NBA Fixing the NBA

scott said:
I’m including the play-in in the context of this discussion, because that’s the NBA is currently set up. The Bucks are the only team currently outside of the cut-off line that might even remotely be trying, and at this point it’s not even entirely clear. Everyone else has completely given up.

But currently, the #14 lotto team has a 0.5% chance of the #1 pick. Your proposal (after expansion) would give them a 6.25% chance, slightly better than what the #8 lotto seed currently gets. Flattened odds may reduce the incentive for the absolutely worst to roll over, but I think it’s pretty clear how it gives teams on the cusp greater incentive to not make the playoffs by an entire order of magnitude.
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I think the 6.25% chance isn't enough to have teams on the cusp give away playoff revenue in any normal year. In this draft it would be a problem because there are three guys who project to be franchise players but the only drafts we have seen like that in modern history are 1984 and 2003, and even a draft with two is pretty rare. I don't remember tanking being a thing in the mid to late 80s once odds were flattened whereas the early 80s saw the most shameful tank of all time when the Rockets traded MVP Moses Malone for nothing to tank for Sampson and Olajuwon.
 
DAF86 said:
Wich teams aren't trying to make the playoffs? Hornets, Blazers, Heat, Warriors, Bucks. I see all of those teams fighting hard to make the playoffs. And I'm obviously not counting teams like the Clippers and Hawks that have no picks. The only play-in team that seems to have gone the tanking route is the Bulls, but that's after years of being stuck in mediocrity. With flatten odds this wouldn't be a problem, you either make the playoffs or you have as good a chance to get the #1 pick as any other team.
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Yeah Milwaukee is about the only one tanking because they know they have to trade Giannis this summer so what's the point of winning this year.
 
The goal of any lottery revamp would be to a) remove/reduce the incentive to be bad, while still b) giving the worst teams a path to improve.

My favorite anti-tank proposal (warning: it’s a little wacky) is to determine the draft order by reverse standings order BUT no team’s pick is tied to their own record. Instead, at the end of a given year, the worst teams (perhaps in selected via a lottery system) draft the team whose pick they control for the following year. For example, let’s say the Pacers win the lottery this year. Rather than drafting #1 in 2026, they would get the right to draft the Kings as the team whose pick they will control in 26-27, with the rest of the teams following suit down the order.

This decouples a team’s record from their draft pick while still providing an indirect way to distribute talent and maintain parity.
 
CGD said:
I don’t fully understand why people think the NBA is broken all of the sudden. It’s like all the podcasters had an agenda, decided to band together for 10 days, and created a narrative for content creation purposes.

That or there are some bad rating numbers that we will never see.
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I actually kind of agree with this. The media - both legacy and otherwise - loves to have content and that means in the middle of a season bitching about things acting like they are huge problems when they are not. Do I GAF that the Jazz are tanking again? No not really. I don't watch Jazz games, and while it sucks for their fans, thats kind of when they can vote with their wallet. I don't know I just don't give a shit honestly.

I do like getting rid of the conferences, because I LOVE a balanced schedule and I think you could actually have a regular season trophy at that point like European Soccer leagues. I agree the owners are going to be extremely resistant to lowering the amount of games, which is why we have the NBA cup, but I think you could simply expand the NBA cup as a competition at that point to make up the difference. All of this takes us closer to the European soccer model which is much better for competition, IMO. Of course, the real lynchpin in that is relegation and promotion which isn't going to happen but the revenue model Scott brings is a watered down version of that. Staying in the upper divisions in soccer is important becuase of the revenue implications. You should make less money if you are at the bottom of the table and I don't mind that one bit. But it does hurt smaller markets.

As for the ASG, you can't fix it. You can't fix the dunk contest, you an't fix the game, because the only way to do that is to make the players give a shit about it and unless they are really competitive then they just don't seem to GAF. Edwards and Wemby did that shit last night and it was awesome, but then you have players on the court like Segun who obviously don't fucking care and it ruins it all. But honestly its the ASG, who gives a shit. Has it ever been anything has ever really cared about who won? No.
 
Eliminate divisions and conferences. Play a 16 game playoff bracket, seeded by records. Play 82 games, but shorten them to 40minutes like every other level of men’s and women’s basketball. Eliminate consecutive top 4 appearances. If you get there a second time, you pick #5. If there’s more than one repeater, have a supplemental lottery to sort that out, 5 thru whatever. Those picks outside of the top 4 are good enough to improve your team, but not likely to net you a transformative player.
 
utah-jazz-v-san-antonio-spurs.jpg

 
Flattening odds. Will be an improvement over the current motive of more losses = more ping pong balls.
No one has gotten more lucky then the Spurs.
3 Franchise players, 2 of them GOATs and David a solid HOFer. Get outa here.

True, the mid teams who are on the bubble will tank for a shot at the #1. But it will nonetheless be an improvement.
 
Can we bring in fixing the reffing into this conversation or should we save that for another thread?
Stern and Stern Jr. were/are both so horribly compromised.
DK that the owners or for that matter the players themselves want it fixed.
 
@MannyIG pretty much mic dropped the thread... but just for the sake of conversation... how about this for an idea:

Incoming rookies are all free agents, but the size of the rookie contract you can offer is scaled similar to the way they are now - so the team with the worst record would have the rookie scale for the #1 pick, etc. You could have the opening free agent period only open to non-playoff teams, so that Cooper Flagg can't agree to just sign with the Celtics on a bargain deal he would hope to make up via endorsements. But, if he wanted to sign with Blazers and take the #11 salary slot, he could. After the first 14 rookie free agents sign, then it opens up to the rest of the teams. You could still trade "rookie free agents allocations" (formerly known as draft picks).

I'm not sure how much I actually like this idea, it's just something I thought of that could be kind of interesting.
 
MannyIG said:
As for the ASG, you can't fix it. You can't fix the dunk contest, you an't fix the game, because the only way to do that is to make the players give a shit about it and unless they are really competitive then they just don't seem to GAF. Edwards and Wemby did that shit last night and it was awesome, but then you have players on the court like Segun who obviously don't fucking care and it ruins it all. But honestly its the ASG, who gives a shit. Has it ever been anything has ever really cared about who won? No.
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100% agree, but it doesn't need to be joke-level basketball like it has been in some recent years. Guys not even crossing half-court, zero resistance in the paint, chucking shots from half court...it almost felt like they were making a mockery of the game. It's never gonna be the level of regular season basketball, and it doesn't need to be. At least make it look like you are playing an organized game.

I was perfectly fine with the level of effort last night, maybe even a little surprised. They were still playing at like 60%, but guys were contesting shots at the rim, they were getting a hand of up on threes, they were getting back on leak outs (for the most part, Stripes took advantage of that against World for a while). We actually saw a challenge in an All Star game for god's sake.

We'll see how it goes next year...players got up for it because of the change in dynamic, but that will wear off eventually. But I think if you can get at least a few guys to continue to play with effort like Wemby, Ant, Brown, and others were...it forces the others to follow suit. It used to stand out if you were the only one playing defense (like Giannis did that one year), now it would stand out if you are the only player on your team half-assing it.

Otherwise, apparently you are counting on legends like Jordan retiring or Kobe dying to actually give a shit and make it a memorable game.
 
scott said:
@MannyIG pretty much mic dropped the thread... but just for the sake of conversation... how about this for an idea:

Incoming rookies are all free agents, but the size of the rookie contract you can offer is scaled similar to the way they are now - so the team with the worst record would have the rookie scale for the #1 pick, etc. You could have the opening free agent period only open to non-playoff teams, so that Cooper Flagg can't agree to just sign with the Celtics on a bargain deal he would hope to make up via endorsements. But, if he wanted to sign with Blazers and take the #11 salary slot, he could. After the first 14 rookie free agents sign, then it opens up to the rest of the teams. You could still trade "rookie free agents allocations" (formerly known as draft picks).

I'm not sure how much I actually like this idea, it's just something I thought of that could be kind of interesting.
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This wouldn't really help the worse teams though. The top talented players could bypass the shittier teams, take the financial hit for a bit, and make mid-level teams a lot better while the bottom feeders stay bottom feeding.
 
spurs2112 said:
This wouldn't really help the worse teams though. The top talented players could bypass the shittier teams, take the financial hit for a bit, and make mid-level teams a lot better while the bottom feeders stay bottom feeding.
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But I think that's actually one of the good parts about the proposal. Bad teams would no longer have an incentive to be absolutely atrocious, because it would scare off the potential rookie free agents. So now the worst teams have something to play for, because they want to present themselves as competent franchises that the player can help elevate.

I think the bigger problem would just be the unattractiveness of certain markets compared to others, outside of just the team element. Utah, Portland, Milwaukee, Memphis, San Antonio, etc. could be disadvantaged in a year where they are in there with the Lakers, Clippers, Heat, Knicks, Nets and Bulls (as a hypothetical example)
 
Dex said:
100% agree, but it doesn't need to be joke-level basketball like it has been in some recent years. Guys not even crossing half-court, zero resistance in the paint, chucking shots from half court...it almost felt like they were making a mockery of the game. It's never gonna be the level of regular season basketball, and it doesn't need to be. At least make it look like you are playing an organized game.

I was perfectly fine with the level of effort last night, maybe even a little surprised. They were still playing at like 60%, but guys were contesting shots at the rim, they were getting a hand of up on threes, they were getting back on leak outs (for the most part, Stripes took advantage of that against World for a while). We actually saw a challenge in an All Star game for god's sake.

We'll see how it goes next year...players got up for it because of the change in dynamic, but that will wear off eventually. But I think if you can get at least a few guys to continue to play with effort like Wemby, Ant, Brown, and others were...it forces the others to follow suit. It used to stand out if you were the only one playing defense (like Giannis did that one year), now it would stand out if you are the only player on your team half-assing it.

Otherwise, apparently you are counting on legends like Jordan retiring or Kobe dying to actually give a shit and make it a memorable game.
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I think part of the issue with the All-Star Game is that its in the middle of the season. I personally don't care for the game but can we expect top level players to go all out risking injury for a totally meaningless game. Most of the all-stars are on playoff teams. I would think the risk of injury would weigh on their performance a bit. You also probably have coaching staff in their ears as well.
 
spurs2112 said:
I think part of the issue with the All-Star Game is that its in the middle of the season. I personally don't care for the game but can we expect top level players to go all out risking injury for a totally meaningless game. Most of the all-stars are on playoff teams. I would think the risk of injury would weigh on their performance a bit. You also probably have coaching staff in their ears as well.
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Agreed, but there's a balance to be struck. They probably play harder in practice.

The goddamn Washington Generals can at least pretend to look like they care more than the All-Stars usually do.
 
scott said:
But I think that's actually one of the good parts about the proposal. Bad teams would no longer have an incentive to be absolutely atrocious, because it would scare off the potential rookie free agents. So now the worst teams have something to play for, because they want to present themselves as competent franchises that the player can help elevate.

I think the bigger problem would just be the unattractiveness of certain markets compared to others, outside of just the team element. Utah, Portland, Milwaukee, Memphis, San Antonio, etc. could be disadvantaged in a year where they are in there with the Lakers, Clippers, Heat, Knicks, Nets and Bulls (as a hypothetical example)
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Ok. I can see that. Thats kinda of what I threw out on the previous page about making teams win a certain amount of games to even be eligible to get a top pick. For example lets say you have to win at least 35 games to get a 14% percent chance at the number one pick. Every loss below that your odds get lowered. I think this would force teams to be some what decent and try to win games. You would essentially be rewarding teams for trying to win as oppose to losing on purpose. Playoff teams excluded of course.
 
spurs2112 said:
Ok. I can see that. Thats kinda of what I threw out on the previous page about making teams win a certain amount of games to even be eligible to get a top pick. For example lets say you have to win at least 35 games to get a 14% percent chance at the number one pick. Every loss below that your odds get lowered. I think this would force teams to be some what decent and try to win games. You would essentially be rewarding teams for trying to win as oppose to losing on purpose. Playoff teams excluded of course.
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Yeah, at the end of the day a lot of these proposals are just going to be a variation on the same theme... the idea with any of them is going to be what achieves the objective with the fewest unintended consequences.

But, ultimately I don't really think they should do anything. Just keep fining teams who behave especially poorly.
 
scott said:
Yeah, at the end of the day a lot of these proposals are just going to be a variation on the same theme... the idea with any of them is going to be what achieves the objective with the fewest unintended consequences.

But, ultimately I don't really think they should do anything. Just keep fining teams who behave especially poorly.
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Yeah but I think making teams try would overall produce a better product. It could make for more frequent better match ups as oppose for waiting for the OKC, Houston, Denver, etc. to come around.
 
LeBowen said:
I don't understand how everyone is fine with NBA players not having any official games for between 4 (finalists) and 6 (lottery teams) months.
The contracts keep increasing and they're trying to convince us that keeping the same number of games, but spreading them over a couple of more months would be an issue?

The opening night should be in early September, that's 6 extra weeks to get rid of all the scheduling issues.
Two full months is more than enough rest for them and there's no valid argument against it.

No more b2bs, better scheduling for fans that attend games which would undoubtedly increase the attendance averages.
Even the TV viewership would increase because not many people watch basketball every day.

But then the players would complain because most of them want to spend a third of the year doing mostly nothing, which is unheard of in any other sport that isn't a full contact, high injury risk like NFL or martial arts are.
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I mean they already stretched it out, which is my point. Back in the day NBA teams had training camps for several weeks with 2 practices per day. Now training camp is 2 weeks with 1 practice per day. That's why they are getting injured so frequently. It's not the amount of games, it's the lack of preparation. Players back then used to workout so hard during training camp that it made the games feel easy. Then the player association stepped in and wanted a shorter training camp and got rid of 2 practices per day and here we are with everybody getting injured because they are chilling all summer long and workout for 30 minutes.
 
If you let the top picks go where they may, Utah, Sacramento, and Indy won’t have to tank, they’ll just naturally suck, and they’ll do it until the sun burns out.
 
Exstatic said:
If you let the top picks go where they may, Utah, Sacramento, and Indy won’t have to tank, they’ll just naturally suck, and they’ll do it until the sun burns out.
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If the bottom teams end up being those teams, the player's won't have much of a choice, but to choose one of them.
 
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