NEW IDEA (as far as I know) for eliminating late season tanking... the PROXY-TEAM draft process

[XxIronChainzxX]

What happens if a team trades for the pick of the team that picked them as their proxy? You'd have to bar these teams from being able to trade picks in a specific year, and then what do you do about future picks. Even if I legitimately think this team is the worse team in the league, you'd have to bar me from picking them.

[clyde21]

The best way to eliminate tanking is to implement a bidding system for prospects based on draft picks:

1. Each draft pick gets allotted a numerical value. Pick 1 = 60 points, pick 2 = 59 points...pick 60 = 1 point.

2. Future picks get assigned a fixed value based on team's picking status in current year.

3. Bids are placed for picking order. For instance, this year the Celtics would've had the #1 overall pick (60 points), but other teams would have a chance to leapfrog them based on how many picks they're willing to offer in their bid. If Philly wanted to move into the first overall pick, for example they'd offer up their third (57 points) + a second or a future first, and so on. Philly would lose those picks accordingly if no one outbids them for the first overall pick and they'd take Fultz.

This would take luck out of it (lottery) and it would inject more strategy (GMs bidding) into the drafting system.

Would have need a lot of kinks ironed out but it has some potential, IMO.

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

What happens if a team trades for the pick of the team that picked them as their proxy? You'd have to bar these teams from being able to trade picks in a specific year, and then what do you do about future picks. Even if I legitimately think this team is the worse team in the league, you'd have to bar me from picking them.

Not sure I'm following you, but maybe this answers what you're bringing up (?)...

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

Another really good question from a poster on another board...



ATL drafts in the slot where HOU finished. CLE ends up having nothing to do with it--they only come into play in the case that HOU were in a position to retain their own pick.

On that follow-up question, let me preface first, that the paramount, compelling principle has to remain that when a team selects its proxy team, it is hitching its draft slot in that year to the fortunes of that team (at least, that is, unless they decide to make a trade).

Then, let me preface second, that I'm learning that where this can easily get confusing in communicating is in the use of that term "proxy team."

In this case, it is stated that "HOU selects CLE for their proxy."

This means that, assuming HOU finishes among the bottom 3 teams, then they get to keep their pick, ie instead of handing it over to ATL and the Hawks drafting from the slot congruent with HOU's final record--heck, let's say #20 for the sake of illustration.

HOU instead, then, will draft in the slot congruent with CLE's final record--let's say #25 for the sake of illustration.

That part isn't what made me stop to churn so much as the other end of it--ie, what happens to the team that ended up selecting HOU in the proxy team draft as their proxy?

That team... sake of illustration, let's say TOR... needs to have divested their self-interest in their own final record, regardless of where HOU finishes--whether 4-30 and the pick gets conveyed to ATL, or 1-3 allowing HOU to keep the pick and draft from CLE's (ie, HOU's proxy team's) slot.

Notice that it sets up this way: if HOU finishes 1-3 and consequently ends up drafting from CLE's slot, then, nooooooooo problem...

TOR drafts from HOU's #20 slot.

It's all just logical.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuutt...

In the case that HOU finishes 4-30, then ATL is given that #20 slot to draft from, there's the conundrum that forces a new stipulation.

That is, whither TOR who also has hitched their wagon to HOU's final record?

I'm going to say ATL gets #20. And TOR gets a "squeeze-in" slot right after ATL at #21, with the deciding factor being which of the two actually finished with the worse record. (Iow, reverse that if ATL has a better final record than TOR.)

It all works out because you have 30 teams with rights to 30 draft slots, and the dance only has those slots changing hands--yes, I'm calling it a "squeeze-in" slot, but that's not to imply that it's an additional 31st slot. TOR had a right to draft somewhere in the order to begin with, just like the other 29 teams did up-until the time they traded a draft pick to someone else... they're just moving to a new place in the order.

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[_s_t_u_r_t_]

Okay, I realized all of that became a little too nerdy... okay, a lot too nerdy... and besides, that it needed some real-life scenario breathed into it in order for anyone, including myself, to envision it...

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

Right.

Along those same lines, I was thinking, "do you want to have those GMs' rankings (in helping set the order of the PT draft) made public, or will that cause too much of a stir to know, for instance, that Danny Ainge picked the Hawks as his worst team?"

And yeah, I think I do.

Let's raise that antagonism level.

[Michael Lucky]

Just pass a rule that any team losing more than 60 games has to spend the next year in the G-league. That's how they do it in Europe.

yes and that's the exact reason why you have two or three teams winning it all every year. A system like that cannot exist with a hard cap. The NBA would never allow a system where their bigger brands would ever be in danger of being relegated due to obvious revenue issues.

[IllMagic04]

So how are we determining the order of picking the proxy team? Why shouldn't I still put a bad team together so I can get the first pick in the proxy team selection?

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

Why shouldn't I still put a bad team together so I can get the first pick in the proxy team selection?

No, you can do that, and always should have the power to do that, imo.

What you shouldn't be able to do, and what this eliminates, is to make the ethically-corrupt choice to lose games to directly help your team's draft slot in the upcoming draft.

Put another way, no fan should ever pay money to see a game in which both teams are not fully engaged in the quest to win that game. It goes to the very integrity of the business, as much as refs fixing games does.

This achieves that. Teams are divorced from any incentive to lose the game you paid good money to see.

[Spintown]

It would never work.

GMs would collude with one another to "team tank"

Or they would just trade each other back their own picks so their fate is in their own hands.

I see too many holes in this idea for it to actually work.

[Da ThRONe]

The only way to make tanking a non issue is to reduce the season length, get rid of max contracts and create a hard cap. Anything short of that rewards tanking or kills competitive balance.

[Cavsfansince84]

I prefer each lotto team gets one ball for each spot from best to worst. So basically ranging from 16 balls to 1. No pick protection for being the worst. Let the balls fall where they may. Here you may have some teams tanking out of the 8th spot but much less so than the kind of tanking the bottom teams will do currently.

[Sark]

How about get rid of the draft entirely, and let teams recruit players the way colleges recruit players from high school. This will take away all incentive to tank, and force each individual business to perform at its best to lure new players. You know, the way real businesses work.

[markjay]

I believe something similar has been proposed several times before, e.g.
viewtopic.php?t=1103599

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

It would never work.

GMs would collude with one another to "team tank"

Or they would just trade each other back their own picks so their fate is in their own hands.

I see too many holes in this idea for it to actually work.

1. What does that mean "GMs would collude with one another to "team tank"? I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt that there's some substance to that, but honestly, it needs some explanation before it can be taken seriously.

2. Teams would not be able to trade back their own picks. I realize there's a lot already said in this thread, so it's reasonable to think this was just missed...

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

I prefer each lotto team gets one ball for each spot from best to worst. So basically ranging from 16 balls to 1. No pick protection for being the worst. Let the balls fall where they may. Here you may have some teams tanking out of the 8th spot but much less so than the kind of tanking the bottom teams will do currently.

I don't think we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water here... there is some good reason behind using the draft to keep the game from becoming a stale repetition for fans of all 30 teams, and some hope alive that if your team is down, the system still gives you some asset to get back up.

Folks, really. All we have to do is disengage the draft slot from the team's own final record.

That's it. That resolves the specific problem being targeted, which is that no team has self-interest in losing games.

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

How about get rid of the draft entirely, and let teams recruit players the way colleges recruit players from high school. This will take away all incentive to tank, and force each individual business to perform at its best to lure new players. You know, the way real businesses work.

At the risk of participating in deflecting from the meat of the thread, ie, the virtues of instituting a proxy team draft system...

As asserted in a post above, the premise that undergirds conducting annual drafts is solid and reasonable for a league that does not want to become big market heavy.

HOWEVER, that said, we might not be that far apart.

Why not make draft-and-stash essentially the law of the land (?)... all of it, including our land, not just foreign soil players: You like a player, you can draft and gain his rights, but you don't actually have to sign him until he's ripened and is ready to graduate to pro ball, whether that's the NBA roster or the D-league roster.

Until then, he stays in college, and maybe even graduates. Or maybe he goes overseas to play. And for that matter, you can even draft right out of high school, as they do in baseball.

Only caveat to that... if you draft him but by age 22 you haven't signed him, you lose his rights and he's draft eligible again. If he goes undrafted, then he's like any other UDFA.

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

I believe something similar has been proposed several times before, e.g.
viewtopic.php?t=1103599

Impressive recall, markjay.

I think this is the URL you were trying to post: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1103599

Yes, that sounds somewhat similar in concept, though with some important differences. For instance, my own feeling is that there's too much that can happen over an off-season, and that you have to have a proxy team draft, and not something that is mandated/assigned based on the previous season's records.

Nonetheless... very cool that you dug that up.

[Cavsfansince84]

I prefer each lotto team gets one ball for each spot from best to worst. So basically ranging from 16 balls to 1. No pick protection for being the worst. Let the balls fall where they may. Here you may have some teams tanking out of the 8th spot but much less so than the kind of tanking the bottom teams will do currently.

I don't think we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water here... there is some good reason behind using the draft to keep the game from becoming a stale repetition for fans of all 30 teams, and some hope alive that if your team is down, the system still gives you some asset to get back up.

Folks, really. All we have to do is disengage the draft slot from the team's own final record.

That's it. That resolves the specific problem being targeted, which is that no team has self-interest in losing games.

That depends on what you are identifying the baby as.

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

That depends on what you are identifying the baby as.

Dunno. I feel I made that pretty obvious, no?

I don't think we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water here... there is some good reason behind using the draft to keep the game from becoming a stale repetition for fans of all 30 teams, and some hope alive that if your team is down, the system still gives you some asset to get back up.

Folks, really. All we have to do is disengage the draft slot from the team's own final record.

That's it. That resolves the specific problem being targeted, which is that no team has self-interest in losing games.

The rationale is solid, and is validated to some extent by the fact that every US professional league employs it as a mechanism to help competitive balance occur.

The goal is not to keep teams from tearing down and rebuilding. That's not only probably not achievable, it's also detached from the reality that it's going to happen sometimes whether a team is actually trying to achieve that or not.

The goal is to keep teams from going into games with an incentive to lose. That's achievable. And this achieves that.