NBA discussion creating a tourney for bad teams to avoid tanking & determine draft order

I don't trust this guy to make "dramatic changes".

 

The NBA presented three comprehensive anti-tanking concepts to its Board of Governors on Wednesday, with modifications expected to each before a formal vote in May, per ESPN sources.

1) 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.

2) 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.

3) 18 teams in a "5 by 5" lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.

 

these are...not good

 

Link

The NBA is considering severe penalties for teams found deliberately manipulating lineups, player availability and in-game rotations to lose. The measures would give Adam Silver broad authority to punish confirmed tanking.

Under the proposed rules, Silver's office could strip a team of its draft pick entirely, relocate it to the end of the lottery or first round, and impose fines reaching into the millions of dollars.

 

They keep flattening the odds more and more and tanking is still a problem. Not benefitting worst teams is also against the fundamental spirit of the draft. They need to come up with a system that helps truly bad teams but punishes intentionally bad teams.

 

They can't do this bc of the CBA but if they made contracts game-availability dependent -> you would see a lot less sitting out.

Honestly that would solve quite a few problems by itself - you wouldn't have the Wizards giving up 82 points to Bam Adebayo if Anthony Davis had to suit up for games to collect his full paycheck.


Ot they could shorten the season but god knows the # of games is a 1 way ratchet due to owner greed - can never go down, only go up even though the game is more physically demanding now

 

I'd rather Silver spending his time policing bad officiating and flopping.

 

I'm pretty sure the players agreed with the owners on keeping the season at 82 games as they also don't want to reduce games to reduce their paychecks. 82 games is here to stay unless the players have a change of heart.

 

You are never going to solve tanking in a draft system in a sports league. It's impossible to do so, every league that has a draft system has tanking. It comes with the draft. NBA should just accept it, the flattened odds and play-ins IMO are just fine.

If the NBA wants to get rid of tanking, it'd need a relegation system. That would stop it completely and it would also solve the idea of the NBA always feeling like it needs to expand. For example, Mexico City has will have a Gleague team...if suddenly some wealthy ownership put more into the team, made it good enough to win a tournament between top 2 worst NBA teams and top two best gleague, then the NBA would have a Mexico City team. Of course yes it's hard for newly promoted teams to break in and stay up but it does happen and imagine the stories and media hype? The Mexico City Capitanes beat the Kings and are now in the NBA for a season!

Of course this won't happen it's too dramatic a chance and would change everything about the NBA but you can never get rid of tanking with a draft system. It's impossible. The European model to team sports IMHO is flatly just better though, players have more freedom where they want to play and the leagues don't ever feel this need to always expand to this city or not because every city big enough has a team in one league or another.

But the current owners would never sign off on it, the very thought that the Lakers could have a bad year, get relegated, is enough to stop that idea but in reality the big market teams that have the most money to play in a more open market would be fine. I think the NBA would be better off in the long run with a relegation system, would make more games competitive and it would give even bad teams something to fight for and would open the NBA to many more markets across N.America. I think you'd start to immediately see investment to new teams across USA, Mexico, Canada to have their own g-league teams with the hopes of making it to the NBA.

 

I've been advocating relegation system, although I know it will never happen. It'd not just solve the tanking problem, but also make bad ownership much less profitable. You make less money in a lower league.

 

You are completely right on the merits of relegation. It would be incredibly exciting and solve a lot of issues. But, the NBA doesn't get $14-20 billion from it like it does from expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas. That's why they'll never do it.

 

I don't think basic tanking is actually the problem that's been going on forever and the odds used to be even better for the tanking team. I'd actually argue parity and the balance of the league was better when the teams at the bottom the standings for multiple years consistently got the future HOF players.

The real problem is with all of these convoluted protections on draft pick TRADES leading to decent teams temporarily tanking to get access to picks they've already traded away.

 

Rewarding bad teams for being bad is the dumbest thing ever and the antithesis of competition. It should just be even odds for all 30 teams. Any less and you will still see ridiculous **** like a top 4 seed trying to tank out of home court advantage just to get a lottery ball

I would much rather see a mid playoff team get a top pick then a tanking loser like say the nets, and watch them still suck next year anyways. Imagine if the rockets got the number 1 pick this year. They probably still wouldnt be a lock to get to the conference finals but it would add more parity by putting another team at that level. Obviously the worst that could happen would be a really good team winning the lottery but I honestly think thats still better than what we have now

 

I like the old lottery rules that encouraged tanking. Worst team gets top pick. The league doesn’t like tanking, because it makes it harder to rig. Dallas wouldn’t have gotten Flagg for instance. Why shouldn’t teams tank after they have no way of winning? It doesn’t really screw the fans of the tanking teams, because they have something to look forward to.

 

It screws the quality of the games though. There's a trend of more blow out games in recent years. I am sure the proliferation of the 3pt shot has something to do with the big variance. But the tanking teams provide a lot of unwatchable games, not just for their own fans but for everybody.

 

real solution is to disincentivize, and the real way to do that is to make it completely same odds for every team regardless of record. this will make every team really compete with honesty every year. takes some fun out of the lottery (thought of possibility is one of the most addictive things) but this is the only real solution. everything else is gimmicky and eventually will lose its effectiveness

 

Y'know, I think I like it.

I respect the problem that the lottery system is trying to solve, but I also understand the really difficult auxiliary problems it creates. This idea sounds like the best solution I've heard. Not perfect (probably will be no such thing), but maybe the closest thing to having your cake and eating it to? It alleviates the pain for bad teams while still not really encouraging them to be the worst after they realize their season is toast. It also maybe means an otherwise good team who suffered a season-killing injury to a key player mid-season doesn't get rewarded with a Tim Duncan to pair with their David Robinson in the summer.

It's either that or, yeah, level the odds across the field... Which really doesn't sound TOO terrible, either. I would just hate to see the Lakers get a first pick after their third Luka championship or something.

 

For the Bottom 10 team 8%, and remainging 20% divided between 11-18 worst teams, I had chatgpt calculate odds in case both the Nets and Phoenix end up in the worst 18 teams. Disclaimer...looks right, but I've not checked chatgpt's math.

1) Bottom-10 Team with Another Bottom-10 Pick
Best pick (X) Odds Worst pick (Y) Odds
1 16.00% 2 1.39%
2 14.41% 3 2.72%
3 12.86% 4 3.99%
4 11.34% 5 5.18%
5 9.87% 6 6.27%
6 8.45% 7 7.24%
7 7.09% 8 8.08%
8 5.80% 9 8.74%
9 4.60% 10 9.18%
10 3.49% 11 9.33%
11 2.51% 12 9.13%
12 1.68% 13 8.48%
13 1.02% 14 7.37%
14 0.54% 15 5.83%
15 0.24% 16 4.03%
16 0.08% 17 2.24%
17 0.01% 18 0.79%
2) Bottom-10 Team + One 11–18 Pick
Best pick (X) Odds Worst pick (Y) Odds
1 10.50% 2 0.42%
2 10.10% 3 0.87%
3 9.68% 4 1.35%
4 9.23% 5 1.86%
5 8.76% 6 2.41%
6 8.25% 7 3.01%
7 7.70% 8 3.66%
8 7.10% 9 4.38%
9 6.45% 10 5.18%
10 5.74% 11 6.07%
11 4.95% 12 7.07%
12 4.08% 13 8.17%
13 3.15% 14 9.31%
14 2.20% 15 10.42%
15 1.32% 16 11.37%
16 0.62% 17 12.04%
17 0.17% 18 12.40%
3) Two Picks from 11–18 Teams
Best pick (X) Odds Worst pick (Y) Odds
1 5.00% 2 0.13%
2 5.12% 3 0.28%
3 5.24% 4 0.45%
4 5.38% 5 0.65%
5 5.53% 6 0.90%
6 5.70% 7 1.19%
7 5.89% 8 1.56%
8 6.09% 9 2.01%
9 6.32% 10 2.59%
10 6.57% 11 3.37%
11 6.83% 12 4.42%
12 7.08% 13 5.89%
13 7.24% 14 7.97%
14 7.14% 15 10.85%
15 6.57% 16 14.61%
16 5.26% 17 19.13%
17 3.05% 18 24.01%