woj: The NBA's pursuing a vote on NBA Draft Lottery reform before the start of season

[RaptorsLife]

I like this idea. especially the idea of teams late in the lottery getting better odds to move into top 3

tanking sucks

[hundreth]

I'm glad this is finally happening. They aren't stopping bad teams from getting top picks, they are trying to stop bad teams from out tanking one another for the worst record. This is a GOOD change. We will always have plenty of bad teams in the hunt for top lottery picks, but why should they be actively trying to be as bad as possible? This allows teams to genuinely suck and try to improve.

This will actually improve competitive balance, not harm it. Part of the reason why you see such a vast imbalance today is in part due to the way the lottery works. When teams are fighting for the worst record, of course you're going to see inflated winning records on the top and dismal losing records on the bottom.

[MartyConlonJr]

Surprised by the negative backlash on this board. Any team that is upset that they can't 'go for the tank' was probably a team with a roster with a few good players that they would have traded or rested to assure them a worse record than their competitors while making the on-court product abysmal, and they would have been one of five or six teams employing the same strategy, who all feel they need the same top player in the draft. The league is telling them all that the worst 5 records will have basically the same odds, so forget about it and compete.

The arguments here make it seem like if you give the worst teams more weighted odds you are giving the team a much better avenue to get great quick, but its not like a rule change is injecting more or less franchise players into the draft and its not like the 5th worst team or the worst team are all that different when all the lotto teams are throwing games and none of them recieving a franchise guy exactly pushes them over the contenders

[Stillwater]

so much for teams following the Philly model

[clyde21]

Anyway, this is a terrible idea that will only keep bad teams bad for longer, make life harder for small market teams, and ruin what's left of competitive balance right now. But don't worry - Silver will continue to assure us that there's nothing wrong with a product where one team has the next 5+ championships on lock with no competition.

Your team not being able to compete is the fault of no one else but your own team.

[karkinos]

Presently, the NBA team with the worst record can drop no lower than No. 4 from No. 1, but the NBA's currently proposed legislation could allow that team to drop from first to fifth in the lottery

The NBA's proposal would flatten those odds, and give the three teams with the worst record the same percentage of earning the No. 1 overall pick

No team can pick in the top three of the draft in consecutive years.

(quoted from the article)
i love all three of these proposals

[Dominator83]

This would hurt the Bulls, Magic, Nets and small market teams. Also hurt the competitive balance. The NBA already has major competitive balance issues they've been dealing with and it has gotten worse by the year. Like 3 teams in the entire league are good enough to win a title and this past year's playoffs were a total joke from beginning to end. A charade and basically a sideshow until the inevitable Cavs vs Warriors.

If they want the bottom teams to stay at the bottom even longer, then sure, overreact and fix the lottery odds so you have even more of a disparity across the league, and have it so the number of teams in the league no free agents ever wants to sign with grows and grows!

The one thing I hate about sports is whenever isolated incidents crop up, the leagues totally overreact and instead of a measured response, they take the extreme response so it "NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!"

A brawl in Detroit??? Make it so if a player steps one foot out of the bench area, immediate suspension!

Sick of players getting technical fouls??? Make it so if you amass enough, you can get suspended in a playoff game!

One team massively tanked??? Let's screw the competitive balance of the league for everyone!

1. Who's the 3rd team?

2. That rule was in place well before the brawl

No it wasn't. The first implementation of it was in the Suns playoff series, I forget who they were playing. Spurs maybe?

Cavs, Warriors, Spurs.

I remember in the 1998 ECF Jalen Rose was suspended for Game 7 because he left the bench in game 6 during a scuffle

[MartinToVaught]

Anyway, this is a terrible idea that will only keep bad teams bad for longer, make life harder for small market teams, and ruin what's left of competitive balance right now. But don't worry - Silver will continue to assure us that there's nothing wrong with a product where one team has the next 5+ championships on lock with no competition.

Your team not being able to compete is the fault of no one else but your own team.

Sure, but 29 teams not being able to compete is a problem with the league.

[Shock Defeat]

They should call it the Hinkie Rule.

[Braggins]

There is no way to fix the tanking issue without making the draft completely unfair and hurting competitive balance. Slightly fiddling with the lottery odds won't fix tanking and will make things less fair at the same time. The point of the draft should be to maintain competitive balance as much as possible. Instead of making the draft less fair to fix an issue that can't realistically be fixed, they should just accept that tanking is going to happen and work to make the draft as conducive as possible for competitive balance, which means just doing away with the lottery and ranking the picks straight up by worst record. The stuff being proposed is going in the exact wrong direction.

I wouldn't be surprised if the league understand and agrees with all this and are purposely doing this slight measure because they want to make it seem like they are doing something to fix tanking, while actually changing the odds as little as possible because they know it is unfair.

[clyde21]

Anyway, this is a terrible idea that will only keep bad teams bad for longer, make life harder for small market teams, and ruin what's left of competitive balance right now. But don't worry - Silver will continue to assure us that there's nothing wrong with a product where one team has the next 5+ championships on lock with no competition.

Your team not being able to compete is the fault of no one else but your own team.

Sure, but 29 teams not being able to compete is a problem with the league.

Nope. Cavs could've competed had they not given 10mil a pop to Shumpert, for example, who was making more money than Livingston, Clark, McGee and D-West combined last year.

You can go down the list, too. Disastrous transactions galore. Teams have no one to blame but themselves for handing out bad contracts after bad contracts.

[ZombieKilla]

There are a lot bigger problems in the NBA that need to be addressed before tanking.

Either realign the conferences or remake the playoffs. Or make the Eastern Conference the D League.

Discontinue back-to-backs and 4 games in 5 days altogether. Possibly shorten the season by a few games.

One franchise player per team might move the league away from these super teams. This gives every team at least a shot at a star player.

[RakimAbdulJabar]

All 30 teams in the lottery with equal odds, you just can't get the # 1 pick two years in a row

If that means the Cavs or Warriors end up with the #1 pick then so be it.

If teams feel they can't compete or improve then find new management, ownership or whatever.

I don't believe in being rewarded or compensated for not being good.

No one will tank ever.

The end

[abark]

This would hurt the Bulls, Magic, Nets and small market teams. Also hurt the competitive balance. The NBA already has major competitive balance issues they've been dealing with and it has gotten worse by the year. Like 3 teams in the entire league are good enough to win a title and this past year's playoffs were a total joke from beginning to end. A charade and basically a sideshow until the inevitable Cavs vs Warriors.

If they want the bottom teams to stay at the bottom even longer, then sure, overreact and fix the lottery odds so you have even more of a disparity across the league, and have it so the number of teams in the league no free agents ever wants to sign with grows and grows!

The one thing I hate about sports is whenever isolated incidents crop up, the leagues totally overreact and instead of a measured response, they take the extreme response so it "NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!"

A brawl in Detroit??? Make it so if a player steps one foot out of the bench area, immediate suspension!

Sick of players getting technical fouls??? Make it so if you amass enough, you can get suspended in a playoff game!

One team massively tanked??? Let's screw the competitive balance of the league for everyone!

The competitive balance issues are due to superstars teaming up, which is enabled by maximum contracts and a soft cap. That's the reason there are only 2-3 teams with any shot at a title.

Evening out the lottery odds to disincentive tanking, would not contribute to that problem. The current era of artificial superteams has little to do with how the lottery is done.

[pipfan]

As a general fan, I love it. I think it is great for the NBA if a decent type team (like Chic in 2009) get lucky and move up to add a superstar-it's great for the league.

As a Bulls fan, I say NOOOOOOOOO. We are perfectly positioned for a great 2 year tank. I think this should go to committee until 2020

[kodo]

Flattening the worst 3 teams is fine, there shouldn't be a competition for the absolute worst. I think fans of even tanking teams will be happier knowing that a random win late in the season won't cost them the difference between KAT and Okafor, like it did for Philly.

It won't do a thing to stop tanking, not even for 1 team. Teams tank because they don't see a viable scenario where they beat the current champion with their existing roster. This doesn't change any of that.

[Braggins]

Your team not being able to compete is the fault of no one else but your own team.

Sure, but 29 teams not being able to compete is a problem with the league.

Nope. Cavs could've competed had they not given 10mil a pop to Shumpert, for example, who was making more money than Livingston, Clark, McGee and D-West combined last year.

You can go down the list, too. Disastrous transactions galore. Teams have no one to blame but themselves for handing out bad contracts after bad contracts.

Your argument is true, but kind of irrelevant to this topic. The purpose of the draft isn't to reward teams for good transactions. The point is to help teams that need the most help to help competitive balance. It ends up rewarding bad decisions, but it is necessary. I mean, we already see things like top teams like Boston or Cleveland getting top picks because of their front offices taking advantage of bad front offices, but imagine if this stuff happened all the time because good teams were just naturally getting good picks because of a bad lottery system. What the league is proposing wouldn't take things that far, but it is still moving in that direction slightly, which is unfair, and also pointless because it doesn't actually stop tanking. The only way to stop tanking would be to do a lottery with all teams given the same odds, but that actually would create the scenario I alluded to where top teams were just randomly getting top picks for no reason, which would be terrible for the league.

[Mos_Heat]

All 30 teams in the lottery with equal odds, you just can't get the # 1 pick two years in a row

If that means the Cavs or Warriors end up with the #1 pick then so be it.

If teams feel they can't compete or improve then find new management, ownership or whatever.

I don't believe in being rewarded or compensated for not being good.

No one will tank ever.

The end

Yep.
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-nbas-possible-solution-for-tanking-good-bye-to-the-lottery-hello-to-the-wheel/

[CrazyKnicks]

This is good, time for these GMs to get their heads out of their ass instead of just doing an awful job and then look like they did something good when they end up for a top pick.

Plus it's frustrating to see a team fall down several lotto spots for doing the right thing and competing while other teams don't care.

[LongLiveHinkie]

This would hurt the Bulls, Magic, Nets and small market teams. Also hurt the competitive balance. The NBA already has major competitive balance issues they've been dealing with and it has gotten worse by the year. Like 3 teams in the entire league are good enough to win a title and this past year's playoffs were a total joke from beginning to end. A charade and basically a sideshow until the inevitable Cavs vs Warriors.

If they want the bottom teams to stay at the bottom even longer, then sure, overreact and fix the lottery odds so you have even more of a disparity across the league, and have it so the number of teams in the league no free agents ever wants to sign with grows and grows!

The one thing I hate about sports is whenever isolated incidents crop up, the leagues totally overreact and instead of a measured response, they take the extreme response so it "NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!"

A brawl in Detroit??? Make it so if a player steps one foot out of the bench area, immediate suspension!

Sick of players getting technical fouls??? Make it so if you amass enough, you can get suspended in a playoff game!

One team massively tanked??? Let's screw the competitive balance of the league for everyone!

The competitive balance issues are due to superstars teaming up, which is enabled by maximum contracts and a soft cap. That's the reason there are only 2-3 teams with any shot at a title.

Evening out the lottery odds to disincentive tanking, would not contribute to that problem. The current era of artificial superteams has little to do with how the lottery is done.

Max contracts and a soft cap are the biggest part of the problem, but there would be less parity than now if there was lottery reform.