Re-do the Lottery system

[Skybox]

People on here range from "tank for the entire season and the next two, it's the only way to win" to "tanking is for p**sies, no winning organization would ever condone that". I personally hate it, but I understand it's the best "work" of the present system, so don't hate the player...hate the game. I think watching a solid handful of teams demeaning themselves and their players so shamefully (and, perhaps, wisely) is just a bad look. To me, uglier than a lack of parity league-wide.

How would you change the current system or do you like it as is?


I hate it... I also hate the play-in...It's not perfect, but I think I'd PREFER a full on lottery (one ball each) for all 14 non-playoff teams. The Lottery would once again be tense, must watch TV...the only possible tanking would be a team barely qualifying for a first-round beatdown preferring a lottery ball to playoff TV money & ticket sales. That would be a lot less prevalent than tanking today and I'd also explore significant financial incentives for orgs that make the playoff to discourage anything other than "We need every win" from FO's.
That's just me-keep it simple, build your team intelligently, focus on smart forward-looking trades that make your team better asap instead of this BS 3D chess, 5 year, anti-fanbase scheming that we're painfully watching (or not bothering to watch).

[MoMM]

How the TV rights for the regular season is shared between the teams? It's divided by the number of teams and that's it? If so, it could have winning as part of the whole calculation.

[nicnac215]

Abolish the lottery

Move the draft to after free agency

New draft is an auction draft with amount of points being able to be used in draft dictated by record.

Can roll over draft points unused to next season.

[Kent]

This isn't a bad idea, Skybox.

For the sake of discussion by playing devil's advocate... If giving every team one ball in a true lottery was to be implemented this offseason, the Lakers could potentially get the number one pick. How do we feel about that?

For me, it's pick your poison. There's no surefire way to fix the issues. It's a matter of what's your biggest concern.

To be fair, the Lakers could win the first pick even in the current system of odds.

[BCS]

The fix is simple, reduce the difference for the #1 pick even more, example, best chance to land #1 at 10%, worst case at 5%, an immaterial amount but hey, if you truly are the worst team you have twice as much chance as a team participating in the play in.

Next and probably most important, eliminating the floor instead of selecting just the top 4 by lottery, expand to 10 or 8, heck even 5 is a big difference, maybe even full lottery, so no floor, lol. So expanding to 8, would mean that the floor for the worst team is now 9, yikes. I do not see a team tanking for that.

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[thelead]

My idea is to do lotto selections for picks 1-8. Play-in losers (4 teams) will have their own lotto selection for picks 9-12 giving them incentive to try to make the playoffs and if failed still get a 50-50 chance at a top 10 pick. Then doing selections for picks 13 and 14 last.

No one would EVER tank if there were equal odds of landing the 14th pick as much as the 1st. And if you tried hard, made the play-in and lost, you still had a 50-50 shot at the 9th or 10th pick. I honestly can't see too much of a flaw with the system.

[nicnac215]

This isn't a bad idea, Skybox.

For the sake of discussion by playing devil's advocate... If giving every team one ball in a true lottery was to be implemented this offseason, the Lakers could potentially get the number one pick. How do we feel about that?

For me, it's pick your poison. There's no surefire way to fix the issues. It's a matter of what's your biggest concern.

To be fair, the Lakers could win the first pick even in the current system of odds.

that’s fine then no one is reading unprotected firsts really

[anothermagicfan]

I'm not a fan of the lottery. It's a waste of time. There's going to be a few bad teams every year. The worst team should get the first pick all the way to the best team gets the last pick.

The lottery actually encourages tanking. Look at our board for the last 10 years. There's a strong majority of our own fan base wanting to lose and pissed about every game we win. Why? Because we have been one of the worst teams for 10 years. So how do we climb out of the hole? By having better teams jump ahead of us because of the lottery? A team just missing the playoffs shouldn't be picking in the top 3 of the draft. The worst 3 teams should be getting the first 3 picks

[penny_nz]

Something definitely needs to change. Maybe it's me being older and more aware, but I don't remember as blatant tanking techniques in the 90s etc.

I'd be fine with the bottom 10 teams having even odds. Make front offices WORK more to build their teams

[drsd]

The Wheel is a discussion point here: Wheel FAQ: nba draft

The Proposal

Grantland obtained a copy of the proposal, which would eliminate the draft lottery and replace it with a system in which each of the 30 teams would pick in a specific first-round draft slot once — and exactly once — every 30 years. Each team would simply cycle through the 30 draft slots, year by year, in a predetermined order designed so that teams pick in different areas of the draft each year. Teams would know with 100 percent certainty in which draft slots they would pick every year, up to 30 years out from the start of every 30-year cycle. The practice of protecting picks would disappear; there would never be a Harrison Barnes–Golden State situation again, and it wouldn’t require a law degree to track ownership of every traded pick leaguewide.

...

The system is designed to eliminate the link between being very bad and getting a high draft pick. There is no benefit at all to being bad under a wheel system like this. If you believe tanking is morally wrong, or that it hurts business by alienating fans and cutting into attendance, this is a system you could get behind.

[p0peye]

Lotto deciding all lottery picks selections should deter teams from relying on lottery as team building strategy (it already is not).

[BadMofoPimp]

They had a one ball system back in the day. I remember 14th place teams winning the Lottery.

[Ducklett]

You can't overhaul the draft without overhauling everything else. Free agency is only good for big markets/superteams. The draft is supposed to help get stars to the small markets/bad teams. We didn't even need the one ball system to see the Magic get screwed for a decade between losing out on the picks we got from the Dwight trade to always moving down.

And guess what. The bad teams are still going to be bad. You are still going to have teams with records like ours. You are still going to have games where bad teams sit their good players to guard against getting them injured in seasons that just don't matter. Winning teams sit their good players too.

[drsd]

And guess what. The bad teams are still going to be bad. You are still going to have teams with records like ours. You are still going to have games where bad teams sit their good players to guard against getting them injured in seasons that just don't matter. Winning teams sit their good players too.

I accept "load management". I do not accept Portland putting up a 9 point 4th quarter after being down 40 after the first three. What a joke.

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[Ducklett]

And guess what. The bad teams are still going to be bad. You are still going to have teams with records like ours. You are still going to have games where bad teams sit their good players to guard against getting them injured in seasons that just don't matter. Winning teams sit their good players too.

I accept "load management". I do not accept Portland putting up a 9 point 4th quarter after being down 40 after the first three. What a joke.

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You should either be fine with both or fine with neither.

Portland putting up a 9 point quarter with there roster could happen with or without tanking. They are horrible and injured.

[IllMagic04]

The system is fine the way it is. They made adjustments to the lottery odds. Now lets give it some more years to see how effects things. Lottery night is an exciting night

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[pepe1991]

You can't overhaul the draft without overhauling everything else. Free agency is only good for big markets/superteams. The draft is supposed to help get stars to the small markets/bad teams. We didn't even need the one ball system to see the Magic get screwed for a decade between losing out on the picks we got from the Dwight trade to always moving down.

And guess what. The bad teams are still going to be bad. You are still going to have teams with records like ours. You are still going to have games where bad teams sit their good players to guard against getting them injured in seasons that just don't matter. Winning teams sit their good players too.

Actually, draft should be consultation price for bad season, not ultimate goal of a season.
Tanking takes joy out of sport from fans, best players don't play, best coaches don't coach. Instad, fans are spoonfed fed with bull***t that if they can "push though" 2,3 calendar years of their already short lifes, maybe down the road, half of decade from today, their team might pass first round of playoffs.

When you talk with fans about their favorite teams and their seasons funny thing happends, big portion of fans don't really claim their best season is one they won ultimate goal, they normally all remember that one massive overachiving season because version of that team was most likeable. For Magic it's Hart &Hustle.
One of my favorite non- Magic nba teams ever was Baron Davis led Warriors team and 2012 76ers teams.
76ers in particular had awkward combination of players ( Turner, Iggy, Holiday, Lou Williams ,Brand) oldschool coach, yet they beat 1# seeded Bulls, and in second round pushed Celtics to 7 games. And whole thing was incredible experience for fans and it was loudeds and most exiting NBA team by FAAR that year.
Next year they remove half of roster for Bynum , thing falls apart, they enter rebuild. 10 years later, here we are, 76ers, after 6 bull**+ tanking seasons still achived same level of sucess 2011-2012 76ers roster achived.


Being sports fan and watching some Premiership football where bad teams go into uber-desparation mode where every single player is pouring his heart out to save himself and his team from relagation to lower rank and tuning in Oklahoma Cithy Thunder & Portland TrailBlazers on home court puting on purpose worst possible roster , yet still charging tickets as their GMs are somwhere smirking how "brilliant " their tank looked that night is most anti-climatic sprots experience possible. For what? For who? For some 19 years old kid that will spent first 4 yeras in nba learning basics of basketball, probably will never sniff into top 20 nba player or will turn into Cam Reddish, Jarrett Culver or Elfrid Payton?

Only reason why nba is hyping draft as much as they do ( and they spend hours and millions on that) is because they understand that only way how to keep fans of bad teams around and not tuning out for good is to sell them delusional dream of "bright future through young players". So ofc, every year there is "next Jimmy Butler" , "Next Kawhi Leonard"; "Next Kobe" in a draft.

However, tracking nba ratings it become obvious that NBA is now in business of losing fans and whole thing is in desparate need for massive revamp. Fact that NBA as a league and whole salary cap today is totally depenant on China market is sad actually. USA ratings are on decline for some time now.
Only reason why playin tournament exists is to:
a) desparation to prevent tanking at least a little bit
b) cash grab to get few more fans to care

As long as you awarding incompetence, dysfunctional , poorly runned teams will deploy " sucking" and try to sell it as "strategy". There is apsolutley nothing strategic about OKC sitting on 370 picks , same OKC, runned by same person who in past made decisions like:
1) my team with Durant, Harden, Ibaka and Westbrook is fine, but KENDRICK PERKINS is my second highest player
2) I don't need Harden, i'm so masterful at drafting that i will be stingy, trade him ,save $4M over 4 years and draft new Harden- Jeremy Lamb
3) I have to choose between Westbrook and Durant, Westbrook gets more cheers from drunk fans in arena -that's my guy
4) "Big 3 + Ibaka " roster was "supported " by Perkins & Nazrn Mohhamed making 1/5th of teams total salary. In today's money it's like Nets Harden, Durant , Irving was supported by McGee & Nerlens Noel in today's money woth -$22,5M cumulative salary

Presti's ROSTER decisions from past destroyed OKlahoma. Everything else is revision of history.

[MoMM]

Hard-cap and not fully-guaranteed salaries might help, at least that's how NFL works and it seems to be just fine. NFL teams don't tank that much. It's all about being smart with money and drafting cheap players to support your stars. This also makes it easier for small markets to succeed.

[drsd]

The system is fine the way it is. They made adjustments to the lottery odds. Now lets give it some more years to see how effects things. Lottery night is an exciting night

With Detroit and OKC winning late-season games, the system does seem to be working (as the league expects).

[drsd]

.... "tanking is for p**sies, no winning organization would ever condone that".

I am so so happy the Spurs made the play-ins. I hope they win two to earn their playoff slot. There is karma there; the basketball Gods shone on their management style,.


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