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The Utah Jazz and Tanking

I still think making the playoff system for the bottom 6 teams makes the most sense. Rules are you can't activate any player who didn't play that much during the regular season (as in, the Warriors couldn't just activate Stephen Curry and Bogut just for the tourney). Then maybe have the next 8 teams in their own playoff for the 7th pick.
 
BENTLEY said:
And, to repeat what Chawx repeated - all teams who make the playoffs are excluded from the lottery - just as it stands now.
All the non-playoff teams (the losers, if you will) compete to not be the biggest loser, but - like Battier mentioned - compete to be the best of of the losers. Reward them with a top pick and a decent team can compete with the top playoffs teams in just a few months. No more dynasties. Every year things could totally change up. If the top pick goes to the Bobcats or Sacramento - nothing changes. The top teams remain the top teams and Charlotte, Sacramento probably miss the playoffs again anyway - despite getting the top pick.
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So let's say Lakers will me running for 3-4 place in the West, then lose Pau for 30 games mid season, drop to 7-8th then realize that they are not in the position fro a truly championship run they tank for the rest of the season and then blow everyone out in this top pick tournament. Oh wait... They won't win it easily because other good teams which would be normally fighting for playoff spot suddenly realize it's better stay out of playoffs and start tanking as well. That's nonsense.

When you start awarding picks for results you bring an incentive to manipulate results regardless of the system.
So, basically, you have 3 choices:
1. equal chances in the lottery
2. GM's don't know how exactly chances will be determined so they can't plan ahead
3. use 5 year record to determine chances in order to award only truly bad teams with talent. If a team makes its business plan off tanking for 5 years they won't have any fans left by the time they start getting better.
 
theNBAnerd said:
chawx, problem there is, you'll have mediocre teams tanking early. if you're a team like the jazz or wolves and you know you don't have what it takes to compete for a title THIS year, then you have great incentive to suck early in the season.

that's why i said... any revised system pretty much just rewards teams for being bad at DIFFERENT times... but do nothing to eliminate altogether the idea of strategy and purposefully being bad at some point.
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theNBAnerd: You have my idea (https://jazzfanz.com/showthread.php?9683-The-Utah-Jazz-and-Tanking&p=288329&viewfull=1#post288329) mixed up.

1) There is no incentive to tank at the start of the year. You don't get any better of shot at the #1 pick if you have more games to play out of playoff contention — lottery position is based on winning percentage not number of wins. A team that plays 30 games out of the playoffs and happens to go 15-15 (.500) isn't going to get a better pick over a team that played 13 games out of the playoffs and went 7-6 (.538).

2) I addressed when tanking would be an issue (around the 13-10 games left in the season mark) where teams are trying to get into that "upper" draft pick zone (aka. the area where teams with 10 games or more played out of playoff contention get a shot at the top pick)
 
northeast:

My plan ( https://jazzfanz.com/showthread.php?9683-The-Utah-Jazz-and-Tanking&p=288329&viewfull=1#post288329 ) was to reduce/fix tanking in the NBA, not to help idiot GMs of perennially crappy teams get better players. I was attempting to fix the quality of the product on the court by making it so teams would NEVER be rewarded for trying to lose a game.

You can't predict injury and you can't predict if the #1 pick will be a Greg Oden / Sam Bowie type player or a Durant / Jordan type player. All you can do is make it so every team in the league TRIES TO WIN every single night.

To use a political term, you can't keep "bailing out" these poorly run teams AND you can't keep rigging the playing field where you put a lottery behind closed doors, then come out and tell everyone what happened! That's bull ****!

Make the draft visible, make it so fans can follow their team and always ALWAYS cheer for them to win, never to lose, and make it so the teams that are run well, get rewarded the most.
 
chawx said:
northeast:

My plan ( https://jazzfanz.com/showthread.php?9683-The-Utah-Jazz-and-Tanking&p=288329&viewfull=1#post288329 ) was to reduce/fix tanking in the NBA, not to help idiot GMs of perennially crappy teams get better players. I was attempting to fix the quality of the product on the court by making it so teams would NEVER be rewarded for trying to lose a game.

You can't predict injury and you can't predict if the #1 pick will be a Greg Oden / Sam Bowie type player or a Durant / Jordan type player. All you can do is make it so every team in the league TRIES TO WIN every single night.

To use a political term, you can't keep "bailing out" these poorly run teams AND you can't keep rigging the playing field where you put a lottery behind closed doors, then come out and tell everyone what happened! That's bull ****!

Make the draft visible, make it so fans can follow their team and always ALWAYS cheer for them to win, never to lose, and make it so the teams that are run well, get rewarded the most.
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Damn Straight!
 
Pretty fired up a out this after watching the warriors close the last several games. And I'm sure there are a half dozen teams tanking right now as well. Honestly the only thing I've heard that makes sense is give the 14 teams that don't make the playoffs an equal shot at picks 1-14. 15-30 based on record like it is now. That way we don't have teams disgracing the game and their fans the last month and a half of the season.
 
Okur13 said:
Pretty fired up a out this after watching the warriors close the last several games. And I'm sure there are a half dozen teams tanking right now as well. Honestly the only thing I've heard that makes sense is give the 14 teams that don't make the playoffs an equal shot at picks 1-14. 15-30 based on record like it is now. That way we don't have teams disgracing the game and their fans the last month and a half of the season.
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I would be happy in a way to see this implemented IF it was done in front of the media and the fans. It would be better than the current system...but, the potential for teams in the Jazz position (6-10th place in each conference) to tank at the end of the year would, in my opinion, be even more prevalent.

What Jazz fan in here wouldn't be screaming for the team to try and lose a bunch of their games to end the season, so they don't have to go against a 1-3 seed in the playoffs and get knocked out in the first round, but instead have an equal shot at the #1 seed?

I like the idea more than now (just because it might benefit the Jazz), but 1) it doesn't encourage winning at the end of the season to make the playoffs. Teams who eek'd into the 8th or 7th seed just to be swept or knocked out in the 1st round won't be too happy about it, which is just plain wrong to be essentially "mad" at your team for getting in the playoffs and, 2) if the draft order is not held in front of the media and fans, there will be even MORE corruption, or feelings of corruption, if big markets win that #1 spot in the draft.
 
why not this...

the idea of a mini-playoff is intriguing, but it does nothing to make regular season games matter more. in fact, if the playoff is top 6 or 8, you'll still have teams like GS who are clamoring to get from the 9-14 range into the worst 8... so essentially we're still robbing the fans of meaningful regular season games.

what if we embrace that playoff idea, but we have the regular season serve as the playoff. i have a few ideas of how to do that, but one would be to say that the 14 non-playoff teams' draft order is set based on winning percentage against each other in the regular season. now, when new orleans and golden state play each other in april, there's incentive for both teams to play their best lineups and try hard to win the game. what's more, it also removes the incentives for them to throw a game when they play, say, the lakers, because while that game doesn't particularly matter, there's no reward for losing it. in fact, you could argue that by playing your best against LA, you are giving yourself some confidence & rhythm that you can use tomorrow night when you play the nets in a game that matters for the lottery.

it would change the calculus for playoff teams, too. for instance, denver is about to play a game in new orleans that nobody expects the hornets to win, but it would sure help the jazz if they did. wouldn't it be great if NOH had a little motivation to beat the nuggets? they'd want to because a) by beating them, they could hamper their playoff chances and then they'd have an additional W against a lottery team, and b) trying hard against the nuggets tonight and spurs on friday might help them play better on saturday against the wolves.

of course, that would make several of OUR games tougher, too, but isn't that the point? don't we want the eight playoff teams to have EARNED their way into the postseason by playing hungry teams and beating them?
 
Okur and Chawx together make an idea I like the most.

The bottom 14 teams each get one ball in a lottery done before media. Picks 1-14 are chosen via the public lottery and picks 15-30 are done by record for the playoff teams.
 
Stoked said:
Okur and Chawx together make an idea I like the most.

The bottom 14 teams each get one ball in a lottery done before media. Picks 1-14 are chosen via the public lottery and picks 15-30 are done by record for the playoff teams.
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Give the teams that don't make the playoffs an equal shot at the picks. That's what I said about 50 posts ago. I need a new PR team I guess.
but it is very different from Chawx's convulted tank 3/4 of the season and then give the pick to the best cheater idea . I missed Okur's idea.
 
northeast said:
That's what I said about 50 posts ago. I need a new PR team I guess.
but it is totally different from Chawx's idea. I missed Okur's idea.
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I stopped reading your posts when you were hung up on refs/fouls. Maybe I should give yours another look.
 
northeast said:
nerd, your idea would still have nonplayoff teams tanking against playoff teams
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it wouldn't though... there's no reward for the nets to lose to the magic, because their lottery chances don't depend on that game at all.

granted, there is only mild incentive for them to play well (keep everybody in rhythm, for example). basically, the WORST that can happen in my scenario is that they'll treat games against playoff teams as meaningless and games against non playoff teams as a chance to get a W.... versus today, when EVERY game is only looked at as a chance to get an L.
 
to build on my point, there are 24 teams in action in 12 games tonight. if you group them into four categories, you realize that only three of those games would be relatively meaningless under my system.

group 1: playoff contenders vs. playoff contenders

spurs @ celtics, thunder @ heat, grizzlies @ mavericks, suns @ jazz, lakers @ clippers

five games that are exciting without any help from my system. these are 10 teams that all have at least semi-realistic playoff hopes, so the games matter for seeding or (in the case of jazz/suns) because a win gets them closer to the playoffs in general, while a loss is pretty drastic for both teams in terms of their playoff odds.

group 2: non-playoff contenders vs. teams obviously going to the playoffs

raptors @ 76ers, pacers @ wizards, bobcats @ hawks

today, these are games that the raptors, wizards and bobcats are rewarded for losing. in my proposal, at the very least these games would become relatively meaningless. they still matter to the sixers, pacers and hawks for matters of seeding.

group 3: non-playoff contenders vs. teams that might make the playoffs

nuggets @ hornets, cavs @ bucks

there is a lot of incentive, of course, for the nuggets and bucks to win these games. but my system makes these interesting games for cavs and hornets fans, too. now, the cavs and hornets would want to win them because if they do, they can help knock the nuggets and bucks out of the playoffs. if, say, the nuggets come up short, then the hornets would have an extra W against a lottery team. so they get to play spoiler (and help out the jazz) and they get directly rewarded for doing so.

group 4: non-playoff teams vs. non-playoff teams

warriors @ timberwolves, nets @ blazers

these games would basically have all the excitement of the lottery playoff idea that chawx was suggesting, but with the added bonus that they are regular season games that matter that much. all four teams would be extremely motivated to win because a win gets them extra chances to draft the unibrow. these could potentially be playoff-intensity games, especially as the season gets closer to ending and you get a better idea of how non-playoff teams rank against each other.
 
theNBAnerd said:
why not this...

the 14 non-playoff teams' draft order is set based on winning percentage against each other in the regular season.
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because now you will DRAMATICALLY INCREASE incentive for teams in the middle of the pack to tank games against playoff teams.

Yes, the worst teams will have less incentive to tank, but teams that are in the middle of the pack will now have a huge incentive to tank, much more than before, including teams that are good enough to win in the playoffs. There would be a huge incentive for perpetual 4 to 8 playoff seeds to now tank in the regular season to get a pick to put them over the top, something that did not exist before, as well as much more tanking from teams in the 9 to 12 range. Their tanking now holds the promise of the next Shaq, not just the next Hayward. This would be much worse than the current system.
 
northeast said:
because now you will DRAMATICALLY INCREASE incentive for teams in the middle of the pack to tank games against playoff teams.

Yes, the worst teams will have less incentive to tank, but teams that are in the middle of the pack will now have a huge incentive to tank, much more than before, including teams that are good enough to win in the playoffs. There would be a huge incentive for perpetual 4 to 8 playoff seeds to now tank in the regular season to get a pick to put them over the top, something that did not exist before, as well as much more tanking from teams in the 9 to 12 range. Their tanking now holds the promise of the next Shaq, not just the next Hayward. This would be much worse than the current system.
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i don't see how it rewards tanking at all. basically, you play to win every game you can. hopefully that makes you good enough to make the playoffs, but if it doesn't, then you'll be good enough to be rewarded with a decent shot at a good player.

is your point that a team in the jazz's place would then try like hell to lose to beat the suns and warriors, but lose to the spurs and TRY to fall out of the playoffs with well-timed losses to non-lottery teams? i guess that could happen, but a lot of those games are games that non-playoff teams were going to lose anyway...

maybe the way to offset that is to still have some form of lottery, but based on my idea. so the non-playoff team that does the best against other non-playoff teams isn't guaranteed the top pick, but they get the best chance... just to dampen the reward for being strategically sucky at times but try at other times.
 
nerd, you've got half the board saying they wouldn't mind seeing the Jazz miss the playoffs so they can get the 14th pick.
Under your scenario, all the teams ranked 5 through 12 would now have incentive to tank for a top 5 pick guaranteed, with an excellent shot at the number 1 pick..
The bottom dweller would have less incentive to tank, but all the teams in the middle of the pack would have much increased incentive to tank.
 
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and the top picks would almost always go to teams good enough to make the playoffs, or at least come very close, but that tank.
it would be more unfair.
 
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