I read, I imagine a team tanking.

No. 2: Reward No. 7 and No. 8 playoff teams more by giving them the top eight picks in the second round in descending order by record. - Basically he's saying to give the 8 teams that lose in the first round the top 8 picks in the 2nd round of the draft. High 2nd round picks are valuable, but not as valuable as 1st round picks. I don't think this is enough to make teams push for the playoffs versus tanking to get a top pick in the 1st round.

No. 3: Regulation to alter the lottery odds. - Even though this would eliminate a team from obtaining a top 3 pick through complete tanking, imagine the middle teams (7th and 8th seeds primarily), tanking near the end of the season for a 1-11 chance at a top 3 pick versus facing the 1 or 2 seed in the playoffs.

No. 4: Deeper weighted lottery odds. - I kind of like this idea, but it still doesn't stop teams from tanking for a lottery pick from the start of the season. You may just have to try a little harder to beat the bad teams.

No. 6: Rotating draft order? - This is probably the most logical solution, but still has its flaws. It's based 100% on luck, so you get no reward for winning or losing. Also, will this encourage teams to do different things when their #1 picks come up? Things like going into luxury tax in free agency to maximize their chances? How can you trade future draft picks? Will players base their free agency to coincide with teams getting a #1 pick (for example, will the top FA next year go to whoever gets the #1 pick to pair with Wiggins?).


I think this is something that can never be completely fixed, but it may be possible to make tweaks. I think the bottom line should be that the better your team is (outside of the playoffs) the more you are rewarded, but that could lead to more tanking, and some teams may never improve.

Maybe we could leave the lottery as is, but slightly change the odds of getting a top 3 pick, or maybe even switch it to the top 5 picks, if not all 14. With this, the worst teams still have the best chances of getting top picks (which means we will still have tanking), but the chances are lower. Also, by switching the lottery to the top 5, or 14, at least the middle of the pack teams have more opportunities to move up versus losing out on the top 3, and then knowing where they will pick. Of course, there are also chances the worse teams could move down, but I think that's a good thing.

 

Anything that seeks to reduce tanking is okay in my book.

 

I agree with you. I think the rich-get-richer phenomenon of superstars going to big-market glamor teams that already have strong rosters is a much bigger problem than tanking for a high lotto pick. In fact, tanking is the most effective counter that small-market teams have to compete against the glamor teams. If you eliminate one without the other, the competitive balance gets worse, not better. How will the Bucks ever get a great player?

 

The thing is, I don't think there's anyway to eliminate that. LA or NY will always be premier destinations- in every sport.

 

If you can't eliminate it, then maybe you should strengthen the strategy of tanking for a high lotto pick so there is an effective counter-weight instead of destroying the one thing small markets can leverage for advantage.

 

There are ways to solve it - not popular ways, but workable ways. For example, make a hard cap and give crappier teams a higher salary cap. That pretty much eliminates any location advantage, because if LA is more successful than other teams, they will be squeezed.

Baseball also has a solution for this in the draft compensation system. If you lose a top-tier free agent, you get a draft pick from the team that signed him. If the LAs and NYs are always signing the top tier free agents, then the other teams get more draft picks as a result. You'd have to make some changes because there are so many fewer draft picks in the NBA vs MLB, but there are ways to penalize teams that sign FAs and reward the ones that lose them.

No one would go for these things, but there are solutions out there.

 

I don't like the idea of having a different cap for certain teams; because that favors the semi-big markets (like ourselves) who aren't a NY or LA, but aren't tiny. I do think RFA's having draft picks would make it better, but I doubt the union wants that (nor would the big market owners). I think that (combined with more benefits to staying, such as making the resigning max be six years) would counteract SOME of the big market stuff, and allow reforms on the tanking end to work.

I understand the system as currently constructed requires small teams (and even some big ones) to tank, but overall I think it hurts a franchise rather than it helps more often than not and worse, it's bad for the fans and hurts the perception of the league. NBA is regarded by a decent amount of people as being full of lazy, overpaid primadonnas who don't care about winning; and having teams lose on purpose certainly doesn't help that image.

 

I hate how tanking has a negative conetation in certain instances..

1. Players don't tank front office people make moves to increase a chance of rebuilding quicker
2. If no teams tanked then there would be so many stupid contracts like the jazz would of chucked 10 mill at Jennings just so they remain more competitive
3. Tanking isn't the worst thing for the league as the morey system of trading for that superstar is so unlikely to happen these days
4. IMO tanking doesn't mean wanting to lose every game, it just is another way of moving a franchise forward.

 

You can't be serious. You want to penalize winners for... Winning? Should athletes not as physically talented as Lebron be allowed five steps on a layup rather than two as well?

I don't think that there is anything wrong with the FA system in the NBA. Will there always be teams with an inherent advantage when it comes to signing top tier talent? Sure, but it's on the front offices of the smaller market teams to make themselves viable.

It's not LA or NY's fault when GMs in smaller markets consistently whiff on lotto picks or handicap thier teams with terrible longterm contracts. The book on how to build an NBA team has been published for a while now, and is constantly being updated by the likes of Oklahoma City, Houston, and others.

The playing field is level. Some of the competitors may be quicker, faster, and stronger. But the rules are the same for everyone. Afterall, this is competition. And the rewards go to the winners, not the losers.

 

I've always said the lottery should be in reverse. The non-playoff team with the best record has the best chance at the top pick and so on. Teams would get better faster and it would eliminate tanking.

 

The problem with essentially all of these approaches is that the bad teams DO need more help than the good teams. Maybe some of the bad teams lose on purpose, but if you flip the draft order or give all teams the same chance or whatever, you destroy the ability of legitimately bad teams to ever rebuild.

I floated this idea in a tanking thread last year. It essentially applies a modifier to their spot in the draft order based on their degree of underachieving/overachieving. I honestly really like the order it spat out in the end (nuking the 7-win Bobcats' pick out of the lottery for their mailed-in campaign, tossing Utah a top-10 pick for making the playoffs after being projected to be a 25-40 team, etc). The only thing that could be troublesome is setting the expectation benchmark in a fair way that isn't exploitable by teams. I suggested Vegas odds because they have a monetary interest in making accurate predictions, but it's not a perfect idea.

My idea would make getting a draft pick a game of expectations management, where the path to draft success is convincing everyone you're bad and then winning games. This might do some weird things to the NBA but I'd argue it's better than the path being "suck as bad as possible".

 

They must increase the incentives for not tanking and early second round picks or whatever won't IMO be enough.

How about tweaking the revenue sharing and luxury tax systems some more?

As I understand it, NBA now has separate revenue sharing and luxury tax "pools". Half of the luxury tax money has been given to teams under the tax level and the other half has been used to fund the revenue sharing pool.

In order to promote competing over tanking, the league could compose a new system where monetary payments from the league pool would go to, for example:

1. Teams under the luxury tax 10%

2. Poor teams 45%

3. Every team in the league, in order of their regular season success 45%
- For example, the best team of the regular season would get 8% (of the 45%) and the worst, say, 1.5%.
- If you are a tax paying team - your share of category 3 money would be reduced.
- If you are a "rich" team, i.e. net payer to the revenue sharing program - your cat 3 share would be reduced.
- If you are both a tax payer and "rich" - you would get nothing or greatly reduced sum.

This system would, at least theoretically, encourage competing and it would also reward well managed small market teams like the Spurs of recent times. The penalties of the category 3 would be in place to prevent the rich getting even richer. The above numbers would obviously be adjusted and the system of course would be more complicated but I kind of think the base idea might work.

Any thoughts?

 

what about a true lottery

the lottery tells you WHOM you drafted

so that will make it alot more exciting

 

Lol. A bit bush league, and the owners would never allow it, but that be great. Oh man, I wish I ran a semi-pro league.

 

Kerr fer commish! none of his recommended fixes sound great but i'm totally on-board with the anti-tanking philosophy. tanking sucks and the teams in the middle of the pack (the infamous mediocrity treadmill) just get pillaged by the current system.