That would eliminate the point, which is to get rid of the so-called mediocrity treadmill and stop rewarding teams so heavily for being terrible.
How about the lottery teams with the highest attendance get the top picks? Their fans care the most, and teams would be giving tickets away to us fans. Owners giving away tickets to win the lottery....now THAT is tanking where the fans are winners. I'm actually serious.
Ehh, this might be a better dynamic. Instead of letting the really awful teams leap-frog the marginally bad teams by adding a top-shelf asset, it might be better to force those teams to get better by increment (Morey style) until they're decent, and then jump into the playoffs and do some damage there with a great draft. My problem with it would be: who would want to watch these games? Not me.
It's a dumb idea. I'm 99% sure he took it from one of his fantasy leagues. These are the considerations, IMO: -The draft is a lifeline to help maintain competitive balance. Especially in the modern era with glamour markets sucking the life out of most of the smaller ones, you need to safeguard the "little brothers" like Milwaukee and Toronto or cut to the chase and contract them. Simmons idea makes it tougher for the smaller markets to survive. -You counter that with the notion that perpetually bad teams that close up shop after the ASG are nearly as bad for the sport. No one wants to pay good money to watch the Bobcats right now. It's insulting on a consumer level. Simmons thinks that the anti-playoffs would keep the bad teams motivated, but I doubt it would make that much difference. I'll keep trumpeting my thought: -auto-slot the worst team in each conference to the #s 4 and 5 pick (reverse order. They get help, but don't get to "win for losing" -Run two lightning rounds to start the playoffs, with "seeds" 7-14 whittling themselves down to become the "new" 7-8 seeds. No one is out of it in March, emptying out the building. (Fans win) No one wants to be the single conference loser, missing out on the playoffs as well as a shot at a top 3 pick. It's a double whammy that would spur dogfights to stay out of the conference cellar and probably leading to horrible teams still clawing their way to the 25-win mark in a regular season. More competitive play from 6-8 teams overall. You've got both. Incentive to stay out of the bottom spot, removal of incentives to land in the bottom spot, and disincentive to land in the bottom spot. You get a better product over the course of the season, and a micro-March Madness that will beat the dull, never ending first round we have to sit through today.
The following starting lineup is 4 games over .500 right now. C: A guy traded for expiring contracts(formerly a guy signed for $7mil) PF: A guy traded for in a salary dump SF: 2nd round pick SG: A guy traded for a player acquired via MLE. PG: Traded for a player acquired via former 25th pick in the draft If a team sucks because it can't get a top pick of every draft, then the team deserve to suck for eternity.
How about the NBA does the thing that makes the most sense? The Worst team gets the top pick, then the second worst team gets the second pick. And the third team gets the third pick. In order is the fairest, most sensible way
We've been down that road before. It's not sensible because it rewards losing. That's why we have the lottery now in the first place -- to dampen the reward of losing. Now, I'm liking the idea of rewarding mediocre teams over the good and the bad teams. The good teams don't need it and the bad teams don't deserve it. So, maybe you do a lottery like we have now, but you weight it to give the middling teams the best chance to win (but still less than 25% like it is now for the cellar-dwellers), and the other teams (good and bad, though maybe you exclude division winners) progressively less opportunity to win.
Okay how about this. They shouldn't have playoffs for a top draft pick--that has a number of big problems. However, they do need to discourage tanking and give teams a route to build incrementally and still get a superstar. So here is my suggestion. Give the best non-playoff team in the NBA a very high seed in the lottery, in the same vicinity of the top 3 picks. So, at the trade deadline, the best option for the GM of a mediocre team (Portland, Golden State) might not be to trade away all the stars, but instead make a huge push for the playoffs. If they make it, wooo, playoff time. If they fail, guaranteed top 5 draft pick which could even be the first overall! Now, one big problem does emerge from this. You still might have a tanking competition between low seeds in the playoffs, to try to get out of the playoffs and into the lottery. My solution for this is to undo the 1984 stupidity of 16 team playoffs. There should be either 10 or 12 playoff teams but no more than that. If you're in the playoffs, you should have a legitimate chance at winning the title. No team should be in the playoffs who is a pretender, but not a contender.
Lottery Tiebreaker Some arenas hold more then others so it would have to go by percentage rather than the actual number who attended. What if two or more teams sell out all games for the entire season? What is the tiebreaker?
The lottery system already prevents the worst team from getting the #1 pick 75% of the time. Whats the point?
Not really. If a player is approaching free agency, they have some financial reasons to play well (or at least put up stats).
There are too many variables here to make it unfair--namely the size of the arena and the population of the city.
Lottery Playoffs Rehashed This topic of non-playoff teams was discussed last year: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=5990764#post5990764 As I stated then reward the top teams who win during the lottery playoffs with better odds of winning the lottery lowering the chances of the teams who lost in the first and second rounds. Also consider revamping the lottery into sections that was discussed in another thread but can't remember which one. So all 14 teams have a shot at 1-4. Then the remaining 10 have a shot at 5-9. Then those remaining five can get 10-14. The good non-playoff teams(Rockets, Jazz, Suns) would have more of a shot of getting a mid lottery pick instead of always being at the tail end. So it goes lottery playoffs then lottery drawing during regular playoffs. Maybe to make it even more fair is to make it like the football draft for playoff teams so the team who wins the nba championship has the last pick even if they don't have the best record and work backwards from there. Hope this makes sense.
Sucking doesn't guarantee top future-superstar prospects. But NOT sucking does guarantee you'll never get a sniff at any of them.
Lottery Playoffs only for good non-playoff teams Not bad...not bad at all. So in this scenario 7th and 8th seeds are not in the regular playoffs anymore? Well there have been upsets: 8th seed Grizzlies over 1st seed Spurs, 8th seed Warriors over 1st seed Mavs, 8th seed Nuggets over 1st seed Sonics, 8th Knicks over 1st seed Heat...that Knicks team made it to the Finals. The 7th and 8th seeds have a shot...just it's close to nil. It just depends on the nba's priorities on parity.
Dumb idea. I still don't see how this would solve tanking. Teams that usually "tank" are the teams that are good enough to win and possibly make the playoffs. You are going to reward them for doing that. This would create MORE tanking, not less tanking. Do you think for a minute that if denver had a real chance to get Anthony Davis (non-playoff system) that they wouldn't tank out of the playoffs and try to beat the true lottery teams. Keep it the way it is.
