Blazers vs Thunder game tonight is a disgrace to the league (tanking)

[JasonStern]

It's horrendous but league addressed it IMO the best way they could with the odds changing.

Did they? Spreading the odds out means more teams get rewarded for being bad. Blazers wouldn't put this roster out if losing as many games as possible wasn't beneficial.

[sp6r=underrated]

If the draft gets abolished, we would have the same 5 or 6 teams contending for a title every year. The size of the market and the bank account of the owner would be the only things that matter...

And if we do not have a rookie scale, the first pick would be receiving like 20M/y before his first game in NBA. The player association would not allow it.

This is what everyone says and it isn't true. If you kept the soft cap, UFA wouldn't all sign for LA/NY because they'd be capped out.

As to rookies making good dollars that;s great, it is absurd how underpaid rookies are.

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: The rookies would rather play in great market teams or contenders with depth issues.

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: the rookies would only play for small market teams if they overpay. Drafting players like Bagley would really hurt them even more...

To be clear, I think we need to get rid of the rookie scale and draft.

[C3H6N6O6]

With a soft cap and serious luxury tax on top of that, there is no argument why rookies shouldn't enter as free agents in the NBA.

The only teams winning would be teams with great scouting departments.

Imagine watching the best players steer themselves to the biggest markets and thinking that this is a good idea.

Flattening the draft odds and the play-in did what it could to alleviate tanking. Other than further odds smoothing there's not a lot left to do. And that won't stop teams from still incorrectly thinking that they need to tank for better odds, since inertia has pointed them in that direction for so long. That's what is so difficult to tackle, the perception that you need to tank.

why would that happen? You do realize that they wouldn't be making rookie money, right?
Lakers wouldn't have been able to sign a $20 million rookie this year because they were over the cap.

[Richard4444]

If the draft gets abolished, we would have the same 5 or 6 teams contending for a title every year. The size of the market and the bank account of the owner would be the only things that matter...

And if we do not have a rookie scale, the first pick would be receiving like 20M/y before his first game in NBA. The player association would not allow it.

There's a reason why the NBA implemented the rookie scale in the first place in 1996.

The rookie scale was set up to break the players union. It divides the players which makes them easier to defeat. The NBA has focused on dividing the union by isolating superstars/rookies from the median vet. The purpose of this is to lower the overall basketball related income that goes to the players.

The deal they offer the union is yeah the players are going to get a lot less money but we're going to take that money out of the superstars/rookies pockets, your share of basketball relate income will go up.

It works great to accomplish the owners end: get money.

It had nothing to do with rookies getting overpaid. Rookies are overpaid is a great media talking point because it plays on (i) resentment of athletes' salaries; (ii) resentment of young make more than olds.

I don't think the rookie scale breaks the player's unions. The rookies are not in the union before getting into the NBA. They are no saying in that matter.

As far as I know, the money is divided almost equally among owners and players (like 48/52). Owners do not profit from rookies getting less money. This money goes to the vets.

Rookies as a agroup are not underpaid. There is the "bust risk". You can end up paying a great salary to a player who hardly can earn the minimum salary like a Frank or a Knox.

[JasonStern]

Who here knows more than two players who played for OKC last night?

Blazers fans aren't any better.
"We should keep Ben McLemore! He is averaging 20ppg with a PER of... 3"

[timO]

Terrible season, What did you expect play-in??

I expected a top 3 pick.

Why would you expect something that has at best a 40% chance at happening

Better than have like 40% that u pick at 5-6-7

[JasonStern]

There is a play-in tournament for the 10th seed and smoothened draft odds. What more should the league do?

Starting penalizing teams draft picks for blatant tanking.

if you get a top 4 pick, the next year the highest you can pick is 5.

Been preaching this for years. The NBA is a business. Most teams cannot afford to be bad for several consecutive years. It's a big reason why the Kings were sold and why the 76ers abandoned the process.

[Richard4444]

With a soft cap and serious luxury tax on top of that, there is no argument why rookies shouldn't enter as free agents in the NBA.

The only teams winning would be teams with great scouting departments.

Imagine watching the best players steer themselves to the biggest markets and thinking that this is a good idea.

Flattening the draft odds and the play-in did what it could to alleviate tanking. Other than further odds smoothing there's not a lot left to do. And that won't stop teams from still incorrectly thinking that they need to tank for better odds, since inertia has pointed them in that direction for so long. That's what is so difficult to tackle, the perception that you need to tank.

why would that happen? You do realize that they wouldn't be making rookie money, right?
Lakers wouldn't have been able to sign a $20 million rookie this year because they were over the cap.

If there is no draft and there is no rookie scale. The majority of the teams would preserve cap space to sign the Top rookies. No more big bucks contracts for average vets like Evan Fournier, TIm Hardway Jr, etc.

I doubt the player association would ever cogitate change the rules to favor players that are not in the players association.

[bebopdeluxe]

OKC won a meaningless game on a Muscala 3 last year at the end of the season that cost them ping pong balls. Anyone remember that game? No. But I remember that they picked 6th.

That shot by Muscala cost OKC the pick that the Sixers used to draft Tyrese Maxey.

Muscala will never have to buy a drink in Philly again.

[Los_29]

How does Sam Presti even have a job at this point?

[SF_Warriors]

two teams that have shown they can't do anything but waste draft talent plan to waste more draft talent

Okc had two lotto picks in the past dozen years...portland has not had a lotto pick in 8 years. These were in general competently run teams. What picks exactly did they squander other than cam payne for okc which was the 14th pick?

[BlazersBroncos]

How does Sam Presti even have a job at this point?

What has he done wrong? He got insane value on multiple trades. The one potential error was trading the Sengun pick away.

They have been tanking for 2 years now. Thats totally reasonable. They own a stupid amount of future picks, no bad salary once Kemba is off the books.

They are in a tremendous position moving forward. The guy has done nothing but set a small market team up for future success.

[JRoy]

This is what everyone says and it isn't true. If you kept the soft cap, UFA wouldn't all sign for LA/NY because they'd be capped out.

As to rookies making good dollars that;s great, it is absurd how underpaid rookies are.

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: The rookies would rather play in great market teams or contenders with depth issues.

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: the rookies would only play for small market teams if they overpay. Drafting players like Bagley would really hurt them even more...

To be clear, I think we need to get rid of the rookie scale and draft.

Great.

So LAL and MIA and get rid of the other teams?

[sp6r=underrated]

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: The rookies would rather play in great market teams or contenders with depth issues.

If we keep the rookie scale and abolish the draft: the rookies would only play for small market teams if they overpay. Drafting players like Bagley would really hurt them even more...

To be clear, I think we need to get rid of the rookie scale and draft.

Great.

So LAL and MIA and get rid of the other teams?

If you keep the Luxury Tax/Soft Cap LA getting every rookie isn't a concern.

And briefly on Miami. My Knicks enjoy a recruiting advantage being in NY as do the Nets. The Lakers and Clippers have one in LA. Miami has no intrinsic advantage over other cities. That they're a top destination for free agents rather than Houston or Atlanta as example is due to superior management.

[Los_29]

How does Sam Presti even have a job at this point?

What has he done wrong? He got insane value on multiple trades. The one potential error was trading the Sengun pick away.

They have been tanking for 2 years now. Thats totally reasonable. They own a stupid amount of future picks, no bad salary once Kemba is off the books.

They are in a tremendous position moving forward. The guy has done nothing but set a small market team up for future success.

He got terrible value in the CP3 trade. He got good value in the Paul George trade even though every pick they received will be a mid-late FRP. The FRP's they own are of little to no value and Presti has done an awful job drafting in that range. In fact, other then Ibaka, who has he drafted in that range that turned out to be a decent player?

I don't think they are in a good position at all. They blew their team up three years ago and only have Shai/Giddey to show for it. Now they are likely going to spend at least another two years fielding pathetic teams and praying for lottery luck. That's not how you build a franchise.

It's embarrassing what they are doing. They probably won't even sniff the playoffs until 2025.

[The-Power]

Teams shouldn't be incevitized to intentionally lose games, which is what happens right now.

Instead teams will have incentives to not spend money on decent players in order to be able to offer more money to the top picks (who, by the way, would be grossly overpaid which is therefore something the NBPA would never agree to). So you'll have a bunch of teams racing to the bottom in their roster construction (either from the start or at the trade deadline) due to trying to have as much cap space as is allowed by the league.

The only way to end tanking is through incentivizing winning/punishing losing (most easily done via penalties such as relegation or bonuses such as financial rewards). Your proposal doesn't really do that. It takes away incentives for losing but doesn't punish it, and in turn produces incentives to have cheap rosters (= lower roster quality) by the time the draft comes around.

[sp6r=underrated]

Teams shouldn't be incevitized to intentionally lose games, which is what happens right now.

Instead teams will have incentives to not spend money on decent players in order to be able to offer more money to the top picks (who, by the way, would be grossly overpaid which is therefore something the NBPA would never agree to). So you'll have a bunch of teams racing to the bottom in their roster construction (either from the start or at the trade deadline) due to trying to have as much cap space as is allowed by the league.

Key difference though, bad teams will be incentivized to save money to sign top rookies but they'll also be incentivized to identify undervalued good players that help teams win to improve their roster attractiveness.

That is very different than current system were teams are intentionally losing games with bad players..

I agree promotion/relegation is the ideal system.

[The-Power]

Teams shouldn't be incevitized to intentionally lose games, which is what happens right now.

Instead teams will have incentives to not spend money on decent players in order to be able to offer more money to the top picks (who, by the way, would be grossly overpaid which is therefore something the NBPA would never agree to). So you'll have a bunch of teams racing to the bottom in their roster construction (either from the start or at the trade deadline) due to trying to have as much cap space as is allowed by the league.

Key difference though, bad teams will be incentivized to save money to sign top rookies but they'll also be incentivized to identify undervalued good players that help teams win to improve their roster attractiveness.

That is very different than current system were teams are intentionally losing games with bad players..

I agree promotion/relegation is the ideal system.

That assumes that Rookies care much about the quality of the roster when they arrive, and not (primarily) about who pays the most. I don't believe top Rookies would be that short-term oriented.

I believe the best way to address tanking – if you're not open to relegation, which owners obviously aren't – is to have wins be worth money (e.g. make the payout from the revenue-sharing agreement dependent on the number of wins) in addition to flattening the odds for the draft as much as necessary to limit incentives for losing.

[BlazersBroncos]

How does Sam Presti even have a job at this point?

What has he done wrong? He got insane value on multiple trades. The one potential error was trading the Sengun pick away.

They have been tanking for 2 years now. Thats totally reasonable. They own a stupid amount of future picks, no bad salary once Kemba is off the books.

They are in a tremendous position moving forward. The guy has done nothing but set a small market team up for future success.

He got terrible value in the CP3 trade. He got good value in the Paul George trade even though every pick they received will be a mid-late FRP. The FRP's they own are of little to no value and Presti has done an awful job drafting in that range. In fact, other then Ibaka, who has he drafted in that range that turned out to be a decent player?

I don't think they are in a good position at all. They blew their team up three years ago and only have Shai/Giddey to show for it. Now they are likely going to spend at least another two years fielding pathetic teams and praying for lottery luck. That's not how you build a franchise.

It's embarrassing what they are doing. They probably won't even sniff the playoffs until 2025.

I think your forgetting that CP3 was still on many levels considered an albatross contract prior to his tenure in PHX. That trade was seen as a considerable risk for PHX.

Everyone has differing opinions. I see SGA / Giddey as 2/3rds of a Big 3. If they luck out and get a Top-3 pick and snag Chet/Jabari/Paolo they already have a excellent trio of young talent to build upon, all in 2 years of tanking. Plus a bag of future FRPs.

Not sure that Mann can be consitered a bad pick at 18, even if I wasnt high on him. His shooting has been better than I expected. If he ends up a nice scoring 6th man, that is great value for 18.

Poku was a swing for the fences and he has played very well late in the year. He has miles to go but I still believe in his potential.

I think they are sniffing the play in by next season if they end up picking Top-3.

G - Shai Gilgeous-Alexander / Tre Mann / Theo Maledon
G - Lou Dort / Tre Mann / Aaron Wiggins
F - Josh Giddey / Kenrich Williams / Vit Krejci
F - Jabari Smith JR / Aleksej Pokusevski / Darius Bazely
C - Mark Williams or Walker Kessler / Jeremiah Robinson-Earl / Mike Muscala

I love that squad, think there is wild potential there.

[JRoy]

To be clear, I think we need to get rid of the rookie scale and draft.

Great.

So LAL and MIA and get rid of the other teams?

If you keep the Luxury Tax/Soft Cap LA getting every rookie isn't a concern.

And briefly on Miami. My Knicks enjoy a recruiting advantage being in NY as do the Nets. The Lakers and Clippers have one in LA. Miami has no intrinsic advantage over other cities. That they're a top destination for free agents rather than Houston or Atlanta as example is due to superior management.

LA and MIA certainly enjoy FA advantages.

When was the last time NYK landed a quality FA?

Agreed on management.