Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope

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Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#1 » by Dominator83 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:37 am

I mentioned this on my board and figured to take my idea here for feedback.

As we all know, this league is by far the hardest of the 4 major sports to make real, difference making additions thru free agency. It just doesn't happen very often due to the restricting rules and its generally never a realistic avenue to take your team from the bottom to the top or the middle to the top. Football and baseball are much different in this regard. In those sports teams can frequently use free agency as a tool to add big time players (maybe not at QB but almost everywhere else). Add to that the draft, where every year theres usually only enough studs to count on one hand. This isn't the other sports where ANY pick in the 1st 2 rounds are premium assets that have very good trade currency. Therefore........

i would like to see it to where ALL lottery teams get an equal shot at the top 3 picks. Hell, maybe even add the 8 1st round exit teams to that pool as well. I know that sounds crazy, but i just feel that in a league where its the hardest to add free agents and go from the middle to the top, especially since there are very few studs in each draft. The teams that are trying to compete shouldn't be punished for trying to compete. Fans of teams that are on the playoff bubble would rather see their teams miss. This is the ONLY sport where this happens. Frequently. All the other sports its a "just get in and anything can happen" mentality. that to me is a problem. in any other sport you wouldn't see Charloette fans or Buck fans (pre Parker injury)wanting to miss the playoffs. Nor would you see fans of a team that had a what? 12 game winning streak? Pissed that it ruined their tank. Its one thing to see the bottom of the barrell teams fans rooting for losses. But when fans of literally half the league or more would rather see their teams lose, even playoff caliber teams, it has gotten way out of hand.

Fans of mediocre teams would feel better about their squad making the playoffs knowing they get the same amount of lottery balls as anyone else. The trash teams are still guaranteed the top picks from 4th and beyond like they are now. The only thing that changes is ALOT more teams and their fans have hope every year. I know that a rebuttal is going to be, "well what about when a team has an injured star and thats the only reason why they lost in the 1st round?" i understand thats a small downside to it. But most 1st round exit teams are simply mediocre fodder.

A team like say, Utah or Indiana or Portland are fairly good but realistically they have just as much of a chance at a title as the Sixers do. They need a top pick to push them over just as much as the bottom teams do but they get punished for trying. i would love to see this evened out a little.

Thoughts?
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#2 » by EmperorLocky » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:09 am

I don't mind this idea including the first round exit teams. With it I'd like to see no more protection placed on traded draft picks.

My only idea which I have put no thought into whatsoever is have teams bid for a pick. Highest bid gets the pick. That bid becomes that drafted players salary and counts towards your teams cap.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#3 » by suns91fan » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:46 am

Anything is better than the current system. Rewarding the worst teams and punishing those that try to win is something that defies the nature of competitive sports. Hell, if it was up to me, i would simply do an inverse draft and give the 1st overall pick to the NBA champion, and the worst one to the worst team. Regular season suddenly gets playoff-intensive games as every team is fighting for each win (and a better pick). Salary cap is still there, so the top teams would lose their talented youngsters on rookie contracts in one-sided trades or FA. Some things would likely need to change to accomodate this (reducing regular season comes to mind), but it would be worth it.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#4 » by meekrab » Thu Feb 16, 2017 5:53 am

EmperorLocky wrote:I don't mind this idea including the first round exit teams. With it I'd like to see no more protection placed on traded draft picks.

My only idea which I have put no thought into whatsoever is have teams bid for a pick. Highest bid gets the pick. That bid becomes that drafted players salary and counts towards your teams cap.

I counter-propose that all bids are binding and the pick order is the inverse of the bid amount. This way Lonzo Ball won't be making more than LeBron James when he comes into the league...

Unless you mean that each team can bid for each pick as it comes up on the board... in which case... 16 15 minute auctions would be a really exciting draft lottery.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#5 » by Johnny Bball » Thu Feb 16, 2017 5:55 am

Bye bye parity.

In case it needs to be said... getting even close to parity is already a problem.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#6 » by Effigy » Thu Feb 16, 2017 6:59 am

EmperorLocky wrote:I don't mind this idea including the first round exit teams. With it I'd like to see no more protection placed on traded draft picks.

My only idea which I have put no thought into whatsoever is have teams bid for a pick. Highest bid gets the pick. That bid becomes that drafted players salary and counts towards your teams cap.


This is a really interesting idea. I would add to it that no team can have a top 5 pick more frequently than once every five years. So teams like the Lakers, Knicks and Mavs can go nuts bidding for the top pick one year, but then after that they can only bid for the sixth pick for the next four years. Maybe additional rules like you can't have two top ten picks in five years.

Or maybe a better way is if you have a top 3 pick you can't have a top 5 pick for 7 years, and still can't have more than two top ten picks in five years. That way you aren't punishing the teams that pick fourth and fifth as much. You could choose between getting back to back 4th picks or the first and sixth picks in back to back years.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#7 » by Dominator83 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 7:40 am

Johnny Bball wrote:Bye bye parity.

In case it needs to be said... getting even close to parity is already a problem.

Parity is already bad. Can't get much worse than it already is. And if the bad teams can't find talent 4-10, then they deserve to suck.

You know the parity is bad as is when it's the only sport where fans actively root for their teams to miss the playoffs. Something needs to be done about that. Make it not feel like a punishment for the teams that are always trying to be competitive year in and year out.

Now the idea of giving the top pick to the champion and so on down, that's a bit extreme. My idea only affects the top 3 picks (like it is currently) and the elite 8 teams don't get lottery balls. There are plenty of teams stuck in the middle that need the help too
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#8 » by YogurtProducer » Thu Feb 16, 2017 8:17 am

I think non playoff teams should all have 1/16 chance for any of the top 16 picks. This encourages teams to not suck because you always have the same chance.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#9 » by DaGawd » Thu Feb 16, 2017 8:54 am

YogurtProducer wrote:I think non playoff teams should all have 1/16 chance for any of the top 16 picks. This encourages teams to not suck because you always have the same chance.

This honestly might be the best way
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#10 » by giberish » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:21 am

It used to be that all the lottery teams had equal chances. Then Orlando got Shaq, improved to near .500 but just missed the playoffs and got the #1 pick again the next year.

For all the talk of teams massively tanking, the team with the worst record in the league (by a decent margin) doesn't have their own 1st (or even 2nd) round pick.

This is mostly the downside of having a lot of teams. When the league expands there aren't any more titles or any more #1 overall picks, just more teams that aren't close to either one.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#11 » by EmperorLocky » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:32 am

meekrab wrote:
EmperorLocky wrote:I don't mind this idea including the first round exit teams. With it I'd like to see no more protection placed on traded draft picks.

My only idea which I have put no thought into whatsoever is have teams bid for a pick. Highest bid gets the pick. That bid becomes that drafted players salary and counts towards your teams cap.

I counter-propose that all bids are binding and the pick order is the inverse of the bid amount. This way Lonzo Ball won't be making more than LeBron James when he comes into the league...

Unless you mean that each team can bid for each pick as it comes up on the board... in which case... 16 15 minute auctions would be a really exciting draft lottery.



That's actually pretty good idea. This idea really needs someone smarter than I to come up with rules to it all. Maybe base around top 15 picks are auctioned from there wherever the teams may fall. Also the rookie salaries could still be limited. I.e. No.1 pick is considered the next superstar teams bid 25 million for that player, that player still only earns the max a no.1 drafted rookie can get, the 25million can still count against the cap and the difference can be redistributed amongst the NBA.

This really would involve some serious scouting and strategy otherwise you end up with Cleveland bidding big on no.1 and draft Anthony Bennett.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#12 » by laika » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:58 am

I wouldn't make it that extreme. The bottom teams would start to be truly awful under your system.
My lottery fixes-
-If you win the lottery you are ineligible to win again for the next 3 years.
-If you get a top 3 pick you aren't eligible for a top 3 pick the next year.
-The team with the worst record picks 4th. The rest of the lottery is played like now.

The worst teams would have a chance to turn things around in my system, but deliberate tanking would be heavily punished.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#13 » by PharmD » Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:08 am

I have an easy lottery solution: The team with the worst record in the league is not lottery eligible and gets the 4th (or maybe 3rd) pick. That would stop you from putting a REALLY terrible roster out there because you'd be afraid of having the very worst record. It would also make late-season games between terrible teams exciting showdowns that both teams want to WIN.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#14 » by antonac » Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:35 am

suns91fan wrote:Anything is better than the current system. Rewarding the worst teams and punishing those that try to win is something that defies the nature of competitive sports. Hell, if it was up to me, i would simply do an inverse draft and give the 1st overall pick to the NBA champion, and the worst one to the worst team. Regular season suddenly gets playoff-intensive games as every team is fighting for each win (and a better pick). Salary cap is still there, so the top teams would lose their talented youngsters on rookie contracts in one-sided trades or FA. Some things would likely need to change to accomodate this (reducing regular season comes to mind), but it would be worth it.


I'm not completely opposed to this idea either, the only problem is makes the best teams have far too many assets to trade with. the warriors simply farm out their likely no.1 picks to bottom teams for the their best players. imagine they sent their 2017, 2018 picks to say the sixers for Noel, that's an even more stacked roster and the sixers do that trade if they only have picks in the 20s to look forward to.

if picks were untradeable though, it would work, warriors/cavs would likely be drafting players they need so you wouldn't even just get the best players going to the best teams.

I wouldn't make it that extreme. The bottom teams would start to be truly awful under your system.
My lottery fixes-
-If you win the lottery you are ineligible to win again for the next 3 years.
-If you get a top 3 pick you aren't eligible for a top 3 pick the next year.
-The team with the worst record picks 4th. The rest of the lottery is played like now.

The worst teams would have a chance to turn things around in my system, but deliberate tanking would be heavily punished.


This is along the lines of an idea I had, which would be to have draft places weighted using a calculation that takes into account how high you picked in the previous 3 drafts (or thereabouts) meaning if you'd drafted no.1 in 2016 you'd be unlikely to get a top pick in 2017 and so on. it wouldn't stop tanking but it would at least make aggressive tanking very temporary and it would end up rewarding teams who consistently do well by making their accumlated low picks climb up the draft as previous high draft pickers sunk down.

that said, I have tried to figure out some sort of calculation to see how this would work and it's way beyond my mathematic abilities.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#15 » by IllMagic04 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:36 am

The system is fine the way it is. I could see minor tweaks with the bottom 5 teams odds but the basic premise of the lottery system is fine like it is. There no other system that's been suggested that would make sense.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#16 » by Johnny Bball » Thu Feb 16, 2017 1:09 pm

Dominater wrote:
Johnny Bball wrote:Bye bye parity.

In case it needs to be said... getting even close to parity is already a problem.

Parity is already bad. Can't get much worse than it already is. And if the bad teams can't find talent 4-10, then they deserve to suck.

You know the parity is bad as is when it's the only sport where fans actively root for their teams to miss the playoffs. Something needs to be done about that. Make it not feel like a punishment for the teams that are always trying to be competitive year in and year out.

Now the idea of giving the top pick to the champion and so on down, that's a bit extreme. My idea only affects the top 3 picks (like it is currently) and the elite 8 teams don't get lottery balls. There are plenty of teams stuck in the middle that need the help too


Yeah, I said that. And now you want make it worse. That's not a good idea. Points for outside the box thinking but it's not in line with their long term goal. And for a league that already conducts the lottery in the dark without letting everyone see it so it is known to be a valid process, I would really not want to see this process in use!

Adding another year of college would help teams better judge the talent they are drafting.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#17 » by Carlos_Danger » Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:47 pm

I'd be down with it.

Every year I root for teams at the back of the lottery to hit the jackpot.

In the NFL, I think the straight draft order by record is perfect. But the NBA is different. Those hall of fame franchise players are so rare. And it's b.s. that incompetent teams almost always get them whereas teams that try often get stuck in limbo, just missing the playoffs or just getting in but having no shot to win. Meanwhile some garbage organization gets rewarded with the best player.

Tim Duncan going to the Spurs was one of the greatest pieces of luck for the NBA itself in league history, nevermind the Spurs. And even then it required some bad injury luck. The Spurs didn't leap a bunch of teams, they had the 3rd worst record. But they weren't trash, just a good team devastated that year by multiple injuries.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#18 » by bmurph128 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:07 pm

I think the lottery needs to be gone. The old NFL system would be perfect for the NBA to discourage tanking:

The number 1 pick is awarded to the worst team, but they have to pay that pick a "max rookie" contract - which the players association and owners could agree on - something like $15-$20 million per year. Veteran players wouldn't like it, but it's the best solution to discourage tanking. There are only a handful of years where the number one player is head and shoulders above the rest - these would be the only years with blatant tanking IMO.

Even if you disagree with that - you have to give the worst teams the higher draft picks, or parity never happens.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#19 » by wickedwrister » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:27 pm

By giving more teams more hope you give the worst teams less hope.
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Re: Lottery idea to help give more fans more hope 

Post#20 » by Chinook » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:39 pm

PharmD wrote:I have an easy lottery solution: The team with the worst record in the league is not lottery eligible and gets the 4th (or maybe 3rd) pick. That would stop you from putting a REALLY terrible roster out there because you'd be afraid of having the very worst record. It would also make late-season games between terrible teams exciting showdowns that both teams want to WIN.


I actually really like that idea. I'd rather take out the bottom two or three just to make sure. Then you give even odds to the other teams. If you have a bottom-two record, at least you get a pick in the top five, and that seems good enough. The worst teams get decent enough picks while beyond them there's no incentive to tank. Might affect fringe playoff teams, but you can't have everything.

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