Or the richest teams always win and thus dull the competition and thus nobody watches NBA anymore. Good idea?
If JVG's so right, why did we seem to find every possible way to lose big lead whenever it counts and lost to Mavs 2 up? We weren't mean under him. Far from that. OTOH, Phil and Pop always seem to find ways to win games when it counts. Given the makeup of the team makes big difference, but does always preach to win every game make that big of difference. The Bulls weren't good in Rose's 1st and 2nd season. The Celts were horrendous before Allen and Garnett signed. The Thunders did not know how to win. And yet, the losing Bulls made some brilliant moves along with the growth of Rose and they became good. The Celts had that much cap space and losing seasons all of sudden didn't matter at all. And the thunders through 3 lottery picks and wise roster moves found themselves as top 2 of the west. For every Cats, Clippers you care to point out, there are the Bulls, Celts, and the Thunders.
Again, the Bulls won the lottery even though they finished 14th. Please stop using the Bulls as "tank evidence."
Eh, you're right. The 1.7% chance made me think it was 14th...didn't realize the odds were that bad for 9th place. Regardless, they weren't losing in the fashion people on the board are advocating (finishing in the bottom 3).
The Rockets do not need to pull a Bobcats. Develop players, let the losses add up, and let Morey work his magic with a top 5-8 pick. No need to go to Bobcat extremes. Easier to pull off trades or move up from inside the top 10.
Even though I agree that tanking is stupid, and it's sad that some teams take that strategy, I'm not sure if there's a better way to do things while maintaining parity... Maybe just doing JVG's idea of giving the last few seeds in the playoffs a shot, too, or something.
Here is audio, click on the 4/27 NBA Today podcast. http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/archive?id=3634017 Direct link: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=7862122
This punishes team that are just bad though. I think it's really this simple. All lottery teams (the 14 that didn't make the playoffs) + the 7th and 8th seeds from both conferences get put into a true lotto. This means the 18 teams get one ball and hope luck is on their side. No one is punished and no one is rewarded. This means you might as well put the best team out there because you aren't pretty much guaranteed a top 5 pick...in fact you are promised nothing, you could be the bobcats and get your team drawn first and draft 18...and be the Rockets and just be lucky and get drawn last meaning you'd have the #1 pick.
IMO, the best compromise would be equal odds of landing a top 3 pick among the lottery teams, and then order from worst team to best from 4 to 14. This way you can still get a better pick if you suck(at worst #4 if you're the worst team). But makes it so that even a borderline playoff team can land a top pick. Sure, there may be some teams that purposely don't try for the 8th seed. But it's a lot harder to manipulate your team to become a 9th seed than a bottom team. And owners have to balance between the money/notoriety of playoff games vs possible higher pick rather than just pure tanking.
