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Zack Lowe: Fix the Lottery to take away need for tanking

green

Well-Known Member
For all the Stoked's out there (I actually really, really like his idea). Key points:

"Grantland obtained a copy of the proposal, which would eliminate the draft lottery and replace it with a system in which each of the 30 teams would pick in a specific first-round draft slot once — and exactly once — every 30 years. Each team would simply cycle through the 30 draft slots, year by year, in a predetermined order designed so that teams pick in different areas of the draft each year. Teams would know with 100 percent certainty in which draft slots they would pick every year, up to 30 years out from the start of every 30-year cycle. The practice of protecting picks would disappear; there would never be a Harrison Barnes–Golden State situation again, and it wouldn’t require a law degree to track ownership of every traded pick leaguewide."

Go check out his pic to see is easily understood.

For example: "the graphic highlights the top six slots in red to show that every team would be guaranteed one top-six pick every five seasons, and at least one top-12 pick in every four-year span."

"The wheel, which has all sorts of complex algorithms behind it, is designed in such a way that each half-decade mini-cycle has at least two top-12 picks clustered next to each other — a means of encouraging long-term building around young players, and of allowing bad teams to get better quickly if they draft well."

"Each six-year set of picks is roughly equivalent to all other six-year cycles, so no team is ever stuck in an unfavorable cycle of bad picks."

https://www.grantland.com/blog/the-...ng-good-bye-to-the-lottery-hello-to-the-wheel

I really, really like this system. You take the uncertainty out it. You take out the need/desire to tank. You give no incentive for losing and every incentive for winning. Build a winner and you could potentially NEVER have to rebuild. Large or small market.
 
If the NBA were to do this, I would also want to do a two team contraction. Find the two teams that have been the least profitable in the last 10 years and contract them. Do a second draft, where every team is weighted equally in a lottery, and let them choose the players off those teams. All contracts follow the players, and all salary cap rules must be abided by.

For example, if Charlotte is contracted, and the Lakers get the #1 pick, they can't take Al Jefferson, because his contract is what they would have to sign him to, and they can't bring on a FA with a deal that big. NOW, I would be okay with teams trading their picks around. So, LA gets #1. They want Kemba. They trade the #1 for the #2 and whatever else they agreed to so they could take Kemba and pick a draft pick along the way. Or dump salary. Or whatever.
 
This needs to happen. The NBA would be so much better if being a decent team wasn't such a bad thing.

Owners and GMs might not like it because it would take away the mechanism that allows them to make losing out to be something desirable.
 
It sounds like it would be great parity but I think small market teams could still go through 10 year dark ages.

Imagine this is Utah's order and the year they get the #1 was 2013 when there was no superstar or even all star.....dark age.

27
24
13
12
1
30
 
Yeah Drafting is a lot about luck, if you drafted bad you would pretty much be stuck in terribleness. Kind of like the Cavs this year.
 
Yeah Drafting is a lot about luck, if you drafted bad you would pretty much be stuck in terribleness. Kind of like the Cavs this year.

Even if they drafted good and got MCW or Oladipo, they are far cries from franchise changers. Not to say this system doesn't have potential. If the picks were given some variance (say from +3 to -3) depending on your trailing 3 year record, it could be interesting.
 
It sounds like it would be great parity but I think small market teams could still go through 10 year dark ages.

Imagine this is Utah's order and the year they get the #1 was 2013 when there was no superstar or even all star.....dark age.

27
24
13
12
1
30

I think you are wrong here. According to Lowe, if Utah had the #1 last year, their next picks would be:

1st, 30th, 19th, 18th, 7th, 6th.

So, you would have Hayward, Favors, Kanter, Burks, Last year, they have the number 1 pick, and their biggest need is a PG. I still think they take Burke #1.

So, your lineup looks like this:

Burke, ???, Neto
Hayward, Burks
Williams
Favors
Kanter, Gobert.

If you can't take, Utah probably brings Mo, and at the very least Millsap back. Now, we look like this:

Burke, Mo, ???
Hayward, Burks
Williams, Hayward
Millsap, Williams
Favors, Kanter, Gobert

That is a playoff team.

That does suck for Utah, because we have three years with no great pick, but then in years 4 and 5, we get two really good picks. And, you can trade the picks.

The big kicker for all of this is that this couldn't start until all the currently traded picks are used up. So, I think Lowe said this would start in 10 years. So, teams like Utah would have plenty of time to prepare for this.
 
Terrible idea. Would work with absolutely hard cap or non-guaranteed contracts only. Under current CBA it will be big market teams owning it all more than ever.
 
Terrible idea. Would work with absolutely hard cap or non-guaranteed contracts only. Under current CBA it will be big market teams owning it all more than ever.

I actually like the idea in the OP but i agree that it would be best with a hard cap
 
Maybe combine this with a salary cap bonus for the lowest ranked teams, so they have the money flexibility to improve but not a massive incentive to tank.
 
It would just make me sick if in year 1 of this new proposed system Miami ends up with the number 1 pick(assuming they own their own pick). I guess it is a step in the right direction to curtail tanking, but it is not without it's own issues. Like GF said, there need to be further incentives.
 
Let's not forget a team like Brooklyn would be crying about it being unfair because they don't have one of their own picks until 2019(I believe) and the value of those picks possibly just changed substantially with the wheel. They will claim that the value of the picks they traded at the time of those trades were a lot less substantial. Do they have a point? Maybe... Not that I am going to cry for the Nets. Just something that is interesting to think about.
 
Terrible idea. Would work with absolutely hard cap or non-guaranteed contracts only. Under current CBA it will be big market teams owning it all more than ever.

I disagree. It wouldn't be any different than right now. Brooklyn traded away Lillard and Kanter. Those were Brooklyn's picks and both those picks were made by playoff/borderline playoff teams. Look at the top spenders in the NBA now. Brooklyn, NY, Miami, Chicago, LA. Only Miami is any good. Dumb teams will still be dumb.

Look at baseball and the no salary cap's winners:

Boston
SF
St Louis
SF
NYY
Philly
Boston
St Louis
W Sox
Boston
Anaheim

There are more small market teams there than anywhere else.

Look at Eric Bledsoe. If what you are saying is true, then Bledose would have never have left LAC. LAC would have kept him, he would have been happy, and the rich would have gotten richer.

I don't think this does any of the things you say it will. IN FACT, I bet it would do the same thing that is going on right now, EXCEPT small market teams wouldn't be left with so much uncertainty. Instead of trading Deron to the Nets for a protected pick, they could have traded him for a future #3 and a future #6 pick. No more hoping/tanking/watching/etc. Instead of GS throwing the end of the season for their pick, Utah would have always known they were getting a #9 pick.

IF you pick right, this works really, really well, because it gives you a bunch of high picks together (to build the team) then gives you lower picks together (to put cheap pieces around your contender) then you start all over again. Then there is no excuse for GM's as to why their teams suck. They didn't pick well enough.
 
Let's not forget a team like Brooklyn would be crying about it being unfair because they don't have one of their own picks until 2019(I believe) and the value of those picks possibly just changed substantially with the wheel. They will claim that the value of the picks they traded at the time of those trades were a lot less substantial. Do they have a point? Maybe... Not that I am going to cry for the Nets. Just something that is interesting to think about.

This was already covered. This would not start until all traded away picks have been picked. So, this wouldn't start for another 10 years, which would give teams plenty of time to know their slots and prepare for it.
 
This was already covered. This would not start until all traded away picks have been picked. So, this wouldn't start for another 10 years, which would give teams plenty of time to know their slots and prepare for it.

Sorry, must have missed that. Go for it I guess. They do need to do something. I do think this proposal needs to be tweaked in certain ways though.
 
The only other way I could see replacing the lottery would to take all teams and average out their win percentages for the last 3 seasons. Then the bottom 14 teams would all have the same odds to win the #1 draft pick and so on.
 
The only other way I could see replacing the lottery would to take all teams and average out their win percentages for the last 3 seasons. Then the bottom 14 teams would all have the same odds to win the #1 draft pick and so on.

I don't like this at all. I like the current system better. The current system allows a team like Utah to suck for one or two years than get back into the playoffs. Your system would take a rebuild from 2-5 years and make it 5 years minimum. You would have to suck for too long to have a shot at a franchise player. This system is much better. Suck for a year, get your guy, get back to the playoffs.
 
I'm one of the few that actually likes the current system. With all the worrying about tanking, how many times has it actually WORKED? The Cavs got Anthony Bennett last year, is he leading them to the playoffs anytime soon?

The wheel system will never happen. It will be terrible for competitive balance. A player could decide NOT to declare for the draft simply because a team he doesn't want to play for has the 1st pick, and he would know the team that would hold the pick the following year. Not only that, but does anyone else notice that big-market teams rarely get the #1 pick? Why? Because they already attract the top Free Agents, thus on average are going to have better teams. In business this is called a "Core Competency." It's a competitive advantage that other teams can't copy. If you give all teams even draft positions it will further strengthen the big-market advantage.

Can you imagine this single elimination tournament at the end of this season for the West's #8 seed?

8- Denver
9- Golden State
10- Lakers
11-Minnesota
12- New Orleans
13-Memphis
14- Sacramento
15- Utah

Does anyone else think we could take Denver?
 
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Parity is easy.

1. Shrink by 4 teams.

2. Share revenue.

3. Fine flopping with playoff games. LeBron would lose 4-5 more games every season.
 
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