Heading into a rebuilding period, there's been a lot of debate on these forums about the strategy that the Celtics should use to construct a contender. Much of that debate boils down to the question -- To tank or not to tank?
The NBA's draft lottery and the perverse system of incentives that it creates for teams outside of the top tier of playoff contenders is at the heart of that debate. As a fan, do you want to see your team do whatever it takes to get a top pick, or does that go against the spirit of competition? Is it wrong as a fan to root for your team to lose, if it means a "win" in the long run in the form of a top lottery pick?
I'm of the opinion that you can't blame fans or teams for doing what the system tells them to do; the bottom line is that neither teams nor fans should be put in this position in the first place. The system is broken.
In response to that, I decided it would be interesting to come up with a new draft lottery system.
Goals of New Lottery System:
1. Lessen incentive to tank without punishing teams for being bad
2. Remove disincentive to make playoffs; anybody who doesn't host a playoff series has a chance to move up in the draft via the lottery. This presumes hosting a playoff series is sufficient incentive to miss out on the lottery -- top 4 seeds tend to be contenders / psuedo-contenders.
3. Make draft positioning much more random so that it is substantially harder to "aim" for a specific part of the draft by tweaking your regular season record. This militates against tanking to avoid giving up a protected pick (e.g. Warriors two seasons ago).
4. Give teams currently in "NBA purgatory" a real chance to get a nice pick in the draft each year. This makes it more attractive to build on what you have instead of constantly selling off assets as soon as your talent base plateaus, because even a mediocre to average team can get a top pick.
My hope is that a system like this would reward teams for making the best of their current situation -- including the talent already on the roster and the picks they happen to get in the draft. It doesn't reward teams for trying to be bad to get a guaranteed top pick.
Whether you're a bad team or a pretty okay team, you could get a pick in the top 8 or you could end up in the late teens. The draft becomes a bonus to your rebuilding effort, not the end-all be-all focus of what you try to do in any given season, because you can't depend on picking in a certain range.
In the system I've devised, the last 8 slots (23-30) are set in stone. These are occupied by the top 4 seeds in each conference, arranged according to regular season record (i.e. best overall record gets #30).
To determine the order of slots 1-22, the system involves three sets of random rolls.
The four teams with the worst records in the league automatically get to pick in the top 8.
The first set of rolls determines the other four teams that will be in the top 8, with odds ranging from approximately 10% for the team with the 5th worst record to approximately 2.5% for the team with the 22nd worst record.
The second set of rolls determines the order of the top 8. The four worst regular season teams each get approximately 15% chance, while the other four teams selected to the top 8 get approximately 10% chance.
The third set of rolls determines the order of slots 9 through 22. The odds for selection for the remaining teams ranges from approximately 10% for the team with the worst regular season record remaining to approximately 4.5% for the team with the best regular season record remaining.
For reference, the regular season standings for 2012-2013:
http://espn.go.com/nba/standings/_/group/1Note that because of playoff seeding, the teams in slots 23-30 are Brooklyn, Indiana, New York, LA Clippers, Denver, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Miami.
The bottom 4 teams (automatically in the top eight) are Orlando, Charlotte, Cleveland, and Phoenix.
In the first three replies to this post I will put up example draft lottery results to give a sense of how variable this can be.