Sorry to bring us back to this. It's an interesting post with some good ideas thrown out - but has there ever been relegation of any kind in American sports? It seems really crazy to me. Even in sports like the NHL where the minor league system is well-developed there is still an enormous difference in level of play between the AHL's best and the NHL's worst. Also, relegation ruins the idea of a 2nd tier farm system. You'd almost have to have an A league, a B league, and a F (farm) league.
It's sad you even have to have a lottery to prevent professional athletes and teams from actually tanking to get a better position...and even sadder that you have to think about tweaking that system to prevent more tanking. Still, it could be interesting to reward teams that push and fight and claw for a spot only to come up short and punish teams for continuing to be cellar dwellars. Why should the Nets and Clippers and TWolves of the league continue to get top draft picks when they do nothing with the half dozen others they've gotten.
If the worst teams didn't get higher picks, they would be mired in at the bottom forever, lose its fanbase because they have no hope of a better future, and fold. Since there's always going to be a team at the bottom of the standings, there will likely always be a franchise that's losing money to the point it has to go out of business. The NBA is a business- it doesn't want its members to keep going out of business. If the worst teams didn't get higher picks the NBA would lose a franchise every couple of seasons.
Tanking is for losers, and ruins the integrity of the game. Maybe all teams who don't make the playoffs should have consolation playoffs....rewarding extra ping pong balls to the teams that make it the farthest.
It's not all that sad. It's the reasonable thing to do under some circumstances given the incentives. Thing about this: In an open market with no restrictions, it's not unreasonable to think that Lebron James would make about $40 mil a year rather than the $20 mil a year he makes now. He's under paid by, say, $120 mil over the next 6 years. In other words, by deciding to sign with any team, Lebron is essentially making a $120 million donation to that owner. This is consistent with the result of the latest Forbes survey of NBA team values-- Miami Heat's value went up by about $100 mil and the Cavs value declined by that much (I don't remember the exact number, but it's quite large). This "donation" effect is even bigger when an elite young player like Lebron or Griffin is making just the rookie scale salary. Winning the lottery in some years is literally like having someone hand you $100 million or even $200 million in free cash. Given this, if you are choosing between having your floundering team win 10 more games, or a 25% (the lotto odds for the worst team) chance of a $100 million or $200 million jackpot (and, if you lose out on that, a good chance at a not-so-bad consolation prize, depending on how deep the draft is that year), you might choose the latter. It's even more reasonable to do so back in the "coin flip" era. However, I don't disagree that it's bad for the game. People didn't buy tickets to see the team not putting out their best players under the circumstances or not playing the hardest. It's bad for the interest in the league when a whole city is rooting against its team.
Good point, CH. Then you have the situation the Rockets find themselves in. Winning the jackpot with Yao, getting worldwide attention with his signing, bringing a billion-plus market into the NBA, and having the value of the franchise go up as you pointed out. Then fate intervenes. Yao is injured. Then he's injured again. He misses years of games while a team contructed to revolve around his talent finds itself in limbo, not winning enough to make a mark in the playoffs, and not losing enough to have a reasonable chance at another jackpot. It's similar to what happened with Ralph Sampson and the Rockets. What people tend to forget is that Sampson was an even bigger deal than Yao at the time and there was no expectation that we would luck out and get Olajuwon. None at all. Getting him led to 2 championships and years of contending, but it could have been Sampson and a promise that descended into endless mediocrity.
Lottery Playoffs Long time reader. First post here. Better make it a good one. I like the posts about a lottery playoffs. Arrange the playoffs to award the team who wins it all to win the 1st overall pick outright or which I think is a more plausible idea is winning rounds increases your odds of a better pick. Say like being the winner of said playoffs would get you an extra 10%(maybe deduct some percentage away from the 1st round losers or something to that effect) to whatever your current percentage is to winning the lottery. Example being if the 5th seed(which would be the team with the 5th best record of the lottery teams...normally would have #10 pick) wins it all. There normal 5% chance(not sure the real percentage but...who cares...just an example) of the lottery would get an added 10% to win the lottery. 2nd and 3rd place get an extra 5%, 4th to 8th gets 2.5%. The teams who finish worse than 8th get some of their percentage deducted from them as further incentive not to call it quits. How I arranged the playoffs would also further teams from lossing being that it will be a tougher road for them to win it all. Maybe to even the odds seeds 1-4 can't activate their most expensive player(or best player) to participate though people pay to see that player so don't know if that is realistic. I arranged a lottery playoff bracket below. Maybe the first 2 or 3 rounds be a best of 3 series then the rest be best of 5. Arranged by best record is 1st seed and so forth. Lottery Playoffs ____________________1___ | ____________8___ |_______ | | | ___11___ |_______| | |_______| | ___14___| |_______ | | ____________5___ | | |_______ | | ___________10___| |_______| | | | ____________________4___| | |Jackpot Winner ____________________3___ |-------------- | | ____________6___ |_______ | | | | | |_______| | | ____________9___| | | | | ___12___ |_______| |_______ | ___13___| | | |_______ | | | | ____________7___| |_______| | ____________________2___| Reasons to do it: 1)Generate revenue otherwise not there for lottery teams by playing games after the regular season is over. 2)More game experience in a "playoff environment". I know it is not the real playoffs but it's a start. 3)Potential small rivalries for rebuilding teams that see each other multiple times in these lottery playoffs. 4)A further incentive to not tank seeing as that is the big debate is about. 5)MORE BASKETBALL!!! I'm sure with some changes here and there it would be needed but I think this would be an exciting time for basketball fans. Lottery playoffs and the Real playoffs. Not sure about scheduling but could be worked out I'm sure. ESPN and TNT should be enough. Maybe throw ESPN2 in the mix if necessary. Sorry for the long post.
Lottery Playoffs My brackets are messed up. That is disappointing. I guess I'll just write them out. 1st Round (Best of 3) 11th vs 14th 12th vs 13th 2nd Round (Best of 3) 8th vs winner of (11th vs 14th) 5th vs 10th 6th vs 9th 7th vs winner of (12th vs 13th) 3rd Round (Best of 5) 1st vs winner of (8th vs winner of (11th vs 14th)) 4th vs winner of (5th vs 10th) 3rd vs winner of (6th vs 9th) 2nd vs winner of (12th vs 13th) 4th Round Semi-Finals (Best of 5) Winner of (1st vs winner of 8th vs winner of (11th vs 14th)) vs Winner of (4th vs winner of (5th vs 10th)) Winner of (2nd vs winner of (12th vs 13th)) vs Winner of (3rd vs winner of (6th vs 9th)) 5th Round Championship (Best of 5) Winner of (Winner of (1st vs winner of 8th vs winner of (11th vs 14th)) vs Winner of (4th vs winner of (5th vs 10th))) vs Winner of (Winner of (2nd vs winner of (12th vs 13th)) vs Winner of (3rd vs winner of (6th vs 9th))) I'm sure it looks bad and more complicated than it is. Oh well.
I think the lottery needs to be a little fairer. NBA shouldn't differentiate bad teams by record. It should be one group: NON-PLAYOFF teams. Under that same label, all the bad teams are the same. Therefore, all non-playoff teams should have an equal chance of drafting high. However, I would go a step further and punish the bottom two teams and take a percentage of their possibility of drafting high and give it to the 7th and 8th seed. I.e. (made up percentages) seeds 9-14 10% chance of getting lottery pick seeds 7-8 6% chance of getting lottery pick seeds 15-16 4% chance of getting Top 5 pick However, low playoff seed teams usually prefer veterans to youth. Depending on the next CBA, you could reward low playoff seeds with more flexbility in signing free agents. Such as giving them an extra player exception of 3 million in addition to the mid-level exception. You could also allow them the ability to trade their 1st pick to a lottery team for a veteran within a certain salary range without salary restrictions or matching. This makes it easier for talent and veterans to move toward competiting teams and allow the bad teams to rebuild. Regardless, something needs to be fixed. Teams at the 7-10 seeds shouldn't penalized for competiting hard.
Maybe some of us just don't believe 1.) this team is bad enough to have a good shot at winning the #1 pick (or even top 10 for that matter) and 2.) that the next best center of all time won't be drafted in 2011.
Lottery Playoffs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery Tanking just doesn't promote good and entertaining basketball. Who wants to watch constant blowouts because the other team hung it up for the season to get a better pick? How could the Rockets "tank" right now anyways? Bench Hayes and Lowry? Play Thabeet and Dragic 36 mins a game? I don't think even then the Rockets pick will get too much better or lose as much as people think. Is that team worse then Golden State, Clippers, Minnesota, Kings, and every lottery bound Eastern Conference team? At best they move up one or two spots. Whoopty do. Go from Kawhi Leonard to Jimmer Fredette. Not that those two couldn't be good players but neither will be a franchise player and become superstars despite all the Jimmer Fever going around. This is why I support a lottery playoffs. The team that wins the 1st pick since 1994 on average has the 4th worst record. 4TH! Turrible. I was trying to see the average of 2nd and 3rd picks but...too much work for now. At least the worst team in the league usually doesn't get the top pick.
A few thoughts: 1. a flatter draft lotter would help... maybe a return to the pre-1993 odds. Another thing that we might do is to make, say, the top 6 picks up for the lottery instead of just the top 3. This way, super-successful tanking only guarantees you a top 7 pick, not a top 4 pick. Also, it gives the near-playoff teams a better chance of jumping into the top 6. A completely flat lottery does not seem politically feasible. 2. a "hard cap, no other rules" system would certainly reward wise management. Not sure if it can happen politically, but I think sthere are some things that we can do to reflect the merits of such a system. I'll post more when possible.
face it guys, we fail at winning and we fail at losing. waaaay to late to tank this season. last year was the year we should have developed our youth. I am much more interested in watching the rockets now, win or lose, because the new and young guys are just more fun to watch.
1. Randomize draft orders for all teams. (To add a little fairness, the second round order can be reversed.) 2. Shorten rookie contracts to two years. (Assume that a guy's value should be clear by the end of the second season.) 3. Make a cap system that makes it extremely hard for any team to keep more than one franchise players at their prime.
Spread the win / loss record over multiple seasons (maybe 3). That way tanking at the end of the season would not provide the full benefit that year.
I don't what the people who suggest reverse lottery order (17th place gets 1st pick) are thinking. I can't believe so many people have suggested it. It's an absolutely horrible idea. Just look at our position now. If we knew that if we barely missed the playoffs we'd get the #1 pick as opposed to the 14th, do you think that would make the incentive for us to tank at this point increase or decrease? Jesus... I've heard some pretty good ideas on here though. I like the idea of having a consolation playoffs. Not only does that deter tanking but it gives fans of lottery teams an opportunity to root for their own team during the postseason. The only problem with this lottery playoff system is that if a team REALLY does suck (couldn't win a game if they tried) thus really does deserve a high pick, they'd be left with the 14th pick. I also like the idea of keeping the current system but just tweaking the odds so the worst team still has the greatest odds of getting the #1 pick but things aren't so heavily favored towards them. 30th - 13.64% 29th - 12.64% 28th - 11.64% etc. 18th - 1.64% 17th - .64%
The concept of bad teams getting the best picks is the same as every system in major US sports, and its the ONLY option if you want to maintain parity in the NBA. If the worst teams get punished by receiving bad picks then those teams will likely NEVER get out of the gutter. To suggest a system where the top teams get the top picks is ridiculous, and would be the end of small market teams in the NBA.
