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It's time for a flat (non-playoff team) draft lottery

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idiot

Well-Known Member
Recent CBAs have more or less solved the problem that "small-market teams" have been complaining about for years. Free agency has been strongly down over the last few years. This past year or so has shown that the big markets cannot simply spend/trade with impunity anymore.

To my mind, there's not much reason anymore to reward tanking. In a competitive league, we shouldn't have teams prioritizing a fight toward the bottom year after year. Better not to have the saying/thinking that "the worst place to be is in the middle."

So let's have a flat lottery system (1-14) by, say, 2028 (to give teams a bit of time to re-calibrate).

Discuss
 
idiot said:
Recent CBAs have more or less solved the problem that "small-market teams" have been complaining about for years. Free agency has been strongly down over the last few years. This past year or so has shown that the big markets cannot simply spend/trade with impunity anymore.

To my mind, there's not much reason anymore to reward tanking. In a competitive league, we shouldn't have teams prioritizing a fight toward the bottom year after year. Better not to have the saying/thinking that "the worst place to be is in the middle."

So let's have a flat lottery system (1-14) by, say, 2028 (to give teams a bit of time to re-calibrate).

Discuss
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No thanks. Id rather just get rid of the draft lottery all together than that.
 
Flat lottery would have teams missing the playoffs on purpose to get into the lotto, we already have teams doing that and a flat lottery would increase the incentive greatly. I don't really have a great solution, but the problem of incentivizing winning is equally as large of a problem as rewarding tanking. You can take away or lessen the award for being bad, but a problem will exist as long as there is no true reward for winning enough to be in "the middle".

I feel as though an NBA draft wheel or some kind of draft cap system would work best, but those won't ever be implemented.
 
I used to give this a lot more though but came to the conclusion that things are kind of are they way they are and significant change won't happen. But here are some ideas from my memory. They are not all related, but some work with others:

- It would be interesting to see a structure where prospects could enter the NBA as something similar to a FA. This would probably only work with a hard cap, but the idea is that teams could either 1) spend money on players that are currently good or 2) spend money on prospects but not both. This would highly reward responsible cap management.

- You could make the tanking reward based on previous or multiple seasons. If, for example, the lottery odds were based on what happened 1, 2, or 3 years ago...it could influence the acute decision making we see from teams who might want to tank. I think it makes it too easy to tank when that reward comes immediately. Making the odds based on a previous year or multiple previous years, would de-incentivize pulling the plug mid way through/

- I think winning the lottery should disqualify you or greatly reduce your odds of winning again immediately. The idea of just tanking until it works is so lame.

- Odds can be dynamic based on certain conditions, no reason why they have to be static year to year.

- It's ok to have some randomness and give some help to the bad teams, but overall I think the reward from the draft needs to be more equitable across teams.
 
KqWIN said:
I used to give this a lot more though but came to the conclusion that things are kind of are they way they are and significant change won't happen. But here are some ideas from my memory. They are not all related, but some work with others:

- It would be interesting to see a structure where prospects could enter the NBA as something similar to a FA. This would probably only work with a hard cap, but the idea is that teams could either 1) spend money on players that are currently good or 2) spend money on prospects but not both. This would highly reward responsible cap management.

- You could make the tanking reward based on previous or multiple seasons. If, for example, the lottery odds were based on what happened 1, 2, or 3 years ago...it could influence the acute decision making we see from teams who might want to tank. I think it makes it too easy to tank when that reward comes immediately. Making the odds based on a previous year or multiple previous years, would de-incentivize pulling the plug mid way through/

- I think winning the lottery should disqualify you or greatly reduce your odds of winning again immediately. The idea of just tanking until it works is so lame.

- Odds can be dynamic based on certain conditions, no reason why they have to be static year to year.

- It's ok to have some randomness and give some help to the bad teams, but overall I think the reward from the draft needs to be more equitable across teams.
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Yup, I agree with this. There should be a cap system for the draft. Bad teams should have more money to spend on the draft, good teams less.
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:
Yup, I agree with this. There should be a cap system for the draft. Bad teams should have more money to spend on the draft, good teams less.
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It would be so interesting to see that type of draft structure. The teams who are the best at evaluating prospects would truly separate themselves. Instead of draft steals because of position, it would be draft steals because of contract.

I think some these ideas are far out there for most NBA fans (and they may be right), but to me the idea of sucking on purpose for a chance at a prospect being valid strategy is the crazy part.
 
KqWIN said:
I used to give this a lot more though but came to the conclusion that things are kind of are they way they are and significant change won't happen. But here are some ideas from my memory. They are not all related, but some work with others:

- It would be interesting to see a structure where prospects could enter the NBA as something similar to a FA. This would probably only work with a hard cap, but the idea is that teams could either 1) spend money on players that are currently good or 2) spend money on prospects but not both. This would highly reward responsible cap management.

- You could make the tanking reward based on previous or multiple seasons. If, for example, the lottery odds were based on what happened 1, 2, or 3 years ago...it could influence the acute decision making we see from teams who might want to tank. I think it makes it too easy to tank when that reward comes immediately. Making the odds based on a previous year or multiple previous years, would de-incentivize pulling the plug mid way through/

- I think winning the lottery should disqualify you or greatly reduce your odds of winning again immediately. The idea of just tanking until it works is so lame.

- Odds can be dynamic based on certain conditions, no reason why they have to be static year to year.

- It's ok to have some randomness and give some help to the bad teams, but overall I think the reward from the draft needs to be more equitable across teams.
Click to expand...
I'm not at all wedded to my particular proposal, and a lot of other ideas could be interesting. But I think we're on the same wavelength in the sense that rewarding the teams the most that actively try to lose the most is simply perverse (and probably a long-term drag on the NBA's health).

Still, I am wondering why you think a flat lotto (7% for #1 pick) would be strong enough to get good teams to tank. Or do you mean that they'd jockey to try to throw a few games at the end of the year to miss the playoffs? I think I might be willing to live with a little end-of-the season jockeying if it meant we could clean up some of this year-long stuff.
 
How about a team only gets the #1 pick every 30 years on a rotation basis
If you happen to be the best team when you get the #1 pick so be it
That should only be a rare occurrence
Then the rest of draft is season record so worst team will always get the #2 pick :) :) :) :)
Or if the best team does have the #1 pick they get the #2 pick and worst team gets #1
 
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idiot said:
I'm not at all wedded to my particular proposal, and a lot of other ideas could be interesting. But I think we're on the same wavelength in the sense that rewarding the teams the most that actively try to lose the most is simply perverse (and probably a long-term drag on the NBA's health).

Still, I am wondering why you think a flat lotto (7% for #1 pick) would be strong enough to get good teams to tank. Or do you mean that they'd jockey to try to throw a few games at the end of the year to miss the playoffs? I think I might be willing to live with a little end-of-the season jockeying if it meant we could clean up some of this year-long stuff.
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It does create a new problem, but you know what....I might be with you in saying the new problem that is introduced isn't as bad. I would be OK with flat odds (or something similar) if we added some of the ideas I listed out before. In particular, I think using multiple years would work well with flat odds so that teams avoid that sudden decision to dip out of the playoffs on purpose.

I also would not be against a reward for winning. Like I said earlier, I think there's a big problem that winning just isn't rewarded. I would advocate for playoff teams getting some kind of benefit, maybe like an extra exception or something like that.
 
David Hume said:
Europe has promotion and relegation, where the worst team is demoted to a lower league and replaced with a team from there, but that ain’t happening here.
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It must be noted, good sir, that you interlocution is indeed debased through your use of casual argot in this sentence. Perhaps you have over-imbibed on ale?
 
KqWIN said:
Flat lottery would have teams missing the playoffs on purpose to get into the lotto, we already have teams doing that and a flat lottery would increase the incentive greatly. I don't really have a great solution, but the problem of incentivizing winning is equally as large of a problem as rewarding tanking. You can take away or lessen the award for being bad, but a problem will exist as long as there is no true reward for winning enough to be in "the middle".

I feel as though an NBA draft wheel or some kind of draft cap system would work best, but those won't ever be implemented.
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I think an auction style system where you can get "credits" that roll over to future years would be one potential solution but its such a giant change that it would never get past like the first meeting. But if you were awarded a certain amount of credits based on where you finished and it wasn't massively different, and then you can bid on players... you could save credits for years with a Wemby and the winning team would have to blow a lot of credits on him... it would open up other value propositions on draft night and some additional trade possibilities throughout the year.

Again it would be so different that they wouldn't know what to do with it. Within the current construct any manipulation you do will simply move the goal post a bit one way or another.

The idea of flattening records across multiple years or simply making it so you can only move into the top 4 one out of every 3 years or something like that might help. Say we move into the top 4 this year... we aren't tanking next year most likely. It would also increase odds for every other team if they were in the lotto with some multi-year tankers that had been blessed with a top 4 pick.
 
They could do a 3-level lottery. First level, every team is included, and it is used to set the stage for the 15 teams included in the 2nd stage. Everyone not selected gets their draft pick in their record order, but outside of the 15. The 2nd stage breaks out the 6 teams competing for the top 6 picks, the remaining 9 get their pick from 7-15 in record order. Then a third level gives you the pick order from 1-6. That way there is a far outside chance of the best team ending up with the #1 pick. And the worst team might end up at 16 at the worst. But the odds are skewed more heavily in favor of the worse teams for each stage of the lottery. This way there is less incentive to tank full-on maybe, depending on how things are weighted.
 
Making it so you can't move up top 4 two years in a row would be a minimally intrusive change that would dissuade or at least spread out the lotto luck a bit. Houston has drafted top 4 for 4 straight years. SA 2 straight years. Making it so that you can't draft top 4 for 2 years after moving up puts a lot of emphasis on getting that pick right so maybe that is too much. Maybe getting the #1 pick means you can't move up for 2 years and moving into the top 4 means you can't move up the following year. I think it would change the long term tank strategy for a few teams.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
I think an auction style system where you can get "credits" that roll over to future years would be one potential solution but its such a giant change that it would never get past like the first meeting. But if you were awarded a certain amount of credits based on where you finished and it wasn't massively different, and then you can bid on players... you could save credits for years with a Wemby and the winning team would have to blow a lot of credits on him... it would open up other value propositions on draft night and some additional trade possibilities throughout the year.

Again it would be so different that they wouldn't know what to do with it. Within the current construct any manipulation you do will simply move the goal post a bit one way or another.

The idea of flattening records across multiple years or simply making it so you can only move into the top 4 one out of every 3 years or something like that might help. Say we move into the top 4 this year... we aren't tanking next year most likely. It would also increase odds for every other team if they were in the lotto with some multi-year tankers that had been blessed with a top 4 pick.
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I like the credits idea as it adds more strategy to the process. It also helps to reduce the unluckiness of being bad in a bad draft. I'm not sure it helps with tanking that much though as it actually might incentivize it more.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I like the credits idea as it adds more strategy to the process. It also helps to reduce the unluckiness of being bad in a bad draft. I'm not sure it helps with tanking that much though as it actually might incentivize it more.
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Yeah there would be some issues and things you'd have to work out. I think teams would hoard credits but you could also trade credits instead of full picks which would facilitate more player movement maybe. It would reduce the issue of "we got the 5th pick and the next obvious pick is a center and our best player or prospect is a center... now what?"

If a team had to push all their credits in for a prospect like Wemby it might mean the budget gets easier on a Thompson or something like that. There is a little too much emphasis and reward for straight dumb luck and no reward for winning a little extra here and there. They could also weight the season to make the lotto odds and during the first half of the season is weighted higher and maybe you reward actual wins the last 40 games to come up with the odds.

IDK there may be a couple small things they could change now but most are pretty big changes.
 
I think the only way to truly remove tanking is to make draft order not related to winning % at all, so the alternating wheel idea that fans would hate when good teams get the chance to draft the best players. Although, if they ever started that system, I would hope they would start the order with teams who have not had number one picks so that the Jazz would be on the top of the list. One thing this would change would be trades, where instead of guessing where the pick might land you would know exactly which pick you were getting at any point in the future.

Maybe if they did something like that the 2nd round would still be based off of win % which would help the worst teams still get top choice of guys that are still potential NBA talents.
 
David Hume said:
The ale flows, good sir; I experience senescence. Lo! Let the ale flow!
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I must, however, divulge that I do prefer mead as a sweeter indulgence, to ale, if I must cross the Rubicon on that topic.
 
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