[Sloan Sports Conference] How to discourage tanking

if a team wants to start tanking at the very start of the season that's determination and I say if you want it that bad more power to you. In reality, all teams look to make the Playoffs at the beginning of the year. The idea that a team would deliberately tank at the start of the season is preposterous.

I like this idea, a lot.

 

Players don't want to tank (unless its because they hate their team, i.e. McGrady)...

 

lol people laugh at tanking. The Spurs say hi

 

1. Best record (percentage wise) after being eliminated from playoffs.
2. Lottery team with the worst record over last 3 years.

Use either of these to determine the lottery picks 1 to 14. #1 would make tanking in the last 8 weeks worthless. #2 would help truly overall bad teams compete.

All this being said, I don't think any system will "eliminate" tanking.

 

How about random ordering of draft position for all teams except playoffs teams with home court advantage.

HCA is probably the most coveted thing to chase for in the regular season. So there is not worry any team would give it up just to have a chance of getting a high pick. There is also no worry any bubble team to tank.

 

I dont think a change needs to be made. Dirk was the 8pick and pierce was the 9th or tenth. Both players had success before winning championships. Kobe was the 13th player taken. How many teams tank and get the top pick anyway? The blazers had a couple of top picks and drafted wrong(bayless) or guys got injured (oden and roy).

 

14 teams miss playoffs...
worst record 14 balls
second worst 13 balls
and so on... til
best team that missed playoffs 1 ball

then lottery pick all 14 slots!

worst record cant draft worse than 4th - screw that - if worst record can end up drafting 14th... there's some incentive not to tank....

 

They may have sucked but they didn't win the top pick to draft Bayless. The consensus top pick was Rose. They lost out on the top pick and drafted Bayless at 11. Roy wasn't a top pick either.

 

I think this is the model he is talking about. It's a great idea. I like it.

Still some flaws, though--you could tank to get eliminated earlier. If you were 9 games back with 10 games left, losing would be the best option.

Plus, the really really sucky teams like charlotte can barely win anything. They might not even get a top 5 pick this way, despite getting eliminated early.

 

That's on them. Get a better front office / coaching staff if they suck that bad.

 

I agree NBA front offices aren't always good decision makers, and yes top 5 picks are NOT a GUARANTEE.

Still, a team like the Rockets and the Bucks who actually try to compete wont even be in THAT area to get a Paul Pierce or Dirk. Rockets have to HOPE other teams SCREW UP 5-8 times BEFORE someone "drops" to them.

Still not a good position hoping 6 other teams draft a Jerryd Bayless so you can get yours. Needing to hope Harrison Barnes smokes some weed and gets caught pre-draft so he can fall to you.

*What you're saying is actually what "MONEYBALL" is supposed to be about. Its about an advantage in finding that CORRECT player when others might NOT be able to identify them *

 

Why not give more lottery weight to the 7th seeds and down in each conference? REWARD the MIDDLE class, TOO.

 

Another thought.... Simply say a team cant be in the top 5 draft picks 2 years in a row...and cant be in the top 10 3 years in a row....
If u got a top 5 pick, the best u can get the next year is 6...
2 back to back picks in the top 10, best u can get the next year is 11...
3 consecutive lottery picks....best u can get is 14.

....these teams 'rebuilding through the lottery' make midlevel teams have to tank to get a decent draft pick... meanwhile the Donald Sterlings just mismanage their teams, stockpile high draft picks and wait til they catch lightning in a bottle - and THEN try to build a team around them.... dont worry about the occassional tanking team - address the constant ones...

 

I found this idea in the comments section of a TrueHoop post (user AART1G):

[rquoter]Picks 1 to 5 : only to non-playoff teams - equal chances
Picks 6 to 10: teams not yet drawn and those who lost on 1st playoff round - equal chances
Picks 11 to 15: teams not yet drawn and those who lost on 2st playoff round - equal chances
Picks 16 to 20: teams not yet drawn and those who lost on conference finals - equal chances
Remaining picks: teams not yet drawn and finals teams - equal chances
Further rounds: Simple draw, all teams - equal chances.
[/rquoter]

To me, this is an even better idea than what was proposed at SSC. There is really no good incentive that I can see to tank in any situation.

What do you guys think?

 

Sounds like a better system to me. I HATE the fact that the worst teams get rewarded with the best draft picks.

 

That system is dependent way too much on the performance of other teams in the conference. Teams in the East would have to gnaw their own feet off to get to the point where they're so bad they're mathematically eliminated. In the West, Sacramento might be eliminated by the All Star break most years.

I've thought about this idea extensively, and to me the fairest way would be to make the lottery system completely unweighted. Everyone from first team out to worst team ever would have an equal chance at each and every pick.

Yes, the biggest problem to this is David Stern. With zero credibility in the front office for preserving the randomness of the procedure, everyone would criticize and speculate as to what reason Stern had for "giving" the number one pick to a certain team or another. To that I answer, basketball reasons.

Basketball reasons.

 

This will just introduce a new kind of tanking. Middle of the pack teams will have their stars have magical injuries early in the season (say, the Timberwolves have Love out for some reason for the first half of the season) and get eliminated early. Then, Love would "heal" and the Timberwolves start competing and win as many games as they can.

This system assumes the teams will be honest, and if that was true, we wouldn't have the tanking problem in the first place.