This is what I see folks (like you) say... but who cares? The Spurs not having any good players was their choice, just like the Jazz sitting their good players is a choice. These are both proactive choices their respective teams made. They're effectively the same thing.
And ultimately... again, who cares? If fans of the Jazz and Kings don't like this... they'll respond with their wallets, just like Spurs fans did in the dark years when the stadium wasn't nearly as full and surely concessions and merch sales were down. That's the true cost of tanking. Clubs have decided it is a price they're willing to pay and fans have repeatedly proven they are quick to forgive the sins of the past once the team is good again.
The only "better lottery systems" that truly eliminate tanking are the ones like
@JMarkJohns suggested, but no one actually wants that because every single major American sport is based upon a system where the worst teams can get better and giving the worst teams the best incoming players is the best way to do that.
At the end of the day - people should just realize there isn't really a happy middle ground. All of the "fix tanking" ideas being thrown really just shift the tanking and gaming of system, but they won't eliminate it. I'm going to be laughing my ass off when whatever they try fails to achieve the stated "fix tanking" objective. The real choice is this: do we want a system that helps the worst teams get better, or do you want a system that completely eliminates tanking? Because it's an either or.
Lastly, the whole conversation is most hilarious to me because there seems to be momentum behind "flatten the odds" but ironically, the last time we flatted the odds was supposedly to eliminate tanking and all it did was create the tanking we are now trying to eliminate
. Every single outcome is easily modeled out to see the outcomes as actors respond to incentives... this isn't even that complex of a game.
