Draft lottery reforms coming as soon as next year

[Jailan34]

Tanking will always be an issue in the NBA because one player can change the dynamic of a franchise so quickly. Reorganizing the lottery will just create tanking in different areas of the standings and some teams who are truly terrible will be stuck in the bottom of the league for longer due to these changes.

[colincb]

Too many unintended consequences. Better to prevent an occurence like Cleveland winning 3 of 4 years than this or go to the Wheel. at a definuite date down the road after all existing trades have played out.

[RyNye]

The problem this creates is a team that is close to making the play-offs with no hope of going past the first round, is incentivized to tank out of the last spot.  So tanking will occur, just at a different place.

Actually, this isn't entirely true. I take it you didn't read the full article?

The probability of moving up for teams just out of the playoffs have barely increased at all. Only about 2 percent under this proposal. Too negligible for a team to tank. Though you are right that tanking will occur at a different place, because you will get mid to late lottery teams jockeying for position instead.

Of course, this is massively preferable.

People saying that you will never eliminate tanking are partially missing the point. The problem with the current system is that there is an incentive for teams to tank away an ENTIRE season (see: Philadelphia). This inevitably hurts the product. However, restructuring the odds takes away that type of incentive by reducing the chances that it actually works out. It replaces this with the potential of teams, as the article mentions, tanking to move from, say, the 12th spot to the 9th spot in the lottery, where there is an observed significant jump in top-pick probability.

However, teams in this position for most of the season will still likely have a shot of making the playoffs. We are talking about 9 and 10 seeds, here. This type of tanking would certainly happen, but it almost certainly wouldn't occur until late in the season; and given the smaller number of losses needed to shift these odds, would entail fewer games being thrown.

As it stands now, tanking isn't ignorable. It's an incredibly prominent and obvious part of the NBA. Under this proposed new system, tanking would be effectively ignorable. It would largely concern a handful of the last 10-15 games of the season, and only among a few teams.

[get_banners]

There's no way to avoid tanking of some sort. The issue with the system as-is (and even moreso with this) is that it doesn't differentiate between tankers and terrible teams. Teams might be awful because they're awful. It seems wrong to not give them the best pick and allow a team that is much better to leapfrog them. Yes, organizations tank (Philly is the most blatant example), so the team is made to be garbage, but there are teams that are just bad w/o management screwing them up on purpose. The most fair system, imho, is to follow every other league and have your pick based on your record. If organizations are blatantly tanking (Philly), the league should have some power to get involved. Maybe take away their pick if they trade all their good players for garbage (like Philly did).

[beklog]

"The proposal, which dominated the lottery-reform discussion in league meetings this week, is essentially an attempt to squeeze the lottery odds at either extreme toward a more balanced system in which all 14 teams have a relatively similar chance at the no. 1 pick, per sources familiar with the proposal.

The goal of this initial proposal is obvious:
To prevent out-and-out tanking among the league’s very worst teams for the No. 1 pick. Equalizing the odds for the five worst teams, and giving the next few clubs odds very close to that 11 percent chance, goes a long way toward removing the incentive to race toward the bottom. The odds decline slowly from there, with the team in the next spot holding a 10 percent chance."

source

[Celtics4ever]

I think Dan Gilbert called  large gambling debts from prominent NBA officals like Stern and Silver.  JK

CAVs are so lucky.

[beklog]

This will be bad news for Jazz and 76ers

[Mazingerz]

Wow Silver has made reforms in the span of one year since he's been the commissioner

[beklog]

Pretty good so far... from the Isaiah Austin draft to the Anti-tank proposal
I'll give him a medal if he stop the in-game sleeve jerseys just let it be just a merchandise don't force teams to wear them... 

[Moranis]

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/report--nba-considering-modifying-its-draft-lottery-process-205828311.html

I went with this link rather than the original report because I like the commentary Yahoo put on it (plus they had some very high praise of Ainge).  The proposal as reported by Zach Lowe is below.

From Lowe’s report:

The proposal, which dominated the lottery-reform discussion in league meetings this week, is essentially an attempt to squeeze the lottery odds at either extreme toward a more balanced system in which all 14 teams have a relatively similar chance at the no. 1 pick, per sources familiar with the proposal.
[…]
The goal of this initial proposal is obvious: to prevent out-and-out tanking among the league’s very worst teams for the No. 1 pick. Equalizing the odds for the five worst teams, and giving the next few clubs odds very close to that 11 percent chance, goes a long way toward removing the incentive to race toward the bottom. That slice of the reform targets team’s like last season’s Sixers and the 2011-12 Bobcats, both of which rather blatantly constructed rosters designed to be as bad as possible in those particular seasons. The end goal was a 25 percent chance at the top pick. The NBA’s proposal would grant such teams just an 11 percent shot at it, merely a hair better than the chances for mid-rung lottery teams that, in some seasons, are at least within spitting distance of the playoff race after 40 or so games.
By keeping the odds for the very best lottery teams on the low side — just 2 percent — the league is working to avoid building in any incentive for a team chasing the No. 8 spot to tank out of the playoffs.

[zerophase]

Please see this thread instead: http://forums.celticsblog.com/index.php?topic=72727.0

[zerophase]

Please see this thread instead: http://forums.celticsblog.com/index.php?topic=72727.0

[Robb]

Here's a great article about the absurdity of the draft process.  The important point is that originally the MLB draft wasn't designed to promote competitive balance.  It was designed to keep costs of incoming players down.  Sound similar to basketball?  Anyway, the article is baseball-centric, but it's really neat, nonetheless.

http://grantland.com/features/the-mlb-draft-work-quite-possibly-immoral-replace-it/

The easiest way to avoid tanking is to avoid the draft, which is a silly process anyway.  The only problem is that it's entertaining and no entertainment industry will get rid of something that's entertaining.  Seriously with all of these strategies to develop the league, they're only considering one thing:  "What will get more eyeballs?" and if it's Cleveland winning three lotteries in four years, then that's going to keep happening, maybe not explicitly, but implicitly.

[slamtheking]

growing to like the idea I proposed for changing the draft more and more
- put a 3-year moratorium on a team that gets the top pick from getting a top 3 pick again
- put a 1-year moratorium on a team that gets the 2nd or 3rd pick in the lottery.

for example, let's assume the next 3 years all the same teams are back in the lottery for arguments sake (just for simplicity and the thought that Lebron misses the playoffs is just a side bonus   ) 
--Next Year: Cleveland, Milwaukee and Philly would all be held out of the lottery draw with only the 11 remaining teams eligible.  odds for the drawing are recalculated based on a TBD formula. 
For argument's sake, we'll say the top 3 picks are Celtics (yay), Orlando and Utah.
--Year 2: Celtics, Orlando, Utah and Cleveland are held out.  the other 10 teams are eligible including Milwaukee and Philly after their 1 year ban.  odds are again recalculated. For argument's sake, we'll say the winners are Milwaukee, Detroit and Philly.
--Year 3: Celtics, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit and Philly are all held out.  9 teams are eligible.  odds are recalculated.
and so on.

prevents teams from being rewarded repeatedly year after year with top picks for not making the playoffs.  allows other teams to acquire good young talent. 

[JOMVP]

I still like the idea of the tournament of the bads at the end of the season.

8 worse teams fight to the death for the number 1 pick, the best of those 8 teams get the better seed. Could even increase it to 10 teams I suppose.

I'd be glued to NBA TV.