Mavericks, Spurs, Sixers, Hornets Move Up In 2025 NBA Draft Lottery

[Barcs]

The draft lottery is an absolute joke. Mavericks have no business getting the #1 pick and 3 of the 4 worst teams didn't even get in the top 3. It's such a stupid system that destroys parity in the NBA. Get rid of that garbage.

The worst teams in the NBA don't deserve the automatic top picks just for being bad. That's an even worse system. It much more open to abuse.

Disagree. The whole point of the draft is to even out the league by giving the best prospects to the teams that need them most. When this doesn't happen, it defeats the purpose. When a near .500 team gets a top 3 pick it ruins the parity of the league. This has happened way too many times. Draft lotto is the stupidest invention ever made, I'm just glad NFL isn't dumb enough to destroy the game with that.

[Luv those Knicks]

The draft lottery is an absolute joke. Mavericks have no business getting the #1 pick and 3 of the 4 worst teams didn't even get in the top 3. It's such a stupid system that destroys parity in the NBA. Get rid of that garbage.

The worst teams in the NBA don't deserve the automatic top picks just for being bad. That's an even worse system. It much more open to abuse.

Disagree. The whole point of the draft is to even out the league by giving the best prospects to the teams that need them most. When this doesn't happen, it defeats the purpose. When a near .500 team gets a top 3 pick it ruins the parity of the league. This has happened way too many times. Draft lotto is the stupidest invention ever made, I'm just glad NFL isn't dumb enough to destroy the game with that.

That's nice in theory, but in practice, you get GMs who build losing teams to increase their odds of getting the top pick. That's why I like the 20% chance and no higher to get #1.

The Wiz get to draft #5 or wherever they landed, and they can re-enter the lottery next year, presumably because they'll still be bad. It's a much better system (in my opinion) than rewarding the team with the fewest wins with the best player. That's too big an incentive and too big a reward for winning the fewest games.

[Barcs]

The worst teams in the NBA don't deserve the automatic top picks just for being bad. That's an even worse system. It much more open to abuse.

Disagree. The whole point of the draft is to even out the league by giving the best prospects to the teams that need them most. When this doesn't happen, it defeats the purpose. When a near .500 team gets a top 3 pick it ruins the parity of the league. This has happened way too many times. Draft lotto is the stupidest invention ever made, I'm just glad NFL isn't dumb enough to destroy the game with that.

That's nice in theory, but in practice, you get GMs who build losing teams to increase their odds of getting the top pick. That's why I like the 20% chance and no higher to get #1.

The Wiz get to draft #5 or wherever they landed, and they can re-enter the lottery next year, presumably because they'll still be bad. It's a much better system (in my opinion) than rewarding the team with the fewest wins with the best player. That's too big an incentive and too big a reward for winning the fewest games.

Tanking isn't even a real problem. It's completely emotional and usually based on conjecture, very few teams actually tank and even if they do, that's on them. If they want to devalue their franchise and risk losing the fans by losing on purpose (which nobody actually does), then that's on them. The NFL does it right, NBA is a joke.

[Luv those Knicks]

Disagree. The whole point of the draft is to even out the league by giving the best prospects to the teams that need them most. When this doesn't happen, it defeats the purpose. When a near .500 team gets a top 3 pick it ruins the parity of the league. This has happened way too many times. Draft lotto is the stupidest invention ever made, I'm just glad NFL isn't dumb enough to destroy the game with that.

That's nice in theory, but in practice, you get GMs who build losing teams to increase their odds of getting the top pick. That's why I like the 20% chance and no higher to get #1.

The Wiz get to draft #5 or wherever they landed, and they can re-enter the lottery next year, presumably because they'll still be bad. It's a much better system (in my opinion) than rewarding the team with the fewest wins with the best player. That's too big an incentive and too big a reward for winning the fewest games.

Tanking isn't even a real problem. It's completely emotional and usually based on conjecture, very few teams actually tank and even if they do, that's on them. If they want to devalue their franchise and risk losing the fans by losing on purpose (which nobody actually does), then that's on them. The NFL does it right, NBA is a joke.

I'm just going to say that we profoundly disagree on this point. On any given season, I'd say 1 team in 3 tanks. Maybe not at the start, but by the mid-way point, it's at least a third, maybe pushing 50%. The Mavs once tanked their way out of a playoff spot so their pick would land in the top 10 and they'd keep it.

[Barcs]

That's nice in theory, but in practice, you get GMs who build losing teams to increase their odds of getting the top pick. That's why I like the 20% chance and no higher to get #1.

The Wiz get to draft #5 or wherever they landed, and they can re-enter the lottery next year, presumably because they'll still be bad. It's a much better system (in my opinion) than rewarding the team with the fewest wins with the best player. That's too big an incentive and too big a reward for winning the fewest games.

Tanking isn't even a real problem. It's completely emotional and usually based on conjecture, very few teams actually tank and even if they do, that's on them. If they want to devalue their franchise and risk losing the fans by losing on purpose (which nobody actually does), then that's on them. The NFL does it right, NBA is a joke.

I'm just going to say that we profoundly disagree on this point. On any given season, I'd say 1 team in 3 tanks. Maybe not at the start, but by the mid-way point, it's at least a third, maybe pushing 50%. The Mavs once tanked their way out of a playoff spot so their pick would land in the top 10 and they'd keep it.

Were they ever penalized for that?

If the draft lottery is to prevent tanking, then it's objectively failing at that.

[Luv those Knicks]

Tanking isn't even a real problem. It's completely emotional and usually based on conjecture, very few teams actually tank and even if they do, that's on them. If they want to devalue their franchise and risk losing the fans by losing on purpose (which nobody actually does), then that's on them. The NFL does it right, NBA is a joke.

I'm just going to say that we profoundly disagree on this point. On any given season, I'd say 1 team in 3 tanks. Maybe not at the start, but by the mid-way point, it's at least a third, maybe pushing 50%. The Mavs once tanked their way out of a playoff spot so their pick would land in the top 10 and they'd keep it.

Were they ever penalized for that?

If the draft lottery is to prevent tanking, then it's objectively failing at that.

Marc Cuban was fined maybe $250,000. He sold the majority share of the Mavs not long after for like 2 billion, so I don't think he noticed. Besides, he was fined for something he said, not the actual tank, because it's hard to prove a team loses on purpose.

On February 10th they were 31-26. Then they went 7-18 the rest of the way. They're probably not the first team to go south that badly, There were some obvious boneheaded players. Kyrie Irving in particular played like he was trying to lose games. I'll bet money Jason Kidd was in on it. Probably not "lose on purpose", but it was probably more "don't worry about it if we don't win, this isn't our year".

The draft lottery prevents teams from the strong desire to have the worst record overall - like the NFL, where fans get mad at a worst team when they win. Twitter blows up when the worst team in the NFL wins a game and loses the top pick.

But what the lottery also does is it incentivizes being in the bad in a general sense. Philadelphia, this year for example. Their pick was top 6 protected. At a certain point this season, they decided to lose as many games as they could to try to keep their pick. That's what Dallas did in 22-23. Their pick was top 10 protected, so they went on a losing streak and got the 10th pick.

Granted, Philly had injury issues and they struggled, despite being a pretty good team last year and adding Paul George, but things didn't go well.

On Jan 29th, Philly was 19-27. They went 5-31 the rest of the way. Were they that bad or did they start playing like they didn't want to win? I think they clearly decided that it was in their best interest to lose as many games as possible. The fans were clearly aware of this too - rooting for their team to keep their pick which had to land in the top 6 to stay with them.

The interesting thing is, it doesn't seem to happen in the NFL. Teams don't tank in the NFL, at least, not obviously. Contracts aren't guaranteed and players probably don't want to risk it. Sometimes a playoff team will rest key players on the final game of the season, but that's different.

In the NBA, teams are going to be more careful trading for picks with protections with this in mind going forward, Philly and Dallas both tanking to keep the picks they traded.