If a bad team's top pick is not good, and they otherwise made no improvement via FA, trade or what not, they will get a shot 2 years later at another top 5 pick and, meanwhile, will still be eligible for a #6 pick to help. It isn't really a death sentence or anything close to it. Teams still get help but they have less of an incentive to intentionally bottom-dwell. And if a team cannot get out of being truly terrible for year after year, then it's not a problem of the NBA not helping them enough, it's a problem of bad management and the solution is for the owner to hire a better front office.
In a similar vein that fits closer to the OP's spirit, cap the credits of the consecutive loser to a number under than the team with the highest Xth number credits. So the Mavs in the second year of suckitude at the worst record would only receive the 6th highest credit total for that year despite winning the 2nd highest number credits the season before. Perennial losers would be penalized by their bidding power rather than the system penalize securing a top 3 pick because of a weak draft and other teams were saving for the year after.
You have to have some element of luck in there to discourage tanking. That's why the lottery was there in the first place. If you guarantee a big prize for being bad, then it's an incentive.
Still would also mean that the rich teams will end up accumulating the most credits. Think about it. The team that is always on top and is in a large rich market. They don't use their credits allotted and gets more and when the team is getting older they wait for that one great player then slam all their credits and any other they can buy off a hapless team and stay with the best talent available again. Richer teams can afford to hoard the credits. This system doesn't come close to parity.
^Yes...until you mentioned it, I forgot that Morey minded GMs value 2nd round picks more often than late 1st rounders. If that's the case, then limit credit distribution to the teams that don't make the playoffs. Could even make it a logarithmic curve rather than a proportional dropoff, but as a long suffering rockets fan, I would totally be happy with Morey stashing those measily 14th seeded credits five or so years to make a play at the 2nd pick after dumping another Lowry... Another consequence is that introducing credits would force teams to hire some sort of broker/economist to make sense of the real value of a highly liquid and dynamic trading system. It would go beyond basketball and into more pure economics. So you could be trading real players away for 5,000 credits and not even using it for that year's draft. The reason could be that you want to capitalize on a low demand (for credits) year and bank on the draft 2 years later. You could even make that trade knowing that you lose a proportion of your credits annually (like inflation/depreciation) because the competition for bidding with credit would be greater on a season with Wiggins level talent. First former hedge fund exec turned-GM? ....Crazy. And how does this affect the salary cap? I'd venture that it would be rated on a yearly basis based off of the credits used to secure draft picks. So if Wiggins needed 80k credits and the 16th pick needed 5000, each team's credit total would be based off that distribution and what they could've purchased with the credits they currently have on hand. That also means you'll have more teams paying for more invisible players than a system without credits if there are hoarders, but this also has the consequence of discouraging hoarding and the added drama of teams dumping their measily credits to a team that doesn't care about cap space. You thought the b****ing was bad with Morey pissing 1.6 million of annual cap space (and real money) with Royce White. What if he traded away another Lin just because he wanted to hold his 20k in Monopoly money (that year's potential 13th pick)? Or in the same case...didn't use it to buy the 13th-15th pick that turned out to be someone useful. It'd be a double edged sword, but it'd also make teams think heavily about hoarding.
I posed this idea 2 years ago in this NBA Dish, and y'all laughed at me saying it was too complicated. Anyone want to try to find my post? An auction is the solution.
Just another thought aswell, what's wrong with tanking? If every team was going flat out to win a 'chip every year it could make for teams to go outside the boundries of what's legal to gain advantages. Such examples could be see in must win sports such as athletics or cycling.. The word tanking has become linked to losing on purpose, instead of rebuilding through the draft.
IMO the economists left the actual usage and how credits will be allocated very wide open. I think this is a decent strategy, if you have the 'credit' essentially like normal goods that will depreciate over time, so 2 credits this year becomes 1 next year. To still try and help bad teams, the team win-loss record will be given the highest weight in determining credits, but also other things come into play, like losing streaks, points differential, and any other things that teams would use to try and lose. The most important thing is to have teams that want to win every night.
This is similar to what I've thought would be beneficial.... If you draft in the top 5 - the next year the highest you can draft is 6 (meaning if u got the #3 pick last year and then got the #1 pick this year...sorry, you move back to 6 and everybody else moves up...) If you've drafted in the top 10 the last 2 years, then the highest pick u can get is 11 (meaning u got the #3 pick 2 years ago and #6 last year, then pulled #1 this year - sorry, yer at 11...) I call it the anti Sterling rule... screw teams that constantly get high draft picks and still continue to post crappy records....
Of course... capping the credits to "lotto bound" teams would also be a relief for contending teams that don't have the cap space to deal with the uncertainty of the measily credits they have on hand. Another would be to have a minimum credits trigger before any cap space is calculated, but that adds more uncertainty because the teams that hold onto it would be involved in crazy trades or cash dumps by a team wanting to squeeze more credits into their next bid. It's a doable system, just not easy to figure out (and not get totally screwed) without some business types.
I don't think this idea can work. If a ****ty team gets the 5th pick, there is no reason to think they won't be ****ty again the next year. Usually the 2nd-5th picks aren't franchise guys. But especially after the 3rd pick they aren't usually franchise changing players.
I don't think teams should be allowed to rebuild purely from the draft... I think the owner has to open up his pocketbook and pay for some free agents to supplement those lottery picks... If a team gets back to back lottery picks and still ends up in the lottery the next year - screw them! They may be victim of injury but more likely they just have a cheap owner... I hate how Sterling would get high draft picks, never build around them and then just let them walk when it came time to pay them after their rookie contract....
What free agents want to go to places like Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Charlotte, and other small markets? They could certainly overpay, but that is not promoting solid GM practices. Small market teams for the most part have no choice but to rebuild through the draft.
Lol Capping credits to lottery bound teams makes them more attractive to sell them to highest bidders so we have rich teams able to purchase them
