Help me explain to my 7 year old Kid why NBA rewards Losing with Draft Picks

[Pointgod]

He tells me this is against the value of rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance. I told him it for the parity of the league but he argued that there is no such thing as parity in the classroom. Those students that gets a E grade should not be receiving extra bonus merits just to pass the semester.

Explain to your son that it’s Socialism.

That would be a really awful description. This is like if a company had 30 products and each product had a product manager. You don't send your best managers to run the best selling products always. Sometimes you send your best up and coming talent to the under preforming products to hopefully turn them around. Why? Because it's a way to add the most value to the overall company. That's capitalism, not socialism.

Well the comment was tongue in cheek not serious. Op’s comparison is a bad one because the NBA teams are more of a cooperative than direct competitors. The draft isn’t an example of capitalism either. Euro league Futbol is probably the purest example of capitalism in sports.

[BK_2020]

Ban teams from having a top 5 pick in back to back years. Run the lottery as you normally would, if a team lands in the top 5 for a second year in a row, move them to 6th and move everyone up.

Discourages The Process but still allows teams to up talent level. A one year tank is not an issue.

It's not exactly fair considering draft quality is not exactly even year after year. Imagine having the 4th pick in the 2017 draft and then being locked out of top 5 for 2018.

[iqureshi]

Think they need to get rid of anti tanking rules, but then bring in a competitive balance committee to penalize teams egregiously tanking. LIke you can't have 30 million in free cap space and be rewarded with a top draft pick, If teams are punished for tanking, they should be out of top 4 automatically. This would benefit owners and players by making sure teams with cap aren't holding back paying players.

[JonFromVA]

Ban teams from having a top 5 pick in back to back years. Run the lottery as you normally would, if a team lands in the top 5 for a second year in a row, move them to 6th and move everyone up.

Discourages The Process but still allows teams to up talent level. A one year tank is not an issue.

All forms of tanking compromise the competitive balance of the league; however tanking is not the same thing as rebuilding, and winning the lottery doesn't guarantee anything.

[birdlives_ma]

Communism

I know you're joking, but like.... kinda true. It's always struck me as funny that America wants socialism for it's sports and capitalism for it's society, while Europe is generally very socialist in their governments and love their super-capitalist club system for sports. Someone smarter than me could probably get a grant for some kind of study lol

[ForeverTFC]

Ban teams from having a top 5 pick in back to back years. Run the lottery as you normally would, if a team lands in the top 5 for a second year in a row, move them to 6th and move everyone up.

Discourages The Process but still allows teams to up talent level. A one year tank is not an issue.

It's not exactly fair considering draft quality is not exactly even year after year. Imagine having the 4th pick in the 2017 draft and then being locked out of top 5 for 2018.

Sure. Though there will never be a "fair" solution. The lottery itself is a game of luck. This would dissuade teams from multi-year tanking and will punish teams that continue to be awful due to bad management.

[Pointgod]

Ban teams from having a top 5 pick in back to back years. Run the lottery as you normally would, if a team lands in the top 5 for a second year in a row, move them to 6th and move everyone up.

Discourages The Process but still allows teams to up talent level. A one year tank is not an issue.

There are 14 lottery teams so maybe split the top 10 picks into 3 blocks of 3,3 and 4. If you were in top 3 the previous year you get bumped to the second block and the top of the next block gets bumped up and so forth. Although the revamped lottery odds should account for this.

[Harry Garris]

Because the NBA understand something the rest of America doesn't: helping people succeed is good for the long-term success of any human endeavor. If the NBA ran their league like many in these country think, they'd give #1 picks to the Champions and tell the last place team to start pulling on those bootstraps.

I mean... Well over half of Americans do understand that. It's a deeply divided country with people on both sides of the aisle. Let's not act like just because you can find a few Americans who don't believe in charity that the entire nation is guilty of that mindset.

[JonFromVA]

Think they need to get rid of anti tanking rules, but then bring in a competitive balance committee to penalize teams egregiously tanking. LIke you can't have 30 million in free cap space and be rewarded with a top draft pick, If teams are punished for tanking, they should be out of top 4 automatically. This would benefit owners and players by making sure teams with cap aren't holding back paying players.

You're on to something here. If you try to stop exploiters by adding more rules, you eventually end up with something as complex as our tax law and legal system. Direct intervention is a lot easier to manage. Unfortunately, it pisses pretty much everyone off.

In general, the better tactic is to incentivize a more productive/competitive manner of team building. For instance, not many GM's would bother investing millions and years in to 19 year olds if they could sign 26 year olds ready to help them win.

[dhsilv2]

Explain to your son that it’s Socialism.

That would be a really awful description. This is like if a company had 30 products and each product had a product manager. You don't send your best managers to run the best selling products always. Sometimes you send your best up and coming talent to the under preforming products to hopefully turn them around. Why? Because it's a way to add the most value to the overall company. That's capitalism, not socialism.

Well the comment was tongue in cheek not serious. Op’s comparison is a bad one because the NBA teams are more of a cooperative than direct competitors. The draft isn’t an example of capitalism either. Euro league Futbol is probably the purest example of capitalism in sports.

The nba is a set of franchises like McDonalds. Only with profit sharing. It's effectively one company where the owners of each team are effectively investors into the overall league product. But the nba as a whole is one league. This is like when a big corp brings in kids out of college and they spread them around the company based on their talents to where they'd fit and can be developed.

[Pointgod]

That would be a really awful description. This is like if a company had 30 products and each product had a product manager. You don't send your best managers to run the best selling products always. Sometimes you send your best up and coming talent to the under preforming products to hopefully turn them around. Why? Because it's a way to add the most value to the overall company. That's capitalism, not socialism.

Well the comment was tongue in cheek not serious. Op’s comparison is a bad one because the NBA teams are more of a cooperative than direct competitors. The draft isn’t an example of capitalism either. Euro league Futbol is probably the purest example of capitalism in sports.

The nba is a set of franchises like McDonalds. Only with profit sharing. It's effectively one company where the owners of each team are effectively investors into the overall league product. But the nba as a whole is one league. This is like when a big corp brings in kids out of college and they spread them around the company based on their talents to where they'd fit and can be developed.

I think the issue I take with the example is that a better comparison would be sending Lebron or Harden to a lottery team. There’s literally no guarantee that a team will even draft a franchise player with their lottery pick and the whole idea of a draft lottery is left up to chance anyway. I get what you’re saying though, I think the op’s example is a poor one.

[Def Leppard]

Plot twist OP doesn't have a kid

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[dhsilv2]

Well the comment was tongue in cheek not serious. Op’s comparison is a bad one because the NBA teams are more of a cooperative than direct competitors. The draft isn’t an example of capitalism either. Euro league Futbol is probably the purest example of capitalism in sports.

The nba is a set of franchises like McDonalds. Only with profit sharing. It's effectively one company where the owners of each team are effectively investors into the overall league product. But the nba as a whole is one league. This is like when a big corp brings in kids out of college and they spread them around the company based on their talents to where they'd fit and can be developed.

I think the issue I take with the example is that a better comparison would be sending Lebron or Harden to a lottery team. There’s literally no guarantee that a team will even draft a franchise player with their lottery pick and the whole idea of a draft lottery is left up to chance anyway. I get what you’re saying though, I think the op’s example is a poor one.

Well, my example about recent college grads is actually exactly what a lot of major corps do. They pay the top students they can find above market wages with the hope that in 2 years of rotating them around for development (nba teams do a different method of development clearly) they stay with the company and can be fast tracked to leadership roles (become allstars). It's more or less a draft for the top performers in some companies and in some the recent grads get more control.

[BostonCouchGM]

tell him the awful teams represent farm systems for big markets. The big markets can't draft them but they can sign them once they're fully developed. So the NBA wants this system in place for that and also to give the fan bases of these farm system teams false hope.

[Buckeye-NBAFan]

Communism

I know you're joking, but like.... kinda true. It's always struck me as funny that America wants socialism for it's sports and capitalism for it's society, while Europe is generally very socialist in their governments and love their super-capitalist club system for sports. Someone smarter than me could probably get a grant for some kind of study lol

The NBA is more capitalist than European leagues.

NBA owners collude to drive out competition and protect their own interests.

European leagues have relegation. Not self respecting industrialist would allow their investment's value to be destroyed so arbitrarily in this way.

[LewisnotMiller]

Hm. So, your seven year old kid understood the definition, and use, of the word "parity". But, followed that by making a flawed analogous argument, attempting to compare school grading systems, to the NBA draft system. Interesting...

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that your kid is the one getting those "E" grades, aren't they? Should probably consider rewarding those low grades, with drafting to a better school.

He might already be on the trade block. Hard to tell from the OP, but obvious flaws in the kids game at this point.

[Dr Aki]

Communism

I know you're joking, but like.... kinda true. It's always struck me as funny that America wants socialism for it's sports and capitalism for it's society, while Europe is generally very socialist in their governments and love their super-capitalist club system for sports. Someone smarter than me could probably get a grant for some kind of study lol

The NBA is more capitalist than European leagues.

NBA owners collude to drive out competition and protect their own interests.

European leagues have relegation. Not self respecting industrialist would allow their investment's value to be destroyed so arbitrarily in this way.

As you say this, the European Super League is causing a huge **** storm over the last 1.5 days

[Buckeye-NBAFan]

I know you're joking, but like.... kinda true. It's always struck me as funny that America wants socialism for it's sports and capitalism for it's society, while Europe is generally very socialist in their governments and love their super-capitalist club system for sports. Someone smarter than me could probably get a grant for some kind of study lol

The NBA is more capitalist than European leagues.

NBA owners collude to drive out competition and protect their own interests.

European leagues have relegation. Not self respecting industrialist would allow their investment's value to be destroyed so arbitrarily in this way.

As you say this, the European Super League is causing a huge **** storm over the last 1.5 days

Exactly. There's less capitalism in the European soccer leagues, because there are a million top level soccer teams thanks to every country having their own league, so money is shared between more clubs. The Premier league has 20 top level teams. California has only 14 pro teams across all 4 major sports combined. But the UK and California have the same GDP.

The top Euro club owners are embracing capitalism by trying to create a system without relegation, and which embraces TV money by creating more marquee matchups, by ditching their less well off competitors. The US's biggest sport, NFL, has 32 teams. The biggest soccer clubs would love nothing more than to create a main division of 32 unrelegateable clubs.

This is the same issue in Euro basketball, too many leagues. Basketball has done more to create a centralized league, which is what the soccer guys are trying to model themselves after, but it still has the local leagues too. I imagine if the Euroleague went full time, it would generate more money for the clubs in it, rather than splitting time with local leagues.

[crossroads]

He tells me this is against the value of rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance. I told him it for the parity of the league but he argued that there is no such thing as parity in the classroom. Those students that gets a E grade should not be receiving extra bonus merits just to pass the semester.

Why does a child think that they will be punished for a bad performance? If a child is performing poorly in school (even while trying their best) you don't punish them, you find ways to help them better learn the subject matter.

That's what the draft is, at its base. It's finding ways to help out teams that are struggling rather than letting them fall off and be left behind because of previous struggles

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[Calvin Klein]

If you need our help for this kind of question what are you going to do when he actually asks something important?