How to hold a draft while discouraging losing

[CelticConcourse]

Saw this idea floating around before.

Is there even a way? The NBA always wants losing teams to have better futures, right?

[Fan from VT]

I was thinking about this a while ago, so I had this partially written.

Post 1: The Lottery

I don't like the current lottery, and I haven't heard a lot of other options that I like. I want unlucky/bad franchises to have a chance to turn themselves around, but I don't like good players languishing away on perpetually bad teams, how a team getting a high pick is still better off being bad the next year to get another high pick, and how the current system really incentivizes losing and de-incentivizes winning if you're not an immediate contender. It's basically created a bad disparity in the NBA of Lottery and Contenders and a No Man's Land middle class; I would much rather see that the middle class consists of teams on the rise or previous contenders a little over the hill rather than how it currently consists of teams that are stuck going nowhere.

In thinking about this, here is my tentative proposal:
-Entire draft order is determined by equal random chance (each team has 1 ping pong ball; draw in order of 1st to 30th pick then again for 2nd round).
-Winning the lottery means you cannot get a top 3 pick the next year, a top 2 the following year, and the top pick in the 3rd year following the lotto win. Exception: if your #1 overall pick is no longer on your roster (i.e. traded), you re-gain eligibility for winning the lotto again. Such a transaction would have to be completed before the lottery is run.
-Winning an NBA title causes the same restrictions to draft picks
-NBA runner-up and the team that earns the #2 pick are inelligible from winning the lotto for 1 year
-There is no "swapping" first rounders of the same year until after the draft order has been determined, since a swap is totally random. You can trade future firsts as under the current rules. Note: if you've acquired the future first round pick of a team that has won the championship, that pick is NOT subject to restrictions since it's YOUR pick now, so it's your logo on the ping pong ball. At least until the draft order is set.
-You COULD make "...the better of two..." type qualifications on picks though, for trade purposes. In other words, I could trade you player x and guarantee that we swap picks if mine is better if you give me player y, who is a little better than player x. 


Work in progress.

[Fan from VT]

I would also like to see each team put 4.1 million dollars into a league fund, then at the end of the season each team gets 100,000 per victory. So if you're a .500 team, you get 4.1 million. Something like that. Split 50/50 between players and management.

[CelticConcourse]

I would also like to see each team put 4.1 million dollars into a league fund, then at the end of the season each team gets 100,000 per victory. So if you're a .500 team, you get 4.1 million. Something like that. Split 50/50 between players and management.

That's clever, I am appealed.

[LooseCannon]

If you want to discourage losing, then the team with the most wins gets the #1 draft pick and the team with the fewest wins gets the worst draft pick.

[Fan from VT]

If you want to discourage losing, then the team with the most wins gets the #1 draft pick and the team with the fewest wins gets the worst draft pick.

I've heard that before, (gladwell, i believe) and I just think it's too extreme. Too much rich gets richer. Might work in NFL, which depends less on singular individual talents except at qb (and in which case a team with a great qb wouldn't draft another), but in the NBA it just would create a wealth disparity that would be almost insurmountable.

Maybe if you combined it with a salary cap while also eliminating individual max deals (so bad teams could just buy away better players and force good teams to decide who to keep).

Or, you could just see the NBA keep the progressively punitive soft cap/tax, eliminate the individual max, and eliminate the draft and let the bidding/future capspace planning wars begin. How good is Wiggins? How much caproom will you plan to save?

[LGC88]

Thanks for this very interesting post.
For what I understand, NBA is trying to even up the competition among the franchises.
Besides the draft problem, there are to me 2 other issues :
1. Player that accept to get paid lesser then they should be. Huge disadvantage for other franchise (more cap space for miami for example)
2. Injuries are making this competition almost a lottery.

Possible solutions :
1. Implant a minimum income for all star players under 35.
2. Reduce games per seasons.
-Create 2 leagues of 20 teams (10 teams per conference, 54 games per season, salary cap around 40mil (players play lesser so they earn lesser))
-Play offs remain the same. The bottom 2 teams of each conference make a 7 game series (the looser teams downgrade to nba2 league).
- NBA2 league salary cap 20mil (the playoffs finalists win their ticket for NBA league)
- The actual draft is good for this system (the best 40 picks will play for the best teams). Tanking is risky as you might be downgraded to NBA2 league.

I believe with 54 games, stadiums should be full everywhere and players will be less injury prone. Not to mention the vets will be more productive.

[Fan from VT]

I'm just going to keep throwing random ideas out there.

-How about the draft is divided into 4-year "windows." Each team gets a set amount of "lotto money" (400 dollars per 4-year window). Each team decides how many 1 dollar lotto tickets to purchase each year; you need to save a minimum of 1 dollar for any given year. So you could buy 397 tickets if you love the first draft of a 4 year window. But then you are likely to end up with the 30th+ pick of the last 3 drafts of that window, because you'd only have 1 ticket each.

Can adjust it too: all teams that finish not in the bottom 4 get 20 extra dollars to prevent bottom end tanking.

[Fan from VT]

Thanks for this very interesting post.
For what I understand, NBA is trying to even up the competition among the franchises.
Besides the draft problem, there are to me 2 other issues :
1. Player that accept to get paid lesser then they should be. Huge disadvantage for other franchise (more cap space for miami for example)
2. Injuries are making this competition almost a lottery.

Possible solutions :
1. Implant a minimum income for all star players under 35.
2. Reduce games per seasons.
-Create 2 leagues of 20 teams (10 teams per conference, 54 games per season, salary cap around 40mil (players play lesser so they earn lesser))
-Play offs remain the same. The bottom 2 teams of each conference make a 7 game series (the looser teams downgrade to nba2 league).
- NBA2 league salary cap 20mil (the playoffs finalists win their ticket for NBA league)
- The actual draft is good for this system (the best 40 picks will play for the best teams). Tanking is risky as you might be downgraded to NBA2 league.

I believe with 54 games, stadiums should be full everywhere and players will be less injury prone. Not to mention the vets will be more productive.

I don't think anyone will go for this. Fans could see their team irrelevant for a full year at least, and players have to take a 50% pay cut (half the league down to 40 mil, other half down to 20 mil), owners lose 25%+ of their tv games.


One simple way to help with players taking less is to just remove the individual max. Wade/Lebron/Bosh could have taken 17 million to play for any team, but instead chose to play together for 16.2 or something like that. Remove the individual max but keep the current cap, and a team like Minny could offer a player 35 million per year. Now that's a choice... be "the man" for 35, or play with others for 16.

[wdleehi]

Tweak the league rules (or how the game is called) that puts a greater emphasis on the team game and less on the superstar.


The more often a team like Detroit won, the less teams would feel the need to have the top pick. 



That's why tanking happens less often(or at least accused less often) in the other tops sports.






A 2nd thing to add is if a team falls in the bottom 3, they are allowed to amnesty one player.  That should help convince some players to push harder or lose a job. 



Get rid of the lottery.

[Moranis]

Nothing wrong with giving the worst team the first pick.  All sports have done this from the beginning of time.  That said, I would be ok with some sort of modified lottery system, like worst 5 all have an equal chance of 1,2,3,4,5 and then do the same thing with the next 5 and the last 4.  A little bit more tiered but with an equal opportunity within each tier.

I think the NBA needs a true minor league with an extended draft.  The NBDL isn't a true minor league, but the NBA could absolutely use one of those.  I also think some sort of extra draft picks for losing a certain level of free agent, would be good (between the 1st and 2nd round for high level and after the 2nd round for lower level).  Then if there was a better minor league you could stash a lot more players that would know the system.  Something more similar to the baseball or hockey systems where the NBDL players on a certain team are all owned by the NBA team, but with a minor league contract.

[CFAN38]

I would like to see the NBA keep a similar system with some changes.

Only the 4 worst teams are eligible for the top 4 picks. The rest of the lottery teams go into an equal chance lottery for picks 5-14. Making it so a team can just miss the playoffs and still have a good shot at the 5th pick. This will eliminate the teams sand banging the last weeks after they are out of contention.

Then (using years as examples) if a team gets the #1 pick in 2013 they are not eligible for top 10 in 2014 or top 4 in 2015. If a teams wins the first pick and doesnt want to suffer that penaltiy in a weak lottery year (like this year) they can then decline the first pick dropping to #4. The team that had one #2 then gets the #1 with only the #2 pick penalty.)

The team that gets #2 pick in 2013 would not be eligible for top 4 in 2014.   

I think this would help stop perennial losers from staying in the bottom of the lottery. So of these teams do this as a way to amass talent leading to year of bottom dwelling and avoiding signing vets who could help them win games. ex bobcats and Wizards (prior to NENE and Okafur trades)

Would also like to see every team get a D-league team. Then open up the draft to 3 rounds. 1st round gets a guaranteed NBA deal, 2nd a guaranteed NBA deal at lower pay with free movement from nba to d league, 3rd D-league draft, if player gets call up to nba from other team. team can block it by paying player rd 2 or they gain a compensatory 3rd pick in next year.

[slamtheking]

there's probably no way to get rid of tanking completely but could try something like this.
1. go back to non-playoff teams getting the same number of ping pong balls -- say 5 each.
2. give the worst team record in each conference only 1 extra ball. 
3. give each of the playoff teams, except for the teams in the finals, 1 ball each.
4. draw the first 5 positions based on the ping pong draw.  fill out the rest of the draft based on record with the finals loser next to last and the winner last.
5. A team cannot win the lottery more than once in 3 years. 
6. A team cannot have a top-5 pick more than 2 consecutive years. 

The non-playoff teams have the best odds of winning but playoff teams are still in the mix so that missing the playoffs doesn't guarantee anything.  The worst  2 teams still have the best odds of winning but barely.  Teams cannot continue to live off high lottery picks to try to improve -- they need to develop some plan for improvement other than hoping to draft the next Lebron/Wiggins

[LooseCannon]

Nothing wrong with giving the worst team the first pick.  All sports have done this from the beginning of time.  That said, I would be ok with some sort of modified lottery system, like worst 5 all have an equal chance of 1,2,3,4,5 and then do the same thing with the next 5 and the last 4.  A little bit more tiered but with an equal opportunity within each tier.

This scheme probably increases the incentive to tank.