So, here is an idea that I have: Instead of helping teams out who are really bad for a 1 year period, the league should look back over a 5-year (or so) period and distribute lotto chances based on how many times a team missed the playoffs and/or failed to advance past the first round during these years. For example, lets give a team 2 lotto balls for every year over the past 5 in which it failed to make the playoffs and 1 lotto ball for making the playoffs but failing to get past the first round. This system will achieve a number of goals. First, it arguably better helps the really needy teams: teams that are not just bad for the current year, sometimes due to injuries or intentional tank job (like when the Spurs lost David Robinson, got to draft Tim Duncan and have Robinson back the next year) but have been stuck outside of the playoff picture and contender status for a sustained period of time (not just the Rockets, but also teams like Milwaukee, Philly, etc.). To me, it seems like a team that flounders between, say, 25 and 40 wins for 5 years is even more deserving of help than a team that suffered significant misfortune for 1 year. (A current 40-win team will be more likely to land a star player, but that's not a bad thing if you want to have more teams being boosted into contender status-- adding a star prospect to a 20-win team often just boosts that team to mediocrity rather than contention (see Bosh, Chris)). Second, it removes the incentive to be really really terrible because barely missing the playoffs for a year is going to give team is the same increase in lotto odds as winning only 13 out of 82 games. Third, and perhaps most important, it makes strategic tanking much harder to pull off. A team will not only have to sign up for more years worth of pain in order to maximize its lotto chance for a particular super prospect, it will also need to anticipate which players will be good (and declare for the draft) several years in advance in order to time its tanking efforts for the right draft (i.e. the Lebron draft rather than the Kenyon Martin or Kwame Brown draft). In this system, the teams that end up with the higher odds are more likely to be there "organically" rather than "strategically." The example I gave above (2 balls for missing playoffs, 1 for a first round out) would be "flatter" than the current lotto odds, but the flatness or the lack thereof can be tweaked. What do you think? Seem that it will address both the disadvantages of the status quo and the concern (by Joel Letvin and others) to give help to truly needy teams.
^^ By the way, expect to see this idea shared on Truehoop sometime soon. Just had an email exchange with Henry Abbott about it.
I think that is the best strategy, I can't see any flaws with it. It's a shame they'll never implement it. Plus, I think that further ruins the chances of teams building laker or celtic like dynasties, where they win some rings, tank, then win some more.
I remember that there were reports about the NBA considering a lottery based on multi-year performance as a contingency for the loss of the 2011-2012 season to lockout. Does anyone remember what the actual proposal was? I seem to remember that it was going to look back 2 or 3 years.
I think we're definitely on the same page in considering past franchise performance in the lottery. I think that one major thing about any "flattened lottery" proposal is that you need to draw enough of the top slots so that the worst team is not guaranteed a superstar. One of the huge problems of the NBA current system is that if you're the worst team in the league, you're still guaranteed to pick 4th, which is plenty high enough to get a superstar. If you implement fairer odds along with guaranteeing the worst team #8 at worst (for example), you get much closer to the goal.
Gary Bettman was a David Stern disciple, who had to implement a lockout draft for the NHL. It was widely assumed that the NBA would have followed the NHL's example. The rules were: All teams had between 1-3 balls. Teams lost a ball for each #1 overall pick over the last 4 years, as well as one ball for each playoff appearance over the last 3 years, and snaked back and forth for 7 rounds. In this case, the 3-ball Rangers (6th worst the previous year), didn't pick until #16, while the highest riser was Ottawa, with 1-ball, going to #9 (23rd worst the previous year)
Even though I'm a pro-playoffer and anti-tanker, I saw this line of thought with that article about the Camby trade, and it's just silly. This whole socialism analogy just does not apply to the lottery system IMO...
- contract the league by around 4 teams. - create greater financial incentive for the team/owners to make it to the playoffs - take the lottery back closer to what it was originally. IE, every non-playoff team had about an equal chance to get the top pick.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/39676/fix-tanking-the-five-year-lottery My idea got posted on Truehoop.
Nice. I've had a similar concept in mind (multiple year adjusted lottery), though your concept is better as it doesn't award teams lottery balls per season, but on a five-year basis, if I understand that correctly. So, good job. It would be interesting to see how this year's lottery would look like based on your idea. I'm guessing that the Rockets for one would have a lot of ping-pong balls. (Not that you tried to create a system that would help the Rockets out or anything ).
This may sound crazy but . . . I think a part of it is basketball is the most susceptable to STAR CALLS If you take two equally talented players 1. is the #1 overall draft pick the other is the last player in the 2nd round. The #1 Pick will get every opportunity to succeed he will get every benefit of the doubt all while the second round pick will for ever be .. 'just another second round pick' The Ref's know you star power and officiate to it . . . more in the NBA than other sports Rocket River
I noticed they posted an article suggesting an extreme version of what I was suggesting: switching the focus from the draft to free agency. I suggested short rookie contracts; he's arguing to abolish the draft and let rookies come in as free agents. http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/39407/fix-tanking-ditch-the-draft I think it's an interesting idea, but potentially problematic. I think it introduces too much volatility. That's why I think a short (maybe 2-year) rookie contract followed by unrestricted free agency with Bird Rights makes more sense. The bad teams still get the best players and an incumbency advantage in free agency, but a team can't live on the draft (like the Clippers have for years), they have to be persuasive in free agency to ever get out of purgatory. Meanwhile, competent GMs will be able to pluck young franchise players away from incompetent GMs by having a good FA package.
I agree with decreasing the control teams have over players. However, I doubt the NBA will go along with it (which is unfortunate). Looking at the way the lockout went and the new CBA went, the owners are all about increasing the control they have over their star attractions. The new S&T rules, for example, basically force a player to take a discount in order to move to a new team. The "franchise tag" further increases the ability of teams that drafted a player to retain him. I don't like it, but this is how the NBA rolls.
Our competent GM has yet been successful in plucking franchise players away from incompetent GMs. Free agency seems to be more about location and already having another star than GM competency. Letting more freedom for player movement will only make super teams for a few locations rather than letting smart GMs compete for good talent.
I have an idea... turn the lotto upside down, the team with the best record that didn't make the playoffs gets the #1 pick. We would of had the #1 pick 2 years in a row if that was the case lol.
I agree, giving a bunch of 19 year old kids complete rein to where they want to go will mean all the young talent will go to big and fun cities, meaning smaller markets will lose whatever little ability they had (like a talent base to offer).
