How Would You Change The Draft If You Could

Only the 14 worst teams can partake. And if you are over the cap, you can only use the normal rookie scale exception for your draft slot. Teams are given extra exception room above the rookie scale exception based on worst record. You can then add any actual cap space to your maximum bid allowance. It would heavily favor the worst records combined with teams who are way under the cap....which are often one and the same.

You would weight the bid exception allowances, so that it would make it pretty impossible for a #9 or below team to bid the highest for the best player, unless there were many equally great players and the bids got split between a bunch of players. Only one sealed bid...only one player per team you can bid on. It's all over after you open the sealed bids.

Only 3 players go this way. The remainder are in a normal draft.

There are twists to make it more interested, like simultaneous trades to allow freeing up more cap space.

 

the question becomes what is more important, preventing tanking or giving those teams with the worse record a better shot at attaining a top 3 pick? I prefer to stop the tanking and think the lottery should consist of all 14 picks, not just the top 3.

 

I know this will never happen, but here's my suggestion.

Take the 14 teams that miss the playoffs and do a single elimination playoff, th winner of the playoff gets the 1st pick and the runner up gets the 2nd pick. For all the teams that lose in the same round go in reverse order of their records just like they do now.

I'm not sure how I would do the seeding or bracketing but I think that winning should be rewarded rather than punished. This would probably take tanking out of the game which I'm in favor of completely.

 

right, but only for 3 players ... the ones who get the most bids (in dollar amt sum). And the players have no choice. The #4 and below players are locked into standard rookie scale contracts, so no extra "bloating" of those salaries.

It is somewhat the point. Better not bid too high unless you are sure. Also, the extra bid exception you could say can only be used once every 2 or 3 years. Meaning, no team can actually use the rookie bid exception twice in a short time period...protecting them from abusing the exception.

The other big point is many people believe the whole problem with salaries is the true franchise players (who almost always go in the top 3 picks) are underpaid...especially on their rookie scales. This basically opens up the maximum pay scale to them in year one, and creates a salary increase scenario that makes it almost impossible for another team to outbid them in future free agency...because of the Larry Bird rule and the home team can continue paying the super high salary as an exception.

Plus, and this is key, some people think teams should be allowed to pay one player on their roster any dollar amount they want....which makes it almost impossible to get 3 superstars on the same team, because the cap wouldn't allow it if the true franchise players can basically be paid without a personal limit.

 

The main problem with expanding the lottery to 14 teams and giving them equal chances or favorable weights to the lower seeded teams, is that all the teams close to getting the 8th or 7th seed of the playoffs will fight to get into the lottery. the main problem with the nba draft in comparison with other sports, and why you only see people complaining about the nba draft and not the nfl, mlb, or nhl draft, is because of the sport itself. 1 player can make the world of difference in basketball, whereas in a league such as the nfl, you won't see any one player take the worst team to a championship contender that quickly.

 

I would lessen the Lottery to about only 5 teams. That way tanking is taken out of the equation still. The rest of the clubs fall in line with according to their rank.

 

The problem with a lot of theories is that losing gives you more ping pong balls or a better pick, so teams have an incentive to tank (no matter how small)

The best idea i have heard is to only make games before the all star break count in terms of draft position. That way teams have absolutely no incentive to tank at the end of the season (though the bottom teams would tank right before the break). And at the end of the season you could replace any playoff teams who were in the bottom 14 at the break with the nonplayoff teams who were in the top 16 at the break.

 

Easiest way to get rid of tanking is to randomize the entire draft order from first pick to last pick. Every team would have an equal shot at getting the 1st pick (and also the last pick) in the 1st round. The 2nd round would simply be the reverse order of the 1st round.

Some people will argue that this could potentially make good teams better, but at the very least it prevents teams from tanking. This puts more pressure on the GMs of the respective teams to actually "do their jobs".

 

There's no way to prevent teams trying to the game the system, so what do you do? Make the game as entertaining as possible to win the lottery.

My suggestion is to make the #1 pick go to the team exactly with the 7th worst record in the league. 14 lotto teams, you bisect the difference to get 14. Good teams are trying to suck JUST enough but not too much. Horrible teams are working their ass off to win even if they cant sniff the playoffs. You end up with 8 teams that are within two games of each other and then the 7th worst record becomes decided by tiebreakers just like any other (division record, conference record, H2H), no one has any clue what's going on. Suspense lasts for all teams until the last game of the season. It's FAN-tastic!

#2 can go to the 3rd worst team, #3 to the 10th, #4 to the worst team, and #5 to the Rockets at 14 like usual. Something random like that where teams just won't have any clue what to do as to how best to rig their draft spot.

 

I think that overall the rules work out alright for the following reasons:

1. Teams that are awful are obviously not going to win a championship the very next year or even 2 or 3 years down the road just because they get the first pick. It takes years to build a deep enough team to compete for a championship.

2. The lottery is a crapshoot and you don't really know what kind of player you are going to get. Anyone can name a dozen busts who have been in the top 3 in the past 5 years alone!

3. Losers don't bring money. Championships bring money and LOTS of it!! So if you are an awful team or a borderline team you are not benefitting from losing and getting a lotto pick if anything you are suffering a lot. Losing bad loses a lot of fans if the pick doesn't pan out.

4. Having a top lottery pick can net you a star from another team which can be the foundation piece for a struggling team. This help create parity in the league.

My only changes are this:

1. The event should be LIVE. We watch each ball drop.

2. The OWNERS inspect all of the other owners balls prior to them entering the machine :grin: to make sure that they are all the same weight, material, etc. :grin::grin: and we watch as EACH OWNER places his own balls into the machine. (This one was not easy to write. God I'm immature! LOL)

3. The machine spins all of the balls around for atleast 1 minute after they have all been put in the machine. (Just to make sure they are evenly distributed.)

 

If you did this then the truly bad teams would never have a chance to land a franchise player.

 

How about 1 ping pong ball for each position the teams are ranked,so the Rockets would have had 14 and the Bobcats 1 ... first ball pulled gets pick 14 and so on down the line.This would give everyone a shot at moving up and be much more interesting to watch.

 

With the current system, they can't do it live, as the lottery will be done from the 1st pick down to the 14th. Meaning, the live show will technically be 3 mins and done.
Another flaw in the system, is that teams have either move into the top 3 or stay put. So where is the lottery? Teams should be able to move up or down.

I read somewhere about a NBA draft idea, which I quite like.

Last 5 teams goes first,
Team with worst record gets 5 balls, and best gets 1 ball.
First ball out will get the 14th, 2nd ball will be 13th, 3rd ball will be 12th.

Then the 2 remaining teams goes into the next round with the next 3 teams.
And rinse and repeat.

Hence following this system, Rox will still have the worst chance to win it, but a lot more chance for them to move up a couple of places. And the 2 teams with 2 worst record at the very least will still be in the top 5 picks.

It makes a great tv show, its still a weighted lottery, and teams that push hard for playoff have a chance to move up in the lottery.

 

I'm not sure on what the type lottery system we should use. However, lets make it more interesting for the fans by making teams play for their picks. The lottery results will provide the seeding order for 1-4 in the playoff in a 1 game only series. 5-14 seeds will be the order for the draft.

The top 4 teams from the lotto will play for the #1 pick. The #1 seed from the lottery will play the #4 seed and will have home court advantage. 2 will play 3. The winner will be given the #1 pick, the runner-up given the #2, the higher seeded team that loses in the 1st round will be given #3 and the lower seed given the #4.

Things get tricky if a team has multiple picks in the top 4 though.

 

I dont like to reward poor behavior or poor play.

I'd do three things , expand the lottery to 14 teams , decrease the disparity between the percentages for each team and invert their order - Rewarding the team with the better records who failed to make the playoffs with the highest chances of winning.
IE: the lottery team with the best record would have the best odds something around 8.6% and decending to the worst record , somewhere around 5.6% with the rest falling in the middle.

 

You wouldn't see nearly as many "truly bad" teams because no one would be tanking, they would have something to play for. You honestly think the Bobcats players are that bad? If they had something to play for they would have won at least 5 to 7 more games IMO.