ATL - New Lottery Rules Move to Owner Vote - pg59

[Ron Swanson]

Dumb. It's already only a 1 in 4 chance you get the top pick even if you go 0-82. Now you could clearly be the worst team in NBA history and have less than a 1 in 7 chance under the new proposed rules. Penalize bad teams for being bad. What a **** concept.

[Max Green]

Blame Sam Hinkie. These are the repercussions from his blatant tanking.

[AussieBuck]

Blame Sam Hinkie. These are the repercussions from his blatant tanking.

Yeah, blame him for making logical decisions, then blame him when you decide to make the problem much bigger by incetivising more teams to tsnk in an effort to stop the worst teams from losing games they'd almost certainly lcose anyway

[midranger]

Stupid. You'll have teams in playoff position tanking hard if they see an 20% chance at a top 3 pick in the lottery.

If anything, they should make the lotto odds worse, or just do away with the lotto altogether.

[Licensed to Il]

The proposed lotto system is awful, I can't understand the league's failure to understand how this incentivizes tanking rather than discouraging it. It also makes it more difficult for small market clubs devoid of talent to acquire the elite prospects needed to become true contenders. If everyone under this proposal played by the rules, the league would have a lot more Pacer and Jazz type teams that cap out at 45 wins after years of building, but were never true threats to win a title. I guess as a fan of a small market club, I see this as making things even more difficult for them to get stars.

[MVP2110]

Just to play devil's advocate? Do people really think a team will try and tank out of the playoffs? I don't see owners giving up that revenue they get

[FlagsFlyForever]

Just to play devil's advocate? Do people really think a team will try and tank out of the playoffs? I don't see owners giving up that revenue they get

I don't think so. The fan backlash would be tremendous.

[emunney]

I don't think playoff teams will tank. I don't understand why anybody thinks it'll change anything other than more frequently give better teams top picks. You still are going to be jockeying for better odds, and those are still associated with being the worst. The lotto was implemented to prevent tanking. It didn't. Then a decent team won, and that was bad, so we moved to the current system. Now basically going back. It's ludicrous, it's not a different system. It's not "reform".

[Ron Swanson]

Yeah, the point is that it makes it even more likely that you get situations like a 40-win Bulls team winning the lottery and getting Rose, or a 30+ win Cleveland team in back-to-back years getting the #1 pick. You drastically increase the odds of those scenarios happening again. Stupid.

[emunney]

Yeah, the point is that it makes it even more likely that you get situations like a 40-win Bulls team winning the lottery and getting Rose, or a 30+ win Cleveland team in back-to-back years getting the #1 pick. You drastically increase the odds of those scenarios happening again. Stupid.

I don't even particularly care about that. I'm just offended that they are putting this out there as a means to address something it obviously doesn't address.

[humanrefutation]

I'm not as tank-happy as some posters are here, but as a concept, I've never had a problem with tanking. Anyone who thinks about it for more than a second will understand that leading with youth - at the behest of winning with overpriced mediocrity - serves a legitimate purpose that's ultimately geared towards winning in the long run.

But the thing is, I hear from so many casuals in my life that they are staunchly opposed to tanking. That they'd rather have an eighth seed than tank. That they'd rather oscillate between 35-42 wins for year after year than tank. They complain about season ticket holders being **** over. They complain about the integrity of the sport. They just plain hate losing.

I get it, to some degree. But I can't understand how anyone can watch the Bucks over the last 30 years and not comprehend the risks that come with committing to mediocrity.

[Diggr14]

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Should have went with Mufasa raising Simba in the middle of the court. Otherwise, it’s an ok court.

[HurricaneKid]

Just to play devil's advocate? Do people really think a team will try and tank out of the playoffs? I don't see owners giving up that revenue they get

First off, its only two playoff games. Several years ago the Bucks made some win now moves to win 38 games and become the 8 seed and ran into Miami. The Heat were literally resting Wade in one or both of the Milw games. The Bucks were selling tickets on Groupon for ~$10 IIRC. It wasn't that much money at all. If the odds were equal for everyone in the lotto (just a few steps past what they are doing now) would I rather see the Bucks with a 7% chance at a generational talent or be humiliated for an extra week? I am pretty comfortable saying yes, though the players coming out would play a large role in that. Lets just say Midz gets hurt, Jabari has a setback and doesn't play would you rather have a reasonably good shot at Bagley/Porter/Ayton/Doncic/Bamba or have two extra home games that just play out a disappointing season?

The real problem with THIS proposal is that rather than the teams at the bottom of the league fighting to lose games (bottom 3 or 4) you will have the teams in the next tier, which will almost always be bigger based on a bell curve, being rewarded far more handsomely by lotto EVs. So while the worst team in the league doesn't have any incentive to lose (and who cares, they are the worst team in the league), several lesser teams who absolutely have talent to push other teams will be rewarded. I think it actually makes tanking more problematic.

[Ron Swanson]

PBT doing their best to one-up the stupidity of the proposed lottery reform.

http://nba.nbcsports.com/2017/09/15/the-nba-draft-lottery-reform-we-really-need-a-five-day-14-team-tournament/

Yeah, give the #1 pick to the best team that just misses out on the playoffs. That totally solves everything...

[coolhandluke121]

This is a pretty sorry development for the NBA. Just a matter of how bad they want to face-plant here. Delusional to think they can really change tanking. They've done absolutely nothing to increase parity so what the eff do they expect?

[paulpressey25]

All this proposal does is potentially decrease the odds that the 3 most awful teams in the league won't lose an extra 2-3 games to jockey for slots 1-3. That's it. It ever so slightly reduces the odds of another Philly trying to be so awful at 10-15 wins versus the usual 17-22 wins the bottom three have.

However, this proposal does redistribute greater top 3 odds to the remaining 11 teams in the lotto. If you have a chance to either get into the lotto or move higher in the lotto, this proposal is for you.

And that blanket usually covers 10-14 teams each year who are on the playoff bubble or in the lotto seeding scrum of 5-10 (where the Bucks frequently were in the past).

Aggregate tanking increases under this proposal.

The incentive to sell of assets at the trade deadline and tank increases under this proposal.

We're being given #fakenews that this will deter tanking. Seems like a trojan horse to me for a different purpose, making the lotto more interesting for more fanbases and also dispersing talent out to more franchises than just the terrible ones.

[MVP2110]

Just to play devil's advocate? Do people really think a team will try and tank out of the playoffs? I don't see owners giving up that revenue they get

First off, its only two playoff games. Several years ago the Bucks made some win now moves to win 38 games and become the 8 seed and ran into Miami. The Heat were literally resting Wade in one or both of the Milw games. The Bucks were selling tickets on Groupon for ~$10 IIRC. It wasn't that much money at all. If the odds were equal for everyone in the lotto (just a few steps past what they are doing now) would I rather see the Bucks with a 7% chance at a generational talent or be humiliated for an extra week? I am pretty comfortable saying yes, though the players coming out would play a large role in that. Lets just say Midz gets hurt, Jabari has a setback and doesn't play would you rather have a reasonably good shot at Bagley/Porter/Ayton/Doncic/Bamba or have two extra home games that just play out a disappointing season?

The real problem with THIS proposal is that rather than the teams at the bottom of the league fighting to lose games (bottom 3 or 4) you will have the teams in the next tier, which will almost always be bigger based on a bell curve, being rewarded far more handsomely by lotto EVs. So while the worst team in the league doesn't have any incentive to lose (and who cares, they are the worst team in the league), several lesser teams who absolutely have talent to push other teams will be rewarded. I think it actually makes tanking more problematic.

If you haven't yet, listen to the podcast with Daryl Morey & Howard Bell from Bleacher Report. In it Morey brings up the correlation of ticket sales the following year and making the playoffs and how significant it really is.

To add another point, while I think end of the season tanking will always exist, I think this rule change will allow teams to try and compete at the beginning of the season instead of going full tank during the entire season. The incentive to tank right from the start is marginal compared to making a true attempt to win and if you don't succeed turning back and taking near the end.

I will also have to believe it when I see it for a team to tank out of the playoffs. Some hardcore fans might want it, but I can't imagine any team purposely not going for a playoff spot when it's in reach.

[Ron Swanson]

All this proposal does is potentially decrease the odds that the 3 most awful teams in the league won't lose an extra 2-3 games to jockey for slots 1-3. That's it. It ever so slightly reduces the odds of another Philly trying to be so awful at 10-15 wins versus the usual 17-22 wins the bottom three have.

However, this proposal does redistribute greater top 3 odds to the remaining 11 teams in the lotto. If you have a chance to either get into the lotto or move higher in the lotto, this proposal is for you.

And that blanket usually covers 10-14 teams each year who are on the playoff bubble or in the lotto seeding scrum of 5-10 (where the Bucks frequently were in the past).

Aggregate tanking increases under this proposal.

The incentive to sell of assets at the trade deadline and tank increases under this proposal.

We're being given #fakenews that this will deter tanking. Seems like a trojan horse to me for a different purpose, making the lotto more interesting for more fanbases and also dispersing talent out to more franchises than just the terrible ones.

Good call. Where was this kind of reform when Kohl had us straddling the fence between the 8th seed and the 12th overall pick for 15 years? If there's one benefit here, it's that it benefits the teams that spend those cap dollars and max out as treadmill squads. And that might be exactly why the NBA/owners could get behind a proposal like this.

[FlagsFlyForever]

Teams shouldn't be punished because they are bad, they should be punished because they are intentionally trying to lose. If the NBA is going to cross the line where they will start fining teams for sitting players for rest or fake injuries, then they can start deducting percentage points from lottery odds for the same reason. Players aren't going to intentionally play poorly so if teams stop being rewarded with better draft odds when they shut down their better players at the end of seasons, they will stop doing it.

[Gianstoppable]

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I really question your tastes if you don't think this court is badass

Meh, not impressed. What's so special about it? Sure it looks better than the old court but it's pretty blah