Draft lottery night thread

[Walt Cronkite]

Don't forget Ewing to the Knicks!

[yosemiteben]

Again, why is the NBA rigging the lottery in favor of small market San Antonio again?

Beyond the market size, and even the Spurs specifically, the lottery continually ends up resulting in certain things happening for decades. And these things are pretty much always leans towards league inventive or are compensating teams that have lost superstar players.

LeBron being drafted by his hometown team. And when he leaves, they get #1 overall 3 times.

AD being drafted by the Pelicans after they lost CP3. And when AD left, they get #1 again.

Rose being drafted by his hometown team of Chicago.

Mavs losing Luka and getting Flagg.

76ers losing Embiid and moving way up.

And the Spurs are just league darlings. They've not been in the lottery much, but when they are, it pretty much always works out for them. They're now in the drivers seat, probably, if they wanted to trade for Giannis. Giannis + Wemby is great for the league.

So the theory is the NBA just arbitrarily likes a small market team? In order to buy into the theory of the lottery being rigged, I'd need to see some sort of explanation as to why they are rigging it in favor of one of their smallest market teams.

[Rich4114]

Again, why is the NBA rigging the lottery in favor of small market San Antonio again?

Beyond the market size, and even the Spurs specifically, the lottery continually ends up resulting in certain things happening for decades. And these things are pretty much always leans towards league inventive or are compensating teams that have lost superstar players.

LeBron being drafted by his hometown team. And when he leaves, they get #1 overall 3 times.

AD being drafted by the Pelicans after they lost CP3. And when AD left, they get #1 again.

Rose being drafted by his hometown team of Chicago.

Mavs losing Luka and getting Flagg.

76ers losing Embiid and moving way up.

And the Spurs are just league darlings. They've not been in the lottery much, but when they are, it pretty much always works out for them. They're now in the drivers seat, probably, if they wanted to trade for Giannis. Giannis + Wemby is great for the league.

So the theory is the NBA just arbitrarily likes a small market team? In order to buy into the theory of the lottery being rigged, I'd need to see some sort of explanation as to why they are rigging it in favor of one of their smallest market teams.

Rigged or not, is the explanation for San Antonio moving up to draft a superstar in like 50% of the lotteries they've been in just really lucky or what?

[fatlever]

i dont think the lotto is rigged.... anymore... most def was rigged at times in past... 1984. league has too much to lose now if caught. i dont buy it.

but... the current system is broken. needs to be addressed, again.

do all 14 non-playoff teams need to be in lotto? why not worst 6? 6 teams in lotto, equal odds at 1st, then it goes in reverse order. why do we need to do 4 picks in lotto. just do 1st.
dont incentivize 8-10 seed teams to lose to get in lotto. not perfect, as teams 4-8 will be fighting to get to bottom 6, but better than playoff teams with 3 hof players getting 1st.
dont let teams pick in top 3 for 2-3 years after winning 1st.
i mean, so many possible ideas to make it better. current system is terrible for the league, especially for legit bad teams in less attractive markets.

[fatlever]

but **** spurs, cavs, sixers have had amazing lottery luck in history.

[MPM]

do all 14 non-playoff teams need to be in lotto? why not worst 6? 6 teams in lotto, equal odds at 1st, then it goes in reverse order. why do we need to do 4 picks in lotto. just do 1st.

Simple. Like it.

[fatlever]

And I'm certainly not buying that the league promised Dallas the first pick overall if they traded Luka to LA. I mean in order for that to work Dallas had to miss the playoffs. They almost made the playoffs and probably would have had Anthony Davis not been hurt immediately after the trade and had Kyrie not torn his ACL. So that theory doesn't make any sense to me. Are we to believe that Davis and Kyrie were in on it and faked their injuries in order to miss the playoffs? And that everyone else on the Dallas roster wasn't trying to win? I mean that theory only makes sense if Dallas was solidly a non-playoff team when the trade happened.

[Rich4114]

i dont think the lotto is rigged.... anymore... most def was rigged at times in past... 1984. league has too much to lose now if caught. i dont buy it.

but... the current system is broken. needs to be addressed, again.

do all 14 non-playoff teams need to be in lotto? why not worst 6? 6 teams in lotto, equal odds at 1st, then it goes in reverse order. why do we need to do 4 picks in lotto. just do 1st.
dont incentivize 8-10 seed teams to lose to get in lotto. not perfect, as teams 4-8 will be fighting to get to bottom 6, but better than playoff teams with 3 hof players getting 1st.
dont let teams pick in top 3 for 2-3 years after winning 1st.
i mean, so many possible ideas to make it better. current system is terrible for the league, especially for legit bad teams in less attractive markets.

A simple solution I think most people would get behind. I would imagine most teams would support this too. I wonder how the teams feel about the current format or a lottery at all.

[KembaWalker]

And I'm certainly not buying that the league promised Dallas the first pick overall if they traded Luka to LA. I mean in order for that to work Dallas had to miss the playoffs. They almost made the playoffs and probably would have had Anthony Davis not been hurt immediately after the trade and had Kyrie not torn his ACL. So that theory doesn't make any sense to me. Are we to believe that Davis and Kyrie were in on it and faked their injuries in order to miss the playoffs? And that everyone else on the Dallas roster wasn't trying to win? I mean that theory only makes sense if Dallas was solidly a non-playoff team when the trade happened.

yeah I don't think anyone thinks its that straight forward

more like, help out LA and we'll help you out when the time comes, as soon as we can because we know you're gonna catch hell for it

and the time happened to come pretty quick thanks to how the season played out

[MPM]

i dont think the lotto is rigged.... anymore... most def was rigged at times in past... 1984. league has too much to lose now if caught. i dont buy it.

but... the current system is broken. needs to be addressed, again.

do all 14 non-playoff teams need to be in lotto? why not worst 6? 6 teams in lotto, equal odds at 1st, then it goes in reverse order. why do we need to do 4 picks in lotto. just do 1st.
dont incentivize 8-10 seed teams to lose to get in lotto. not perfect, as teams 4-8 will be fighting to get to bottom 6, but better than playoff teams with 3 hof players getting 1st.
dont let teams pick in top 3 for 2-3 years after winning 1st.
i mean, so many possible ideas to make it better. current system is terrible for the league, especially for legit bad teams in less attractive markets.

A simple solution I think most people would get behind. I would imagine most teams would support this too. I wonder how the teams feel about the current format or a lottery at all.

In combo with a top-6 only even-odds lottery (great idea), I've suggested the enforcement of an anti-tanking policy with draft penalties rather than just fines - meaning you drop teams out of the lotto found repeatedly guilty of sitting healthy players, limiting minutes for starters, not bringing back injured players who are healthy, etc.

[fatlever]

Yeah that league really does need to step in and do something about the blatant tanking that we have seen recently, when it's included. Sitting healthy players, shutting guys down two months before the end of the season with minor injuries, taking forever to bring guys back from injuries, sitting starters in the 4th quarter. At the end of the day this is still An entertainment business. It's bad for the product when you have 5 to 10 teams that are pretty much unwatchable even for the most hardcore fans for the last two months of the season.

[KembaWalker]

Yeah that league really does need to step in and do something about the blatant tanking that we have seen recently, when it's included. Sitting healthy players, shutting guys down two months before the end of the season with minor injuries, taking forever to bring guys back from injuries, sitting starters in the 4th quarter. At the end of the day this is still An entertainment business. It's bad for the product when you have 5 to 10 teams that are pretty much unwatchable even for the most hardcore fans for the last two months of the season.

flattening the lotto odds wouldnt be so bad, maybe even preferable, if it came in turn with tools for teams like Charlotte to acquire talent outside the draft. instead they've free agency dry up to absolute scraps and done nothing to address the ridiculous trade market. maybe we're just supposed to just be waiting for this supposed second apron fall out to trickle down to us over the years somehow

[fatlever]

per lowe

The league voted 29 to 1 for the current setup. The long team that dissented was Oklahoma City Thunder who correctly said that the lottery is the only way for small market teams to get superstars and now you're making it more difficult.

[KembaWalker]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxqj9BVl0yR7CyVXl-3yhgYq3AiQQ2PXkR[/youtube]

The league voted 29 to 1 for the current setup. The long team that dissented was Oklahoma City Thunder who correctly said that the lottery is the only way for small market teams to get superstars and now you're making it more difficult.

not to make it political again but it echoes the quote about how americans will always vote against their own actual interests because they all view themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. kind of like how our owners say a bunch of dumb **** about how this team is gonna be a premier NBA franchise instead of talking about how maybe if everything goes well they could win 28 games next year

[Braggins]

I don't know how feasible it would be make something like this work, but I like the idea of having a lottery system where each team in the lottery has a limited range of picks they are in play for and can't move back or forward more than a few spots.

So for example, if you made the maximum a team could move two spots, then the team with the worst record would be in play for picks 1-3. The team with the 2nd worst record would be in play from 1-4. The team with the 3rd worst record would be in play from 1-5. The team with the 4th worst record would be in play for 2-6. The team with the 5th worst record would be in play for 3-7. And so on and so forth for however many teams you include in the lottery.

[yosemiteben]

Beyond the market size, and even the Spurs specifically, the lottery continually ends up resulting in certain things happening for decades. And these things are pretty much always leans towards league inventive or are compensating teams that have lost superstar players.

LeBron being drafted by his hometown team. And when he leaves, they get #1 overall 3 times.

AD being drafted by the Pelicans after they lost CP3. And when AD left, they get #1 again.

Rose being drafted by his hometown team of Chicago.

Mavs losing Luka and getting Flagg.

76ers losing Embiid and moving way up.

And the Spurs are just league darlings. They've not been in the lottery much, but when they are, it pretty much always works out for them. They're now in the drivers seat, probably, if they wanted to trade for Giannis. Giannis + Wemby is great for the league.

So the theory is the NBA just arbitrarily likes a small market team? In order to buy into the theory of the lottery being rigged, I'd need to see some sort of explanation as to why they are rigging it in favor of one of their smallest market teams.

Rigged or not, is the explanation for San Antonio moving up to draft a superstar in like 50% of the lotteries they've been in just really lucky or what?

Until I hear a reason that the NBA would prefer San Antonio to receive better prospects than say New York, then yes the explanation is that they just been lucky.

[Walt Cronkite]

I have seen it argued that San Antonio isn't a small market to the international audience and that SA was rewarded for Duncan retiring, so it's actually further evidence for the conspiracy.