Could you keep the wheel for future seasons a secret from the public? I suppose GMs will probably whisper it in prospects' ears anyway. The #14 pick is hardly a lotto pick.
Woj: Why the NBA's draft lottery reform is a slippery slope Everyone understands the reasons the Philadelphia 76ers want the NBA to wait on implementing a plan to reform the draft lottery: They need one more season to complete a most brazen two-year tanking cycle. The Sixers didn't invent the idea of gutting a roster to short-circuit a path to the No. 1 overall pick, only perfected the pursuit. The strategy of Philadelphia general manager Sam Hinkie – who came with his ownership's full endorsement and support – has inspired an immense level of resentment and disdain within the NBA. There's a movement to punish the Sixers and discourage the practice. So on Wednesday, the league's owners will vote to change the way bad franchises bottom out for the chance to select transcendent talents. Philadelphia's campaigning to ease the implementation of the rule over the next several years has struggled to gain traction, but there's been an improbable voice that risen in recent weeks, advocating a stay of execution for the current system: Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti. In conversations with small-market executives, Presti, a member of the influential NBA competition committee, has tried to warn peers that changing the system is a risky proposition for small-market teams. Presti declined comment to Yahoo Sports, but his case, laid out to others, is this: The big-market teams badly want this change because it'll give them one more advantage over small markets in securing top talent. Big-market teams have an advantage signing superstar free agents, an advantage trading for them because those players are far more apt to agree to sign a contract extension. And, now, the big market teams will get better access to top players higher in the draft. Gone will be a weighted system where the worst team has a 25 percent of the pingpong balls for the No. 1 overall pick and a guarantee it'll drop no lower than fourth in the draft order. Now, the worst four teams have a 12 percent chance at the first pick, No. 5 has an 11.5 percent chance, No. 6, 10 percent, and on down. What's more, the worst team can drop as far as seventh in the draft order, the second worst can drop to No. 8, and so on. Now, the bottom three teams have 64 percent, 56 percent and 47 percent chances of getting top-three picks, and that'll change to 35 percent, virtually the same as the fourth- (35 percent) and fifth-worst (34 percent) teams. As one GM sympathetic to Presti's concerns – and employed by an owner who has decided to vote for the new system – told Yahoo: "Everyone is too focused on Philly, on one team in one situation. The only chance for a lot of teams to ever get a transformational player is through the draft, and eventually we are all going to be in the lottery, in that spot. The teams that'll drop from two to eight, or three to nine – that's just going to take the air out of those fan bases and franchises. They'll get little, if any chance, to improve. "We are going to see more big-market teams who just missed the playoffs jump up and get a great young player at the top of the draft. And people are going to go "What the [expletive] just happened?" Presti hasn't so much campaigned for "no" votes, executives told Yahoo, as much as he's used his platform on the competition committee to remind teams of the possible consequences for smaller-market franchises. Still, most executives don't see this issue as big market vs. small, but rather a short-term opportunity to get a better pick, perhaps a longer-term play to discourage tanking. Nevertheless, the issues between big and small markets arose again in Monday's round of Board of Governor meetings in New York. Owners started a conversation on future revenue sharing. With possible change still two years away, sides are forming again. As the $24 billion TV deal starts to pour into the league, as payrolls expand, small-market advocates made a preliminary presentation about further payouts in revenue sharing. Portland's Paul Allen offered an idea on bringing smaller-market profit margins closer to those of big-market teams, and it wasn't met with much enthusiasm. Several big-market representatives bristled, including Dallas owner Mark Cuban. For a few minutes anyway, Cuban spared with Allen, league officials in the room told Yahoo Sports. "Are you from China?" Cuban asked. Everyone had a laugh over it and considered the barbs part of the busting of chops that forever goes on. That's forever the big vs. small conversation among these billionaires. Nevertheless, everyone left the meeting with an understanding that revenue sharing promises to become a difficult issue again. "The small markets want more, because there's more to give," one high-ranking Eastern Conference official told Yahoo Sports. That's still a fight for a different day in the NBA, but draft lottery change is coming on Wednesday and there's no stopping it. Philadelphia and Oklahoma City need six more teams to align and block the reform, and their officials have already given up on the possibility of defections to their side. Whatever the motivations for change – a referendum on Hinkie's approach, a self-serving short-term strategy to steal a higher pick or two, an honest belief in the new system – Oklahoma City's Sam Presti made his case to executives that this could turn out to be one more way for the rich to get richer in the NBA. And, as one Western Conference GM said, "Then there will be no going back. I hope we know what we're doing with this one."
Of course there is going back. Just vote again. The lotto odd have been re-done several times already.
Yeah. "There is no going back" might be a tad on the hyperbolic side. They're changing the draft rules, not invading a foreign country.
This is a great change and something Morey has wanted for a long time. The old system didn't reward small markets, it rewarded extremely incompetent franchises and tankers. It's not surprising that Morey's protege (unconstrained by Lex Alexander's principles) was the one who went full force exploiting the obvious flaws in the system. This really kneecaps the mediocrity treadmill and means fewer good young players will have their early careers ruined wasting away in horribly managed organizations.
Well put. I often feel this way. Philly and Charlotte took tanking to epic levels these last few years.
Voted down. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Correction: Final vote was 17-13 IN FAVOR, short of 23 needed "yes" votes, per league sources.</p>— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZachLowe_NBA/status/524938666234241024">October 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Here were the 13 "No" votes, sources told Yahoo: PHX, PHL, OKC, NO, DET, MIA, MIL, San Antonio, Utah, Wash, ATL, CHA and Chicago.</p>— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/524939718065000448">October 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>One owner tells Yahoo: "Several teams started to wonder about unintended consequences and voted no to be able to do further study."</p>— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/524940016267436032">October 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>One glum GM tells Yahoo: "Well, we still have the 'Be as ****ty as humanly possible' strategy available in future if we need it."</p>— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/524942427807698945">October 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Good, this re-form seemed way too rushed and simplistic to implement this soon. Study it further and vote again to start a change in say 2-3 years so 2017-2018.
Huzzah. I wasn't too enthused about it. Surprised that Chicago voted against though. They'd stand to benefit from a watered-down lottery. Of course, you'd think Philly was a big enough market that it didn't need to take a tanking strategy, but they did anyway.
Does anyone actually believe the lottery isn't rigged? 2010 - lebron leaves cleveland 2011 1st rd pick - cleveland 2011 - chris paul trade blocked 2012 1st rd pick - new orleans 2013 - cleveland 2014 - cleveland
So the NBA's goal is to make Cleveland really popular? It seems like the easy way to stop tanking is through revenue sharing. Just take the bottom 5 teams and reduce the amount they get from the NBA national TV deals slightly. The other 25 teams get a little more that way, meaning you could probably get a majority of owners to agree to it. That would incentivize owners to want to win and avoid being at the bottom on a regular basis.
Not surprising to see the league stick with the status quo. Tanking is a fairly reliable strategy and I can see why those teams voting agains the plan would not want to see tanking off the table. The tough thing with voting any plan is the possibility teams will vote their short term gain/loss. Teams that think they will benefit short-term may vote for change which those that think they lose short term vote no. I still prefer the wheel concept. It spreads the top 7 picks around fairly evenly at regular intervals.
Here's the issue: #1, let's just assume that the crappy teams decided to run their teams as this board sees fit, so here dwight, we'll give you max money to play for the 76ers, ops, but Howard's agent steps in and says howard it's not a good career move to go to philly. So philly says, hey melo, we got max money, wanna play for us? But melo has big market knicks behinding him over more incentives if he stays put. In this current scenario, what would satisfy you with regard to the 76ers. Oh, you lost out on dwight and melo, but hey can you help us get a better seed by actually trying to win your games? It's ridiculous. Tell you what, lets get rid of free agency and I'm sure orlando would gladly cede olidepo if they can have back dwight. Is that a deal?
Yes, I believe the lottery is not rigged. A lottery conspiracy makes no sense with the way the league is structured. I really like this idea if discouraging tanking is the goal.
Relegation is a powerful tanking deterrence financially. You can just order the draft from worst to best with no lottery so that the bad teams have the means to rebuild. But you relegate the worst two teams to the purgatory called D-League for a whole season. Those teams would lose all NBA revenues for one year.
