8 games left. I think we finish 5th worst with 29.2% chance of a top 3 pick.

[Celtics18]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point. 

[Fafnir]

I appreciate the apology Casperian, thanks.

Your offer is a bad one and the idea that if I don't take it I'm "Chicken" or something is straight out of Back to the Future. I'm not Marty McFly and you're not proving your point via that.

In particular your wager is a poor one as the C's at the maximum are going to have a 16% chance to win. To make the bet "fair" you'd need to be offering 6 to 1 odds. Beyond that I still wouldn't take it as my risk tolerance given my families finances is very small. I play small poker games for entertainment at table stakes less than 80 bucks, beyond that I don't gamble.

Its clear you don't believe in expected value. If you think its snake oil that's your prerogative. But just because there is uncertainty in what lottery combination will be chosen doesn't mean that every team shouldn't desire to have the most combinations on their side.

If you were just saying like Nick that we shouldn't tank for other roster reasons I get that it makes sense to me. I agree that purposeful losing is very destructive. But the argument that because its a single random event that every lottery slot is equally unappealing/appealing because the winner is unknown doesn't make any sense to me.

[KGs Knee]

Yeah, I'm going to partially agree here with Faf.

Probability and expected value are good tools. They seem to have a reasonable application in terms of final standings, and how that relates to draft position via the lottery.

As for the box and ball bet discussed, it has no relevance.  You can't really apply that analogy, as the 'negative result' has a disproportionate outcome to the 'positive result'.  There's no probability or expected value in the world that would sway me to take that bet.  That isn't even remotely the case in the NBA draft lottery.  You don't lose your team if you 'lose' the draft lottery, you just get a less nice 'house', or whatever.

But here's the thing with expected value, it requires a fairly comparable progression of results (positive or negative).  To truly be effective, you also would need to be working under the assumption this same process will be repeated multiple times, as is the case with any probability based event.  It works great for land developers, or other similar enterprises.  And while it works here in the simplest of terms, as in, it accurately estimates the value of each initial lottery slot prior to the actual lottery, it does nothing to account for the disparity between possible picks.  There isn't exactly a set value for any one draft position, as the quality of the players who might be drafted can vary widely and is difficult to accurately quantify for the sake of computing any sort of meaningful expected value.

[bruinsandceltics]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

There is absolutely a huge drop off between the top 6 and the rest.

It goes, Top 3, dropoff, top 6, big dropoff, rest.

We absolutely need to lose out here. Beating a few scrub teams down the stretch isn't going to help anyone's confidence.

[Smokeeye123]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

I guess I agree with the 4-9 prognosis but you're missing the point. Ending up with the 4th worst record as opposed to the 7th worst record greatly increases our odds of landing a top 3 pick. It ALSO assures we wont get BELOW the 7th pick. If we end up at 7 it is completely possible that we fall back to 10.

[fairweatherfan]

If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying that any uncertainty is exactly the same as total uncertainty?  That's really interesting, I've never met a probability denialist before.  Would you like to play cards sometime?

Oh, I´m not denying probability per se, I´m denying it´s legitimacy in certain circumstances, like one-off events with random number generators, for example.

Wouldn't this logic mean that the entire weighted draw system is an illusion?  That's just a probabilistic setup for a one-off event, after all.  Or are you saying the probability is real, it's just that anyone subject to it should deliberately ignore it in a one-off event?

It's pretty simple.

Lets say there are 6 boxes on the table in front of you, and each of these boxes contains a rubber ball.  4 of the boxes contain a red ball each, 2 of the boxes contain a blue ball each.

The aim is that you need to pick a colour, then pick a box.  If the colour of the ball inside that box matches the colour you guessed at the start, you get to keep your house plus you win a new car on top.  If the colour is wrong, you lose your house and end up living on the street.


The boxes are jumbled in a randomised order so you have no idea which box has which ball.

If you had to choose red or blue, which would you choose?

Personally, I would choose red.

So, you´re willing to bet your house on that game? For a new car? How about a year of your life? How about a year of the Celtics´ life? Because that´s pretty much the actual bet you´re taking here.

The correct answer is not "Red", the correct answer is "No thanks, and now leave my house before I call the cops".

The problem with this analogy is that the Celtics HAVE to make this bet in some form or another.  Unless we somehow forfeit our pick, we're in the lottery this season, no ducking it.  Fortunately, we don't really lose anything of value if our numbers don't come up, we simply get a less desirable pick.   But if there's no way out of the bet, it's better to have a higher chance of winning, no?

EDIT: And, of course, teams do have 100% certainty of a range of picks.  The worst record will never pick lower than 4th, 2nd worst 5th, etc, etc.  When you look across multiple picks rather than just #1, teams with worse records have a much clearer advantage.

[nickagneta]

Nick all I was saying was that the best position in the lottery for this team to be in is to have the most ping pong balls. I didn't mean more broadly that we should have tanked "harder" this year by selling assets for nothing like the 76ers or that we should outright throw games.

Overall I believe you need to enhance the value of your team and develop the players you plan on being part of the teams future. I think the C's have made a pretty reasonable approach towards that. They're playing the young guys rotation minutes, but not force feeding them from what i can tell, and also trying to protect/rehab Rondo. Meanwhile Danny has cleared future cap room, acquired some extra picks for Crawford/taking Anthony, and because of the talent deficiet we've lost a bunch of games.

Though clearly the team has checked out at this point, they just want the season over so I expect rather inconsistent effort from night to night. Which hasn't been the case overall for the majority of the season.

Okay...cool. I think we see things fairly closely. Can't say I disagree with anything here. I think they have approached this in a manner that is consistent in that Stevens coached to win and develop, the players always played to win and Danny managed the assets, trading and drafts in the best possible way. And wherever that landed them, then that's where it landed them.

[Celtics18]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

There is absolutely a huge drop off between the top 6 and the rest.

It goes, Top 3, dropoff, top 6, big dropoff, rest.

We absolutely need to lose out here. Beating a few scrub teams down the stretch isn't going to help anyone's confidence.

Who are the top six?  I think we all know who the top 3 are, but after that it seems to get hazier.

[perks-a-beast]

Every time I play that ESPN Mock Lottery the Celtics always end up with the 5th or 6th pick...extremely inconvenient for us. The best two players we could get there are Smart or Randle. We already have like 5 power forwards and a bunch of guards with shooting malfunctions so no help there....This is just the season from hell.

[Rondo9]

Every time I play that ESPN Mock Lottery the Celtics always end up with the 5th or 6th pick...extremely inconvenient for us. The best two players we could get there are Smart or Randle. We already have like 5 power forwards and a bunch of guards with shooting malfunctions so no help there....This is just the season from hell.

That's the lottery for you, there's always that chance of slipping.....

[D.o.s.]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

There is absolutely a huge drop off between the top 6 and the rest.

It goes, Top 3, dropoff, top 6, big dropoff, rest.

We absolutely need to lose out here. Beating a few scrub teams down the stretch isn't going to help anyone's confidence.

Who are the top six?  I think we all know who the top 3 are, but after that it seems to get hazier.

Your choice of three of these:
Randle Smart Exum Vonleh

[footey]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

There is absolutely a huge drop off between the top 6 and the rest.

It goes, Top 3, dropoff, top 6, big dropoff, rest.

We absolutely need to lose out here. Beating a few scrub teams down the stretch isn't going to help anyone's confidence.

Who are the top six?  I think we all know who the top 3 are, but after that it seems to get hazier.

Your choice of three of these:
Randle Smart Exum Vonleh

I would not take smart or Randle with top 6 pick.

[Rondo9]

So the Celtics are the 4th worst team now. Can anyone tell me what are the chances that they'll maintain their or go into the top three?

[Celtics18]

soo we just lost to the worst team in the league, and now Humphries/bradley are out. no Rondo TN...so hopefully another loss the end of the season is setting up nicely for us.

at this point I cant see why anyone would root for wins. we are a horrible team, no chance of making the playoffs. might as well lose these last few games and get a high prospect who hopefully could turn into a cornerstone player

I'll give you a reason: To salvage a bit of pride to end the season.  The tank has already been accomplished.  The Celtics are going to end up with one of the worst eight records in the league. 

As far as I can tell, there really isn't a significant difference in potential between the guys in the 4 to 9 range in this year's deep draft. 

Rooting for losses at this point seems more like it's become part of a habit for the "tank squad" than actually setting us up better for the future.  Some fans have gotten so used to rooting for losses that they are going to continue even though what they had hoped for has already been accomplished.

A few wins to close out the season won't break our future.  It could, however, give our guys a sliver of confidence going into off-season.  To me, the latter is more valuable at this point.

There is absolutely a huge drop off between the top 6 and the rest.

It goes, Top 3, dropoff, top 6, big dropoff, rest.

We absolutely need to lose out here. Beating a few scrub teams down the stretch isn't going to help anyone's confidence.

Who are the top six?  I think we all know who the top 3 are, but after that it seems to get hazier.

Your choice of three of these:
Randle Smart Exum Vonleh

I would add Gordon to that list, making a distinct top eight as of now. 

[Donoghus]

I have Vonleh/Gordon on another level after Randle/Smart.  If the Celtics end up with #4 or #5, I'd be disappointed if they got either Vonleh/Gordon. 

Exum is the big unknown to me.  My whole view on him is based on what I've read.  I assume he's in that 2nd tier along with Randle & Smart for now.