Yet Another New Lottery Idea: Limited Rookie Free Agency

I'm pretty sure no one else has suggested adding a limited Free Agency phase to the lottery, whereby you give all lotto teams a weighted (based on different maximum salary per team) at three top rookies and those top rookies have some control).

Primary Goals:

• No more Ping Pong Balls
• Worst teams no longer have a guarantee of best players (no tanking incentive)
• Fiscally responsible teams are rewarded

How it works:

Prior to the draft, there is a Free Agency Phase whereby lotto teams make sealed bids (given to league office) to any player in the draft (but only one bid per lottery draft position they own). The players with the three highest offers (as a sum total of all offers given to the player) become free agents to choose one offer or decline them all and enter the draft.

Teams who sign a player obviously have just used their 1st round selection and everyone moves up. Once three players have signed or all remaining rookies have declined offers, the normal draft begins.

Brief Rules:

• Teams above the cap cannot participate in the Free Agency phase.
• Teams who sign a rookie as a Free Agent cannot do so again for X amount of years
• Maximum offers are determined by drafting position and cap room. (See below)

Maximum Offers

Currently, at the end of a rookie scale term, maximum salary for the player is 300% of their rookie scale. The maximum offers accelerates this to 1st year, but it must fit within the team's cap. However, the maximum offer is based on the rookie scale of the drafting position of the team...not the player.

• Again, only teams with cap room can make offers within the Free Agency phase
• Teams can make offers up to 300% of rookie scale for their drafting position
• All offers *must* fit within available cap room, or must be no more than standard rookie scale.
• Teams with multiple lottery picks must fit the sum of all their offers within their cap room, no matter if they win both bids or not.

Yes, this does mean the Knicks would have had a great shot at Kyrie Irving last year. Maybe you can skew the Maximum salary more in favor of the worst teams. I don't think there is any way around what the Knicks did. Note they did it for the blockbuster free agency summer -- which was guaranteed to happen. I doubt they do it for a rookie or have the time to plan for such a thing.

Possible Tweaks
To prevent a big market team from clearing cap room for one year and tanking down to #14, you could make a rule that teams who already have a maximum players are limited to standard rookie scale bids. A #14 slot bid would be very low for a top players, AND it could actually make that player fall out of the Top 3 highest offered players eliminating the free agency option for that player.

Also, you could retain the ping pong balls. Which would make it exciting for team just out of the lottery, who fall back down to the lottery as teams who sign FA rookies relinquish their slot.

Thoughts? Is it sacrilegious to allow rookies to have a limited decision to pick their team; albeit, they potentially could leave enormous amounts of money on the table.

 

Thanks for input. What is complicated about it? I thought it's less complicated than Free Agency rules in general. Did I just spell it out too much?

Simplified explanation.

• Strongly eliminates tanking incentives, and gives mediocre teams legitimate shot at #1
• Maximum of 3 players get limited free agency
• Lotto teams with cap room can bid on them
• To give the worse teams an advantage, Maximum Offers are a function of drafting position.

The rest is details.

 

That's somewhat the point. Tanking no longer guarantees you anything. Isn't that the whole point of people suggesting anti-Tanking ideas.

The big market team would have to have cap room, and one of my tweaks was that you could say teams with a max franchise player already cannot participate. So, you'd have to have cap room and no franchise player.

 

Yes, he definitely does not go to OKC because they were over the cap and had only the #5 draft position -- pre Lottery.

I did a really quick check of that year...according to Patricia Bender's salary page, only three teams were under the Cap to qualify for the Free Agency phase of the draft.

Under the Cap with Pre Lottery Position
Memphis -- with the #1 pick
Atlanta -- with the #4 pick
Charlotte -- with the #8 pick

All three of those teams are small market, with high picks anyhow. They would have bid on either Oden or Durant.

So as long as Memphis doesn't waste their bid on Oden, they had the best chance at Durant.

See how this works?

 

I had some time at lunch....soooo
Here's an illustration of what last year's draft Free Agency phase would have looked like. Notice the Rockets jump to the #10 spot in amount of money to bid on a player. Kyrie might sign with LAC to be with Blake, but he'd have to leave $25m on the table.

And since each team can only bid on 1 player, we can assume at least 5 teams will make offers to Irving and Derrick Williams. The Rockets could potentially get a very high lotto pick to sign with them, if they pick someone who didn't get too many offers. Jonas Valanciunas might have been a real possibility.

<style type="text/css">kevin {background-color: #CD1010; color: #FFF} green {background-color: #00CC00; color: #FFF} table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;} .tableizer-table th {background-color: #CD1010; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold;} </style><table><tr><td><table class="tableizer-table"> <tr ><th>Pos</th><th>Team</th><th>Max Bid</th><th>5yr Total</th><th>Bid Rank</th></tr> <tr><td>1</td><td>Minnesota</td><td style="background-color: #F3F781;">$10m</td><td>$63.0m</td><td >2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Cleveland</td><td>$3.8m</td><td>$23.9m</td><td >11</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Toronto</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$10.2m</td><td>$64.2m</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Washington</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$9.3m</td><td>$58.6m</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Sacramento</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$8.4m</td><td>$52.9m</td><td >4</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Utah</td><td>$2.5m</td><td>$15.7m</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Detroit</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$7.0m</td><td>$44.1m</td><td >5</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>LAC</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$6.3m</td><td>$39.7m</td><td >6</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Charlotte</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.9m</td><td>$37.2m</td><td >7</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Milwaukee</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.6m</td><td>$35.3m</td><td >8</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Golden State</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.3m</td><td>$33.4m</td><td >9</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>Utah</td><td>$1.7m</td><td>$10.7m</td><td >13</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Phoenix</td><td style="background-color: #CD1010; color: #FFF">$0m</td><td>$0m</td><td >NA</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>Houston</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$4.5m</td><td>$28.3</td><td >10</td></tr></table></td><td><table class="tableizer-table"> <tr ><th>Pos</th><th>Team</th><th>Max Bid</th><th>5yr Total</th><th>Bid Rank</th></tr> <tr><td>3</td><td>Toronto</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$10.2m</td><td>$64.2m</td><td >1</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Minnesota</td><td style="background-color: #F3F781;">$10m</td><td>$63.0m</td><td >2</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Washington</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$9.3m</td><td>$58.6m</td><td >3</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Sacramento</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$8.4m</td><td>$52.9m</td><td >4</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Detroit</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$7.0m</td><td>$44.1m</td><td >5</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>LAC</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$6.3m</td><td>$39.7m</td><td >6</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Charlotte</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.9m</td><td>$37.2m</td><td >7</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Milwaukee</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.6m</td><td>$35.3m</td><td >8</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Golden State</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$5.3m</td><td>$33.4m</td><td >9</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>Houston</td><td style="background-color: #81F781;">$4.5m</td><td>$28.3m</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Cleveland</td><td>$3.8m</td><td>$23.9m</td><td >11</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Utah</td><td>$2.5m</td><td>$15.7m</td><td >12</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>Utah</td><td>$1.7m</td><td>$10.7m</td><td >13</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Phoenix</td><td style="background-color: #CD1010; color: FFF">$0m</td><td>$0m</td><td >NA</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>
Green = a maximum offer up to 300% of draft position rookie scale
Yellow = maximum for the player's cap room but less that <300% full max
others are standard rookie scale values, because the team didn't have enough caproom.
Phoenix had no caproom so are ineligible to bid.

 

Agree. But look at my second table for last year, which is probably more like what we'd see. Look how much money the top worse teams have to spend. Even at a maximum bid for a #14 slot, Houston as $36m less to offer than Toronto.

What do you think of my tweak that teams who already have maximum salary vets (franchise players) cannot participate in the rookie Free Agency. Wouldn't that eliminate the big teams....and distribute the Top rookies to teams who need them.

Plus, it would make a disincentive to sign vets to max deals, since you'd forgo your rookie Free Agency ability.