NBA Lottery

[kurtis48239]

detroit has no chance whatsoever of getting a good draft pick. NBA wont let davis, a future all star, to join that black hole of a team.

Big ugly troll right here.......

[Jay10]

fixed

[raleigh]

The NBA needs to tweak the odds a bit, increasing the chance that the worst teams get the top pick.

[Jay10]

I think it works fine. Just some coincidences of who got the #1 pick each year that got the conspiracy theorists going.

Rose to Chicago (Hometown kid, Bulls were pretty much a treadmill team at that point)
Wall to Wizards (Abe Pollin dies earlier in the year, Wife shows up to lottery)
Irving to Cavs (year after LeBron leaves, they get #1 pick with the clippers' pick)

[LameR]

It's fine the way it is. There's a risk with tanking, getting the 4th pick (or 5th/6th if there are worse teams) instead of the one equal with your record. Free agents are more likely to go to fringe playoff teams than teams that are terrible, so it somewhat evens out. Although ultimately it's easier to stay good once you are good (if you have competent management) than get good in the first place.

[R-S-M]

I agree it should be shown live on tv. Why dont they show the actually lottery live on tv? it would get ride of all the doubt..

One might say: they do it to build up the suspense of counting down to see who gets the first pick, however the can easy do that and afterwards show the top 3 teams lottery balls being randomly selected.

[knicksNOTslick]

I would change it to this...

Worst team record at the end of the season gets the 3rd overall pick and is exempted from the lottery.

The rest goes on as is except the lottery will determined the 1st, 2nd and 4th overall picks (as the 3rd pick already goes to the worst team)


That means... bottom feeders will try their hardest not to be the worst team in the league so they won't really tank. Maybe just half-tank.

[LionOfLannister]

The worst team in the NBA should just get demoted to the WNBA, and the top WNBA team moved up in their place.

A team like the Bobcats might never make it back.

[He Filled it Up]

Even odds. It's not fair that the being a mediocre team is far worse than being terrible. How is that a good business model?

[Ditchweed]

I agree it should be shown live on tv. Why dont they show the actually lottery live on tv? it would get ride of all the doubt..

One might say: they do it to build up the suspense of counting down to see who gets the first pick, however the can easy do that and afterwards show the top 3 teams lottery balls being randomly selected.

If you know how the lottery works, you'd realize that showing the lottery on TV would just confuse people, which is probably why they don't show it.

It's not like there is a team name on the ping pong balls, there is a pre-determined reference sheet with 1,000 number combinations, the lowest team having the highest number of 250 assigned to them down to the lowest amount of 5 to the highest team.

There are 14 ping pong balls numbered 1 to 14 and one is drawn only every ten seconds . For the first pick, after four balls are drawn, then they check the reference sheet to see who has that combination. An example lets say 9, 2, 14, 11 are drawn, then whomever has 2,9,11,14 assigned to them would win first place. Then all the balls are put back in the machine and the second place is drawn the same way, then repeat for the third. That's it for the draws. When the first three teams have been determined, the remaining picks are given out based on regular season record with the worst teams getting the highest picks. This assures each team that it can drop no more than three spots from its projected draft position. (In the event that a team is chosen a second time in a second or third round, or the 1,001st combination shows up, they are disregarded and that round of the draws is redone.)

Here is the number of chances/distribution/reference sheet for each team in order (it adds to 1,000):
1.250 combinations, 25.0% chance of receiving the #1 pick
2.199 combinations, 19.9% chance
3.156 combinations, 15.6% chance
4.119 combinations, 11.9% chance
5.88 combinations, 8.8% chance
6.63 combinations, 6.3% chance
7.43 combinations, 4.3% chance
8.28 combinations, 2.8% chance
9.17 combinations, 1.7% chance
10.11 combinations, 1.1% chance
11.8 combinations, 0.8% chance
12.7 combinations, 0.7% chance
13.6 combinations, 0.6% chance
14.5 combinations, 0.5% chance

Also, there representatives from the acounting firm handling the draw and a rep from each team present during the draw.

[Kassinasjon]

Even odds. It's not fair that the being a mediocre team is far worse than being terrible. How is that a good business model?

Because if the terrible teams never get high picks, they will always be terrible. The NBA need all their teams to be relevant. And with your model, tanking will be an issue by fringe playoff teams. So if f. example the Nuggets and Rockets are facing the decision of getting stomped in the first round by OKC or having a 14-1 shot at Anthony Davis, they will tank the last games.

The lottery is working just fine. There's no incentive for the good teams to tank, and the tanking bottom feeders aren't sure to get a top pick

[Nowascki]

I would change it to this...

Worst team record at the end of the season gets the 3rd overall pick and is exempted from the lottery.

The rest goes on as is except the lottery will determined the 1st, 2nd and 4th overall picks (as the 3rd pick already goes to the worst team)


That means... bottom feeders will try their hardest not to be the worst team in the league so they won't really tank. Maybe just half-tank.

Good idea.

[Happyfoosball]

I haven ever liked a draft lottery. Worst team should get the first pick. Penaltys should be put in place for tanking.

[Ditchweed]

In my opinion, it is broken. The team with the worst record in the league has a better chance of getting the 4th overall pick than the 1st overall pick, and have a better shot at getting the #4 pick than any other team. I also don't see why teams that aren't horrendous even have a shot at landing the #1 overall pick; how many times do we need to see truly horrible teams miss out on franchise players?

In a way yes, the worst team does have a better chance of getting a 4th pick rather than the first. At fourth, that would be the lowest they could possibly drop and would be 100% of all their possibilities, for first, their chance is only 25%.

However, they still have by far the best odds over any other team of getting the first pick, which is 25%, and they have 25% for the second and third round as well. Teams that are better in the standings, such as the 11th to 14th teams have less than a 1% chance to get the first to third pick.

(See my post in this thread on how the draft works to see all the odds.)

All things considered, it still is a lottery and luck does come into play. At least they don't get pushed past fourth, which is what could happen if there were more than three rounds of draws.

[Ditchweed]

I haven ever liked a draft lottery. Worst team should get the first pick. Penaltys should be put in place for tanking.

It would be virtually impossible to put into place clear rules/penalties for tanking and then even harder trying to determine if it really is a designed tank or some other factor. How could it be proven? It would have to be something both tangible and proven and be far more than one person or a small group's personal opinion.

Even then, if a team was ever charged with tanking, the lawsuits would be flying and could end up holding up the entire draft process.

Even if an idea is good, if it can't be implemented, it can't be done.

[Heat3]

Like many things in the NBA the draft lottery has some shenanigans around it. This is the only sports league (in the US anyway) where so many things come into question and the draft lottery is no exception.

[Brt19]

It's fine but maybe a tweak would be fine. In this system it's hard to getting back to contender or playoff team status for teams like Houston or Milwaukee. Mediocre teams. So I thought maybe NBA can deal possibilities something like 90% as regular, like in this system. Worst record with best chance, best record with least chance. Remaining 10% as bonus or reward for wins against playoffs teams. Detroit won against Lakers, New Orleans won against Dallas. This may prevent tanking or help better teams a little bit more. I'm aware of that it's something hard to do fairly but I think it is worth to consider at least.

[DuckIII]

The worst team has the best chance of getting the Number 1. Everything else is irrelevant.

I agree with this. There is nothing to fix. It is the best happy medium we are going to see. Or at least equal in quality to any alternative plans I've seen.

[DuckIII]

I agree it should be shown live on tv. Why dont they show the actually lottery live on tv? it would get ride of all the doubt..

One might say: they do it to build up the suspense of counting down to see who gets the first pick, however the can easy do that and afterwards show the top 3 teams lottery balls being randomly selected.

This always comes up. Two things:

(1) Yes, they do it privately to build up the television drama. Its a ratings hit for the NBA, so why change it just because of some paranoid delusional fans?

(2) More importantly, the NBA teams are all represented in the lottery room. If anyone actually thinks that the NBA teams themselves are in on the conspiracy, and therefore willing to sacrifice ungodly amounts of money, success, and franchise value to "fix" Howard to the Magic, Rose to the Bulls, etc., then that person is a crazy person not worthy of consideration.

[DuckIII]

Penaltys should be put in place for tanking.

Good luck proving it.