NBA Fixing the NBA

[Exstatic]

I was about to say this as well. Going back to the old odds repairs about 60% of the problem.

The old odds were in no way flatter than now. On the contrary, they were steeper. Currently, 1-3 all have 14%. Previously #1 had 25%. Terrible.

 

[spurraider21]

a) i dont like the whole "you cant pick twice in the top 4 in consecutive years" stuff. maybe you can talk about that for 3 straight years, but if the goal (big if, i guess) is promoting league parity, you dont want a shit team to stay shit extra long just because they drafted a bum one year. this isnt supposed to be about punishing bad drafting

b) i hate the "no picking top 4 after conference finals" one too. teams fall apart.

c) i dont really care about the pick protection stuff, though i enjoy clever use of protections like the pacers/clippers trade this year

d) making lotto odds dependent on 2 years record could just push teams into longer term tanking. ie being really bad for 1 year only netted them a #8 pick, now they didnt get the help they need to really turn things around and are inevitably going to tank again

e) i love the idea of extending lotto to the play-in teams

f) i like having lotto odds freeze earlier. or ive seen the hybrid points system where up to a certain date, its reverse standings as always, but then theres some allocation of points for teams that win. now, players dont necessarily care about winning to have a team draft their replacement, but players always want to play hard to put on good tape and earn contracts, proving they can win games. if you extend that incentive of winning to management, it should work well

 

[scott]

I get what yall trying to say just fine, I just disagree with it. I have no problem with the 14 worst team in the league getting a higher pick than the team with the worst record in the league.

You still have to explain why yall think that, for example: this offseason, the Bulls getting the #1 pick over the Nets is such a bad or unfair thing.

Because the 14th worst team is already considerably better than the absolute worst team. The idea of a reverse order draft is to help the worst teams get better. By completely randomizing the order of the 14 worst teams, you are limiting the means to do that. If anything, perhaps the NBA should just do away with the lottery altogether and just award picks based on record like the NFL does. Why isn't tanking a topic in the NFL, where teams have 100% control over where they pick?

Maybe it would make the worst 14 teams closer to each other, but it wouldn't do anything to actually make them actually competitive on a league scale. So all you've really done at that point is de-emphasized the draft as a strategic team building element, since now it's just completely random. This would hurt small markets the most, who rely on the draft because they aren't as attractive destinations for free agents, and players have more power than ever to force themselves out of teams they don't like.

You seem to have an interest in making the bottom half of the table more competitive with one another... why? Does being the 11th best team in the West carry some sort of pride over being the 15th best team? You want to pair it with financial incentives for the owners... but that's just rich people passing relatively small (by their standards) dollar amounts between each other. The least valuable team in the league is worth an estimated $3.5B... getting Wemby added an estimated $500MM-1B to the value of the Spurs. But you think they're going to trade in that for the chance at making an extra $10MM for the privilege of getting swept in the first round of the playoffs?

But even beyond all of that... there is an even simpler explanation... why do I want the future prospects of the sport being based on perfectly random events? It's not the National Roulette Association... if we're going to take away team building strategy, why not just award the NBA Championship to the winner of a coin flip and skip the whole basketball part altogether?

Also... no beef if we disagree. I am just being clear on what we disagree on here. You want the top talent just assigned at random. I want teams to be able to control all aspects of team building (draft, free agency, trades, development). But if we disagree because one of us things 1 + 1 = 3... that's not a disagreement, that's just one of us being wrong.

 

[scott]

f) i like having lotto odds freeze earlier. or ive seen the hybrid points system where up to a certain date, its reverse standings as always, but then theres some allocation of points for teams that win. now, players dont necessarily care about winning to have a team draft their replacement, but players always want to play hard to put on good tape and earn contracts, proving they can win games. if you extend that incentive of winning to management, it should work well

I've seen some interesting hybrid points models that sound good on the surface, like having points award for worst record up to a date, and then you earn more points for wins after that. The idea there is to make the bad teams want to compete late in the season... but then that just means teams will tank at the start of the season and then hope to flip a switch at whatever date (or maybe make a big deadline trade so that they can "win the lottery"). But really that's just re-arranging incentives in different ways that I'm not totally sure are aligned with what we're trying to do here.

 

[spurraider21]

I've seen some interesting hybrid points models that sound good on the surface, like having points award for worst record up to a date, and then you earn more points for wins after that. The idea there is to make the bad teams want to compete late in the season... but then that just means teams will tank at the start of the season and then hope to flip a switch at whatever date (or maybe make a big deadline trade so that they can "win the lottery"). But really that's just re-arranging incentives in different ways that I'm not totally sure are aligned with what we're trying to do here.

i think the idea is you are less likely to shut down a star in november, whereas by february/march you take an injury like Fox's finger and say "may as well shut him down"

 

[tearsofmorningdew]

Because the 14th worst team is already considerably better than the absolute worst team. The idea of a reverse order draft is to help the worst teams get better. By completely randomizing the order of the 14 worst teams, you are limiting the means to do that. If anything, perhaps the NBA should just do away with the lottery altogether and just award picks based on record like the NFL does. Why isn't tanking a topic in the NFL, where teams have 100% control over where they pick?

Maybe it would make the worst 14 teams closer to each other, but it wouldn't do anything to actually make them actually competitive on a league scale. So all you've really done at that point is de-emphasized the draft as a strategic team building element, since now it's just completely random. This would hurt small markets the most, who rely on the draft because they aren't as attractive destinations for free agents, and players have more power than ever to force themselves out of teams they don't like.

You seem to have an interest in making the bottom half of the table more competitive with one another... why? Does being the 11th best team in the West carry some sort of pride over being the 15th best team? You want to pair it with financial incentives for the owners... but that's just rich people passing relatively small (by their standards) dollar amounts between each other. The least valuable team in the league is worth an estimated $3.5B... getting Wemby added an estimated $500MM-1B to the value of the Spurs. But you think they're going to trade in that for the chance at making an extra $10MM for the privilege of getting swept in the first round of the playoffs?

But even beyond all of that... there is an even simpler explanation... why do I want the future prospects of the sport being based on perfectly random events? It's not the National Roulette Association... if we're going to take away team building strategy, why not just award the NBA Championship to the winner of a coin flip and skip the whole basketball part altogether?

Re: NFL tanking concerns, a single player (even QB) cannot affect the game nearly as much as a Jordan, Shaq, Duncan, Wemby

 

[scott]

It’s amazing that the NBA got it right out of the gate in 1985: equal odds for each lottery team. It lowers the worst, or in many cases the fake worst team’s odds from 14% to 7.14%, raises the #14 team from 0.5% to 7.14%, and eliminates any incentive to tank all season for those better odds, because there are none. In addition, it would kill the play in tournament, because no one would want to win the games. Completely flatten the odds, eliminate the play in, and you might be left with a couple of teams scuffling at the very end, which we had back before the play in, anyway.

And yet in 1985 there were still multiple teams with with win totals in the 20s... it didn't stop bad teams from being bad, it just meant that the team with the worst record ended up picking 7th.

(And, FYI, there were only 7 teams in the lottery back then, so each team had a 14.29% chance at the #1 pick).

 

[scott]

Re: NFL tanking concerns, a single player (even QB) cannot affect the game nearly as much as a Jordan, Shaq, Duncan, Wemby

I agree - but I also think this is even less of a reason to just assign those players completely at random (which is what happens when you flatten the odds) and how by doing so you don't eliminate tanking, you actually increase the number of teams who will want to do it. When there is a Wemby in the draft, every team who isn't a legit title contender is going to try to miss the playoffs, even if it is by one game, because they'll have an equal chance at a franchise altering player.

The skewed odds make it less likely for a borderline playoff team to tank - the payoff just isn't there most of the time (though the last two lotteries have bucked that trend)

 

[Guru of Nothing]

New rules to be gamed in 3...2...

 

[Exstatic]

And yet in 1985 there were still multiple teams with with win totals in the 20s... it didn't stop bad teams from being bad, it just meant that the team with the worst record ended up picking 7th.

(And, FYI, there were only 7 teams in the lottery back then, so each team had a 14.29% chance at the #1 pick).

It also eliminates the treadmill. You don’t need to be awful to get good.

We’re not going to agree on this, because you seem to want status quo or something close, awful teams trying to not beat each other regularly, and not even competing against good teams. Forget the gambling outfit sponsors, I’d be banging on Silvers door demanding a refund if I were the TV and streaming partners. The next deal will be a fraction of this one if they don’t smash tanking.

 

[scott]

It also eliminates the treadmill. You don’t need to be awful to get good.

We’re not going to agree on this, because you seem to want status quo or something close, awful teams trying to not beat each other regularly, and not even competing against good teams. Forget the gambling outfit sponsors, I’d be banging on Silvers door demanding a refund if I were the TV and streaming partners. The next deal will be a fraction of this one if they don’t smash tanking.

It doesn't eliminate the treadmill, it just randomizes who gets to escape it. If you're on the treadmill, and you're not selected as a winner, you're still going to be on it.

I want teams to be able to control their destinies. You seem to want their destinies decided by random. No thanks.

As for your comment about the next TV deal... it's not like tanking just started this season, yet the NBA just signed this deal... and ratings are up an estimated 16% YOY. The only thing that has changed is that Sam Presti and Kalshi started complaining about it, and you took the bait like a sucker.

 

[Sugus]

I kinda burned myself out on debating this topic, but FYI there was a Governor's Meeting regarding the whole tanking topic, and it went about just as I had imagined it would;

Adam Silver tells teams NBA plans to make anti-tanking rule changes: Sources

According to one source, there was a consensus on the call that this issue threatens the integrity and long-term viability of the league.

www.nytimes.com

There was, according to the source, a consensus on the call that this issue threatens the integrity and long-term viability of the league. And when Silver emphasized the importance of finding a solution, there was an acknowledgement that a change to the current system is needed.

As one general manager on the call put it in regards to tanking, “We’re all to blame.”

Once again I can only thank Basketball Jesus that we made out like bandits already with Wemby, Castle, Harper. Some of the ideas floated actually included forbidding teams from making consecutive picks in the lottery, so that might just never happen again

 

[scott]

In the Spirit of “fixing the NBA’ - here is a completely different but even more radical idea…

Private Equity is buying up stakes in NCAA teams, why not just have NBA teams have stakes in them and act as feeder schools? You basically push scouting and development down a level and college programs would take the identity of their parent club. Could also be a way for NBA teams to enhance and deeper regional connections with fan bases.

This basically would completely dissolve whatever is left of the original spirit of collegiate sports… but it’s kind of happening anyway, so let’s just lean into it.

For the record, I actually don’t really love this idea… but it’s more interesting than just completely randomizing the draft order, IMO. And it would eliminate tanking because there would be no reason to tank… your development pipeline is what it is.

 

[Exstatic]

It doesn't eliminate the treadmill, it just randomizes who gets to escape it. If you're on the treadmill, and you're not selected as a winner, you're still going to be on it.

I want teams to be able to control their destinies. You seem to want their destinies decided by random. No thanks.

As for your comment about the next TV deal... it's not like tanking just started this season, yet the NBA just signed this deal... and ratings are up an estimated 16% YOY. The only thing that has changed is that Sam Presti and Kalshi started complaining about it, and you took the bait like a sucker.

Teams “ controlling their own destiny” is a garbage product.

 

[scott]

Teams “ controlling their own destiny” is a garbage product.

Let’s just watch the National Roulette League instead then

 

[O_V]

Does the NBA do revenue sharing? If they do revenue sharing, they just need to do revenue sharing based on your record. Then do the entire first round by lottery and the second round by record.

 

[scott]

Does the NBA do revenue sharing? If they do revenue sharing, they just need to do revenue sharing based on your record. Then do the entire first round by lottery and the second round by record.

Yes - basketball related revenue is split between teams and players (in the form of the salary pool).

To qualify for the revenue share, a team must generate at least 70% of the league average revenue.

 

[DAF86]

Because the 14th worst team is already considerably better than the absolute worst team. The idea of a reverse order draft is to help the worst teams get better. By completely randomizing the order of the 14 worst teams, you are limiting the means to do that. If anything, perhaps the NBA should just do away with the lottery altogether and just award picks based on record like the NFL does. Why isn't tanking a topic in the NFL, where teams have 100% control over where they pick?

Considerably worse, really? Are the Jazz really considerably worse than the Bulls, or are they just blatantly tanking?

Are the Pacers really the worst team on the league or are they just taking advantage of the injury to their franchise player to also blatantly tank? How much fairer is that the Pacers get the #1 pick over any other team?

Maybe it would make the worst 14 teams closer to each other, but it wouldn't do anything to actually make them actually competitive on a league scale. So all you've really done at that point is de-emphasized the draft as a strategic team building element, since now it's just completely random. This would hurt small markets the most, who rely on the draft because they aren't as attractive destinations for free agents, and players have more power than ever to force themselves out of teams they don't like.

How wouldn't it make them competitive? You are still getting a bottom 14 team to pick #1. Also, it isn't like the #1 pick is the only one that matters. Any team that hits on their draft pick will become competitive, just like it happens now.

You seem to have an interest in making the bottom half of the table more competitive with one another... why? Does being the 11th best team in the West carry some sort of pride over being the 15th best team?

I think my interest is pretty clear and is the interest of all the fans that want to fix tanking: for teams to not throw games away and sit healthy players. It's kinda the whole point of this whole topic, tbh.

You want to pair it with financial incentives for the owners... but that's just rich people passing relatively small (by their standards) dollar amounts between each other. The least valuable team in the league is worth an estimated $3.5B... getting Wemby added an estimated $500MM-1B to the value of the Spurs. But you think they're going to trade in that for the chance at making an extra $10MM for the privilege of getting swept in the first round of the playoffs?

Financial incentive not only for the owners, but for the players and the coaches too. I don't know how much it would take but it will need to be something that makes it worth it. It's not like Wembys come by every draft, tbh.

But even beyond all of that... there is an even simpler explanation... why do I want the future prospects of the sport being based on perfectly random events? It's not the National Roulette Association... if we're going to take away team building strategy, why not just award the NBA Championship to the winner of a coin flip and skip the whole basketball part altogether?

It is not completely random, you still need to nail your picks. Also, it is not like tanking now is some kind of building strategy that guarantees success. If not, we wouldn't have these teams that seemingly suck forever. The truth is that with flattened odds you will still need a mixture of luck with competent roster building, just like it happens now. I don't know why you try to pretend like scouting and roster building will become a coin toss with flattened odds.

Also... no beef if we disagree. I am just being clear on what we disagree on here. You want the top talent just assigned at random. I want teams to be able to control all aspects of team building (draft, free agency, trades, development). But if we disagree because one of us things 1 + 1 = 3... that's not a disagreement, that's just one of us being wrong.

As if that didn't happen now. Nico Harris pulled the worst trade of all-time, still tried to be competitive, failed embarrasingly and was rewarded with Cooper Flagg. What the fuck are you talking about?

 

[scott]

@DAF86 - are the Blazers considerably better than the Kings? Because those are the 14th worst and worst teams. If you wanna have a conversation, do it in good faith, instead of cherry picking the 6th and 10th worst teams. Stopped reading whatever you wrote there, since you clearly have no interest in accurately representing the conversation.

 

[ambchang]

I've seen some interesting hybrid points models that sound good on the surface, like having points award for worst record up to a date, and then you earn more points for wins after that. The idea there is to make the bad teams want to compete late in the season... but then that just means teams will tank at the start of the season and then hope to flip a switch at whatever date (or maybe make a big deadline trade so that they can "win the lottery"). But really that's just re-arranging incentives in different ways that I'm not totally sure are aligned with what we're trying to do here.

Also teams with tough schedules at the start of the season and easy ones at the end benefits greatly from this. The league can control this so you bet the lakers will get a good chunk of bad teams at year end

 

[DAF86]

@DAF86 - are the Blazers considerably better than the Kings? Because those are the 14th worst and worst teams. If you wanna have a conversation, do it in good faith, instead of cherry picking the 6th and 10th worst teams. Stopped reading whatever you wrote there, since you clearly have no interest in accurately representing the conversation.

How are the 15 and 41 Pacers the 6th worse record on the league? i knew they were the worst record in the East and I just assumed they were the worst overall. That still doesn't take away from any of my points, and I was clearly not arguing in bad faith.

And you didn't stopped reading, you just don't have any reasonable counter-arguments to the other points I made. Trying to say otherwise trully is arguing in bad faith.

I have no intentions to start a beef so I will just say that there's no perfect solution to tanking, but if the goal is to stop teams from throwing games away and sit healthy players, the flattened odds is clearly a better solution than what we currently have. You can like the current system and think that tanking needs no fixing, but that's a whole different argument.

 

[scott]

How are the 15 and 41 Pacers the 6th worse record on the league? i knew they were the worst record in the East and I just assumed they were the worst overall. That still doesn't take away from any of my points, and I was clearly not arguing in bad faith.

And you didn't stopped reading, you just don't have any reasonable counter-argument to the other points I made. Trying to say otherwise trully is arguing in bad faith.

I have no intentions to start a beef so I will just say that there's no perfect solution to tanking, but if the goal is for stop teams from throwing games away and sit healthy players, the flattened odds is clearly a better solution than what we currently have. You can like the current system and think that tanking needs no fixing, but that's a whole different argument.

You said the Jazz and the Bulls. You made a choice to pick those teams. The 6th and the 10th worst. Doesn’t get anymore bad faith than that.

You’re right about one thing - there is no perfect solution. You think flat odds is a better solution that what we have now, but it’s obvious to a lot if people (including those who’s opinions are granted much larger platform than mine) why it isn’t. But that’s your preference, and it’s fine.

Your solution is indeed simple, but I think there is an even simpler one… just adjust the player participation policy to stop what the Jazz are doing if the league doesn’t want it (though I think the fine will do the trick).

I’m not looking forward to the post Wemby era when we’re stuck on the treadmill and unable to utilize the one tool that’s made us successful.

 

[DAF86]

You said the Jazz and the Bulls. You made a choice to pick those teams. The 6th and the 10th worst. Doesn’t get anymore bad faith than that.

You’re right about one thing - there is no perfect solution. You think flat odds is a better solution that what we have now, but it’s obvious to a lot if people (including those who’s opinions are granted much larger platform than mine) why it isn’t. But that’s your preference, and it’s fine. You can continue with the “I don’t understand why people are against it” routine if you like… but it’s been explained to you. If you still don’t understand it, that’s on you.

I literally wrote this:

Are the Pacers really the worst team on the league or are they just taking advantage of the injury to their franchise player to also blatantly tank?

So I was clearly never trying to imply that the Jazz have the worst record in the league. I was just pointing out that the Jazz do in fact have a worse record than the Bulls and according to your line of thinking it would be unfair for the Bulls to have the same odds of getting a high pick as the Jazz. I'm saying it wouldn't.

 

[O_V]

Let this be a lesson to every professional sports league to steer clear of any kind of rule that incentivizes a team not to put their best product on the field and to not try to win at all times.

 

[scott]

I literally wrote this:



So I was clearly never trying to imply that the Jazz have the worst record in the league. I was just pointing out that the Jazz do in fact have a worse record than the Bulls and according to your line of thinking it would be unfair for the Bulls to have equals odds of getting a high pick than the Jazz. I'm saying it wouldn't.

You’re first words responding to me saying the worst team is considerably worse than the 14th worst team were:

Considerably worse, really? Are the Jazz really considerably worse than the Bulls, or are they just blatantly tanking?

You’re just going to pretend this didn’t happen?

I’m saying it would be unwise for the Blazers, Clippers (which goes to OKC), Hornets, Hawks to have the same odds at the #1 pick as the Kings. You disagree. Understood.