The Draft Lottery Sucks

[galena]

I'm sure I'll get quite a few eyeballs rolling with this one. But the whole "rebuilding process," where you are counting on a poor record and thus a high draft pick, is disrespectful to the game, IMO. Teams tanking it every year is just absurd. Teams going into a year with no intentions on being above average.. it makes me sick! Because no matter how much they slash their payroll, they can always tell the fans that they're "rebuilding." Maybe they'll get the next LeBron...

All this being said, it is my belief that the NBA would be better off if EVERY TEAM, except all Division winners, would have an EQUAL chance to land the top pick- and any other pick for that matter. A second place (Divisional) team has the same shot at the top pick as a last place team.

Why?

First of all, it gives the competitive, but not dominant, teams hope that they could get over the hump WITHOUT making big trades and compromising the chemistry that they've spent a long time trying to build.

Secondly, it discourages tanking almost entirely. Sure, teams will still dump salary if they want to go on a big FA run (or if they're cheap bastards), but overall, every team will be going into a season with more of an emphasis on winning now. This would create more competition I believe, and thus a more exciting brand of basketball.

[trwi7]

And then the teams that actually lack talent have the same chance of getting the first overall pick than a talented team that lost a few good players to injury. The system is fine the way it is now.

[bigkurty]

Man could you imagine the conspiracy theories then when Lebron magically is gifted a big time running mate.

[MajorDad]

just eliminate the lottery.

then those teams tankig their season to get the top pick would finally get the top pick and wouldn' have to tank any future seasons. it works fine in hockey, baseball and football. why does the NAB have to be different? so they can have a 1/2 hour lottery special and a draft special? The current lottery hasn't really benefitted any team any more than a straight last is first draft would have done. It definitely doesn't prevent teams from tanking.

the problem with the lottery is a team like the bucks will tank 5 years in a row in an attempt to get that top pick who wil make a difference. Just give us that top pick , and we won't have to tank any more.

as much as i don't like Bogut, I can't imagine how bad the bucks would be without him.

[andonewheel]

The lottery is a great system. Under your proposed system, the big market teams like the Lakers and Knicks would have an even bigger advantage.

[jeremyd236]

You've got it all wrong. The lottery system PREVENTS tanking. You say it encourages tanking but rarely does tanking lead to a team actually winning the lottery. We all know that the team with the best odds to get the #1 pick rarely ever does.

Besides, your system is beyond flawed. Let's take a team like the Blazers. They didn't win their division, they were really good, they're very young and talented, and loss their #1 pick Oden for the entire season. If they won the #1 pick this year, it'd be absurd. They'd have Roy and Oden and Rose/Beasley. And that's not even a great example. A team could get crushed with injures, not win their division, and get the pick.

[jeremyd236]

The lottery is a great system. Under your proposed system, the big market teams like the Lakers and Knicks would have an even bigger advantage.

Yeah, not to mention the conspiracies that would result. We think the theories are bad now....just imagine if the Lakers or Knicks had a great team, didn't win the division, but won the #1 pick. Everyone would be crying for years.

[Rockmaninoff]

just eliminate the lottery.

then those teams tankig their season to get the top pick would finally get the top pick and wouldn' have to tank any future seasons. it works fine in hockey, baseball and football. why does the NAB have to be different? so they can have a 1/2 hour lottery special and a draft special? The current lottery hasn't really benefitted any team any more than a straight last is first draft would have done. It definitely doesn't prevent teams from tanking.

the problem with the lottery is a team like the bucks will tank 5 years in a row in an attempt to get that top pick who wil make a difference. Just give us that top pick , and we won't have to tank any more.

as much as i don't like Bogut, I can't imagine how bad the bucks would be without him.

Very well said.

The problem is the current system allows the league to manipulate the draft order behind closed doors. That's a problem for the fans, but not for the owners, nor for league management.

That's if you believe in conspiracy theories, of course.

[MajorDad]

the current lottery has never prevented teams from tanking. all it has prevented is tanking teams from getting the first pick. I get tired of the bucks' unofficial quasi tank job that starts every 2 january.

let's be honest, if the NBA went to a straight draft like every other pro sport, how many more teams would tank away their season? 1? 2 ? 25? i doubt highly we would have any more tanking than we had the year oden was available. What you would probably see is 1-3 teams with very bad records trying to get the first pick. And wit h a straight face, can you tell me that exact same hing hasn't happened the last 5 years?

Please don't try to give me the GM spin about how the bucks were not tanking the last three years and they were giving their 110% every game. I'm just not buying it anymore.

the lottery has not stopped teams from tanking. and without a lottery, there will be the exact same number of teams that tank every year.

[dunhill]

A huge risk though especially in one player drafts. Last time there was only one player worth taking in a draft it was Tim Duncan. Look what happened to the Celtics, a decade of bad to mediocre basketball. Nearly everyone in that lottery stunk it up for the first part of their careers, eating up cap space. Only two other guys had decent careers and none of their success came with the team that drafted them.

Nearly every draft over the last decade only generates 3 or 4 bonafide quality players, so tank all they want, the crappy odds to get no1 overall + the high likelihood the player will not meet expectations is a pretty poor bet. So really tanking IMO just stuffs up a team. It's a PR nightmare, it puts more pressure to win next year, and really what does it say to any worthwhile players you have on your team? "Sorry you all suck don't try to win"?

The lottery doesn't stop tanking but teams that tank have to face very real and very significant consequences. eg look at the Yi situation, tanking for the Bucks resulted in drafting the worst possible player for their situation, it started a chain reaction of player/personnel conflicts and led to quite possibly the most putrid display of basketball I've seen in a decade which upset fans, which was a PR nightmare and really has had an adverse affect on getting nationally televised games which affects revenue.

[cavsfan_osiris]

Some teams tank because they just suck and are horribly run organizations. Other teams like Portland and Seattle have a plan. Being stuck in limbo is the worst place to be, not having a plan is even worse. I'm not sure what the Bucks long term plan is yet. I think their next major transaction will make their plan clearer.

[InsideOut]

The problem with the original posters plan is that the problem it causes (good teams picking higher than bad teams) is worse than the problem he's trying to solve (tanking).

A plan I've wrote about before and would like to see the NBA try is adopt a HARD CAP then get rid of the draft completely, Let college in international guys sign wherever they want. I realize the first complaint is the best players will all want to sign with NY and LA. Well with a hard cap that isn't possible because those teams are over the cap so they couldn't sign anyone. I also feel the best teams are the ones with little cap room so they also couldn't afford to sign the best players. This plan would stop tanking and also make the off season more entertaining. All the teams with cap room have a shot at the best players and this will lead to an exciting free for all and hope.

With this plan never going to get a chance I wish the NBA would just do the draft like all the other sports. Nobody complains about their system near as much as the NBA's system. You'd think the NBA would be smart enough to figure that out but I guess not.

[old skool]

There would be chaos some years if the draft order was determined purely by order of finish.

Good teams that are having trouble winning it all would be tempted to shut down to get a sure superstar like Lebron. It would not be just the bottom feeders tanking, but playoff teams as well. A player like Lebron or Jordan or Duncan is worth millions to any franchise. The temptation to tank would increase many times more than it is today.

oLd sKool

[MajorDad]

temptation to tank is there every year.

there is absolutely no evidence that the NBA's lottery draft has achieved any of its objectives to stop teams from tanking.

if you get rid of the draft, will teams tank as bad as they did before the draft? Some of the league's worst overall records have came from teams when we had the lottery, not before hand.

everybody keeps pointing to the lousy season philly had, and maybe one by cleveland as examples as teams tanking before the draft. the 76ers were not actually tanking that year. they just had a really really bad team. And it wasn't like they were trying to position themselves for a great #1 overall pick in that year's draft either.

before the lottery was insituted, very few teams actually tanked. now it seems like 3-5 teams tank every year. it seems like the lottery's sole purpose was to try to sneak Ewing onto the knicks, and to reward the Spurs injury of David robinson by giving them Duncan.

teams are doing worse now than they were before the lottery was instituted. take a look at the bucks before the lottery and after. How many years did the Bucks deliberately tank before the lottery? One - to get lew Alcinder! how mny of the last 15 years have the Bucks deliberately tanked as part of the lottery? at least 5! the bucks tanked to back door into the lottery to get big Dog. They tanked to get Bogut. they've tanked getting ford, Yi and Alexander for their efforts. Tanking as part of the lottery has become a way of life for the Bucks.

the lottery has done nothing to stop teams like the bucks from tanking. bucks fans should realize this by now.

[ReasonablySober]

I think a good argument could be made that eliminating the lotto and going by record would actually decrease the amount of taking the NBA sees.

At this point I agree with Reed. The problem with the current system is it often prevents the teams that legitimately need the franchise-type talent from getting it, and shouldn't that be the goal of the draft?

[L&H_05]

There has to be a reason worth tanking... IMO, there's only been 4 players in the last 20 years that has been worth tanking for...Shaq, Duncan, Yao and 'Bron, and to be honest, I'm not sure I would even put Yao on that list..

The consensus was Shaq, Duncan and 'Bron were all going to be great, franchise carrying players.. Which proven to be true...

Yao had a ton of size and potential, and he's a pretty damn good player..

However, in the last few years I've read and heard about tanking for LaMarcus Aldridge, Tyrus Thomas, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Rose, Beasley, Mayo etc... And IMO, I don't believe any of those guys are worth tanking for... Not to suggest they won't be great, impact players, but I don't believe they are players that will carry a franchise.. (Mayo maybe)

All this talk about Oden and Durant was just funny to me... They compared Oden to Bill Russell.. He retired 40 years ago, and played against inferior talent.. The game has changed, the talent has changed... Would you tank for a prime Mutombo ?? That's what I believe Oden's ceiling is.. And quite honestly, although it would be nice to have, I don't believe I would mortgage my entire franchise for that.. Who knows, maybe he'll be better than that, but I just don't believe he's tank worthy despite what others believed... Same with Durant..

[ReasonablySober]

I think there's one or two players every draft worth tanking for to some degree. If it's LeBron, you try to deal away your best players as soon as you can to try and get bad. With Durant and Oden, you probably do the same.

A guy like Rose or Beasley I think you play out the season and if at the All-Star break you're bad to the point of likely missing out on the playoffs, then dealing Redd and/or Mo Williams makes sense. Maybe even Bogut if Oden is who you want.

[MajorDad]

my personal belief is that with or without a lottery, we would see the same number of bad teams. Some teams are bad because of injuries to key players. Some teams are bad because of bad management or coaching. and some teams are bad because they are deliberately tanking. I highly doubt if the draft was restored to the way it was that we would see any more bad teams than we saw last year. the bottom line is that teams must answer to their fans. they can't be tanking every year and expect their fans to go along with being bad.

By definition, when two bad teams play each other, one of them has to win.

[old skool]

Eliminating the lottery would guarantee an increase in tanking because it would guarantee that the worst team would get a huge reward. That would not be a factor every year, but it would be a factor some years. Would, for example, the Cavs tank one year to find Lebron his Pippen? Would the Lakers have tanked a couple of years ago to get Kobe some help? In those cases the incentive is not only to improve the team but to retain a superstar who is rumored to be unhappy and might leave via free agency.

In my opinion, the lottery serves a competitive purpose and the NBA is better off with it.

The lottery also gives hope to a dozen non-playoff teams. That hope is part of the NBA PR cycle that every team benefits from. It is not a coincidence that season ticket renewal dates come just before the lottery and the draft - taking advantage of the "hope" offered by both events. The NBA bean counters recognize a good thing, and will be hesitant to give it up for nothing.

oLd sKool

[Dags]

I like the idea (that has been posted around the place from time to time) of a lottery based on a 3-year record. You don't get the freak Admiral injury deal where the Spurs picked up Duncan. You don't get people tanking for one year to pick up a high pick (Miami fields NBADL players and gets Beasley), they have to suck for a few years to do that, and who really wants to put their fans through at least 3 years of sucking to get that high pick?

You still do a lottery so no-one is guaranteed a top spot, but don't make it rely on just one year. Granted if you win the draft and get a Duncan, doing better the next year can still result in a high pick due to the previous 2 crappy years, but I'm sure that can be dealt with somehow.