Let's fix the Tanking issue

[MAGICian619]

I'm sure we have another thread about this, but could not find one going back a few months. This HAS to be fixed once and for all. It is literally killing interest in the NBA for so many. My solution:

- Give all 14 non-playoff teams EQUAL odds
- Draw all 1-14 draft slots. (Not just 1-3)

You literally have the exact same chance to draft anywhere 1-14 if you have the worst record or best record of the non-playoff teams. Literally gives ZERO incentive to tank for non playoff teams. The only slight issue you could bring up is #7-#8 playoff seeds tanking to be a non-playoff teams but then you just incentivize playoff teams with massive playoff payouts.

Is this not the perfect fix?

[tiderulz]

so you could be just a very bad team for years with no real hope? especially small market teams that wont be able to get any high profile signings.

Interesting is dying because there are a few super teams and then everyone else.

[deggett]

You still need to help bad teams, to get better through the draft.

Here is my idea

Teams that don't win 25 games will be out of top 3 (not participate in lottery). If multiple teams don't win 25 games, the worst team will be lower in draft order.

[MAGICian619]

so you could be just a very bad team for years with no real hope? especially small market teams that wont be able to get any high profile signings.

Interesting is dying because there are a few super teams and then everyone else.

You have hope. You are still getting a lottery pick. Also, there are other ways to get better than just the draft. You are just not being handed the best pick because you are the worst. You could still win the top pick, just not allowing the idea that every loss makes your draft slot better. Tanking will never be fixed until you take the incentive for losing away completely. Changing the odds (other than making them equal) will never be the solution.

[Cammo101]

There is no fix to tanking that won't unilaterally bury the bad teams unless they get real lucky. One great player is just too important to winning in a way that no other sport has to deal with.

[MAGICian619]

There is no fix to tanking that won't unilaterally bury the bad teams unless they get real lucky. One great player is just too important to winning in a way that no other sport has to deal with.

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

[Cammo101]

There is no fix to tanking that won't unilaterally bury the bad teams unless they get real lucky. One great player is just too important to winning in a way that no other sport has to deal with.

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

But, to fix tanking you are really hurting the bad teams at the time you do this. A small market team with little talent getting back to back 14 picks can set a franchise back for a decade or more. Why change the entire league to fix a small problem? The juice isn't worth the squeeze here.

[JF5]

Yeah, I'm afraid that bad teams would continually be horrid for years if they didn't resort to tanking. Tanking is not good for the product but at the same time it gives a bad team direction/option on what they need to do for the future. Plus, it keeps the fans interested to some degree on lottery odds. Like you see it with our fans who come on here every game/day (including myself) watching a game in hopes they'd lose. You eliminate that this place would be a ghost town and the games would be even more meaningless with probably even less people caring.

Adam Silver thinks out of the box. But some of his ideas/points to me don't really connect well. Though that all-star game format worked out pretty well.

[JF5]

There is no fix to tanking that won't unilaterally bury the bad teams unless they get real lucky. One great player is just too important to winning in a way that no other sport has to deal with.

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

If a bad team has little to no talent... Tell us how it would benefit them to land a 10-14 pick rather than 1-5 where most star player are historically selected?

[MAGICian619]

There is no fix to tanking that won't unilaterally bury the bad teams unless they get real lucky. One great player is just too important to winning in a way that no other sport has to deal with.

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

If a bad team has little to no talent... Tell us how it would benefit them to land a 10-14 pick rather than 1-5 where most star player are historically selected?

I didn't say this change would benefit every team. This solves tanking though. Also lets not forget this years likely ROY was taken with the #13 pick.

[Skin]

I say give the Championship team the #1 pick and go in order until the worst team in the NBA gets the last pick.

The NBA is all about creating Superpowers anyways. This is a great solution for everyone. Teams will be forced to respect their cap space. Dumb contracts will become less and less. 2nd place doesn't have to feel so bad knowing you'll get the 2nd pick in the draft.

[JF5]

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

If a bad team has little to no talent... Tell us how it would benefit them to land a 10-14 pick rather than 1-5 where most star player are historically selected?

I didn't say this change would benefit every team. This solves tanking though. Also lets not forget this years likely ROY was taken with the #13 pick.

This solves tanking but this doesn't help teams that have no talent, bad, and need better players to turn around their franchises.

I agree that you don't necessarily have to tank to gain a star player and build a winning team. But the likelihood to gain star players declines the further in the draft you go. The premise of all drafts in major sports is to turnaround bad teams. This has the possibility of putting inferior teams in a longer bind.

[FFBlitzace]

I've never thought there was such a thing as a tanking issue. There will always be bad teams, whether it's on purpose or not. The distribution of records across the league hasn't significantly changed. It's not like there's suddenly 14 teams every year that only have 20 wins. That would necessitate a whole bunch of teams sniffing 60 wins. You're still getting a similar amount of teams in each win range as you always have. And the worst team doesn't always get even a top 3 pick, which is the purpose of the current lottery. So I just don't think there's an issue. I wouldn't have voted, personally, to even implement the changes that are coming after this year.

[MAGICian619]

I've never thought there was such a thing as a tanking issue. There will always be bad teams, whether it's on purpose or not. The distribution of records across the league hasn't significantly changed. It's not like there's suddenly 14 teams every year that only have 20 wins. That would necessitate a whole bunch of teams sniffing 60 wins. You're still getting a similar amount of teams in each win range as you always have. And the worst team doesn't always get even a top 3 pick, which is the purpose of the current lottery. So I just don't think there's an issue. I wouldn't have voted, personally, to even implement the changes that are coming after this year.

Not a tanking issue? People have been laughing at the NBA for years because of this. By midseason, you have half the NBA teams purposely putting an inferior team on the court thus diminishing the overall product. That's an issue. Half the fan bases are hoping for their teams to lose to get better. That's an issue.

[FFBlitzace]

I think it's an overstatement to say that the NBA has become some sort of laughingstock over perceived tanking. The NBA ain't exactly hurting right now. I think that's one of those things people say but doesn't actually have any reflection in reality. And why shouldn't a bad team pull the plug on their supposed "better" veteran players and play young guys? Should a team like Sacramento keep their young guys buried and continue to lose with Zach Randolph and Vince Carter every night? Should WE be playing Speights and Afflalo big minutes because they're supposedly better than Iwundu or Birch? No, of course not. It's strictly better for our future, regardless of draft rules, to look towards development in a losing season. You could change the draft rules almost whichever way you wanted, and it would still benefit the Kings to play Fox, Skal, Hield, WCS, etc. The product only gets diminished if you're deliberately creating more losing than you would normally have compared to a different system. But there are only so many collective losses that teams can have in a season. There's a fixed amount of total wins and losses every year, and like I said previously, we still wind up with the same kind of record distributions that we've always seen. The overall product hasn't gotten worse, and the NBA's popularity is even trending upward.

[Xatticus]

Which is why you do not correlate draft order and wins/losses. Take that away completely. Put 14 balls in a lottery ball machine and draw 1-14. Bad teams do not get "burried' here and there is no incentive to lose.

If a bad team has little to no talent... Tell us how it would benefit them to land a 10-14 pick rather than 1-5 where most star player are historically selected?

I didn't say this change would benefit every team. This solves tanking though. Also lets not forget this years likely ROY was taken with the #13 pick.

Except that your solution doesn't at all solve the issue of tanking. It simply shifts the rewards for tanking towards mid-table teams. Anyone that wouldn't have a realistic belief that they could win the NBA title would have to consider the benefits of tanking and teams just outside would be doing everything possible not to get into the playoffs.

Your solution creates more problems than it solves.

[ralphie9898]

I'm sure we have another thread about this, but could not find one going back a few months. This HAS to be fixed once and for all. It is literally killing interest in the NBA for so many. My solution:

- Give all 14 non-playoff teams EQUAL odds
- Draw all 1-14 draft slots. (Not just 1-3)

You literally have the exact same chance to draft anywhere 1-14 if you have the worst record or best record of the non-playoff teams. Literally gives ZERO incentive to tank for non playoff teams. The only slight issue you could bring up is #7-#8 playoff seeds tanking to be a non-playoff teams but then you just incentivize playoff teams with massive playoff payouts.

Is this not the perfect fix?

I don't think "tanking" is an issue. First of I don't think players or coaches tank at all. There is too much money on the line to tank for both for both. Not playing or coaching well costs them money. If anyone tanks I guess you could say it i sthe GMs. But even for them money is on the line. Ask Hennigan if he willingly did bad. Instead I think it's just the writing on the wall. Some teams are going to be bad. Not everyone can win. That is simply a fact. Some GMs simply take advantage of this and have to rebuild but it is a competition so some rebuilds take longer. This is the age of player movement and they have the power to go where they want as long as the money they want is there of course. The top players want to win and aren't necessarily going to the bad teams especially if a chance to join a good team is there like Durant signing with Golden State which benefited from the huge spike in the cap, But even the rest of the big names want to go to winners. Some times it will be with bad teams but even then it those teams are usually up and coming teams with a lot of promise like Philly. You have to build your team some way and through the draft is just as good as any other way.

Some times you can build a team with one pick like Lebron, but for the most part(and even in Lebron's case) you need other good players to win a title. Talent like Golden State and Houston have plenty of don't grow on trees. It isn't easy. There is only so much to go around some teams are just going to end up being at the bottom and some will be there for a while. We have seen it happen and I remember a time when Golden State was pretty bad for a while. It is just the way it goes. And the Lottery is preventive measure for that. The top pick isn't guaranteed for the worst team or any of the 14 who don't make the playoffs. The top three are up for grabs with a weighted lottery. I don't have a problem with the way it is. I guess maybe going a little higher and making the top four or five picks up for grabs. They already moved the chances closer for the top 7 or 8 recently to where even the top three don't have as much of a lead over the fourth to 7th or 8th spots. I don't think that making every 14 spots have equal chances solves anything. Instead I think you could just see "tanking" happen for teams that are destined to lose in the first round of the playoffs. So I don't think that works nor do I see much of a problem with the way it is.

[ralphie9898]

so you could be just a very bad team for years with no real hope? especially small market teams that wont be able to get any high profile signings.

Interesting is dying because there are a few super teams and then everyone else.

You have hope. You are still getting a lottery pick. Also, there are other ways to get better than just the draft. You are just not being handed the best pick because you are the worst. You could still win the top pick, just not allowing the idea that every loss makes your draft slot better. Tanking will never be fixed until you take the incentive for losing away completely. Changing the odds (other than making them equal) will never be the solution.

If there was that much hope then I would buy more lottery tickets. Now I am over-exaggerating that but still it doesn't help bad teams that are simply bad because they have to be. Someone has to be at the bottom. What move were they supposed to make to prevent that? You can't say simply that hey should sign this player or that as those players have a voice in the matter and may not want to go there and there is only so much better talent out there. Rookies don't tend to influence wins and losses very much and it may take them at least a couple years to to do that. Not even Lebron got Cleveland into the playoffs his rookie year. Your scenario could give them not only Lebron but another very high pick to join him and maybe he might not have left Cleveland for better pastures in Miami. Sorry but I don't think this fixes anything and we very well could see the same teams being bad until they can finally get the right combination(but with rookie deals at four years you could see that player leave in four years as that team waits for a pick to get high enough for them to add to that guy.) guys could just go the Greg Monroe route and sign a one year deal to hit free agency sooner and get way from this team that doesn't have much hope to get better.

[pepe1991]

I belive that awarding losing is wrong way to go.
If you give every team that missed playoffs chance to win lottery equally, over times teams will be forced to actually step up in every other aspect of a game and their goal will be go to playoffs every year.
That would stop buyouts to boost tanking,
We saw in past that tanking works, sometimes, but there are LOT of teams that are in lottery forver, waiting for their Anthony Davis, and even when they land superstar, they still do nothing with that player ( Garnett and T wolves best example, Kevin Love and T woles second example... ).

Let's be 100% honest, teams that win 10 games in 82 season are not that bad because they have nobody, they are bad on purpose because they wanted ,from start of a season, win top 4 pick no matter what.
76ers, last team that went 10-72, payed freaking $26M in dead salary because they refused to sign anybody that could help him win ( 2015-16 season ) . They payed and bought out McGee and Gerald Green $20M just to trick nba rules for hitting salary floor.

Second problem are owners, tied with NBA , as private league. NBA really doesn't like owners like Cuban who talk a lot, and we saw in Sterling's case, owners are not really owners, just people who have rights to keep a team and invest money to get collect earnings.
Most of owners don't really try to compete for championship, as long as teams are profitable, they run them as company. Invest enough to get money, don't overextend yourself into risky investments . Bulls are super profitable and their owner never really broke a bank if he didn't know 100% that he has title window.

Third. If you are Luka Doncic or Ayton, is perfect place to be team like Suns where everything is mess, or Kings where team is a joke, and how much would you benefit if you actually end up on Pistons, Clippers, Pelicans or Heat. Borderline playoff teams.
We have soooo many busts who are actually busts because they landed on shi**y teams.

Spoiler:

Wink Wink Mario Hezonja and treatment during second season.

4th. There is no proof that giving top college ,Euro prospects to worst teams will help them rebuild. They will get bit better but single player, in most cases won't pull them over a hump.
nba lottery 2010, top 5 picks : Wizards, 76ers, Nets,Minny , Kings
2011 top 5 picks: Cavs, Minny, Jazz, Cavs, Raptors
2012 top 5 picks : Pelicans, Hornets, Wizards, Cavs, Kings
2013 top 5 picks : Cavs, Magic,Wizards, Hornets, Suns
2014 top 5 picks : Cavs, Bucks,76ers, Magic, Jazz
2015 top 5 picks : Minny, Lakers, Philly,Knicks, Magic
2016 top 5 picks: 76ers, Lakers, Celtics(Nets), Suns, Minny


So let's recap this. Magic, 76ers, Nets, Kings, Pelicans,Hornets, Lakers still suck despite landing one or more top 5 picks.
Nobody from this list is contender but Cavs ( despite drafting Irving and Wiggins, non of them are on team ).
Minessota turned around when they got Butler, better coach and still made huge mistake with Wiggins and his contract.

Some teams did get top pick and turned around, but as we can see from this list, most teams ,despite getting top picks, still continue to suck .

Conclusion. For owners, easiest, cheapest way to rebuild is via draft. However, teams that rely on tanking as ONLY way to rebuild, tend to suck for years and never go anywhere because if most of top 10 draft picks are not superstar players, and even if they are, it doesn't mean that players fit well with each other.

[shadrock]

Leaguewide parity should be the goal. These fking superteams kill hope and leave teams with no option but to either accept mediocrity (Detroit etc) or hope they do a Philly and hit a few honeruns in the draft. Even a 5-8 seed is considered a bad spot to be in now because the gap to the top is so great. Stop this rediculous super best friends cuddle puddle circle jerk bull$hit and the rest will take care of its self.