How Tanking ruins the NBA and possible solutions

[green]

There needs to be a penalty for repeating teams that are in the say top 6 of the lottery, every concurrent year you should lose a % of ping pong balls and even a certain times over a determined amount of time. For example 4 times out of 6 or 7 years. Just saying that in addition to or as a supplement of other ideas.

So, you would take away Griffin from LA? Rose away from Chicago? What about Orlando? They were screwed by Shaq, got unlucky with Hardaway, then screwed by Dwight. Should they be penalized for that? What happens if you take away Beal from Washington? Washington being good is a lot better for the NBA than punishing them for some bad picks. What about the Grizzlies? They spent 3-4 years in the top 4. Look what they were able to build. You want to take that away? That would ruin the NBA a lot quicker than anything you propose.

 

[♪alt13]

I disagree. If the lottery was drawn on the top 5, with worse odds for #1, would Utah be doing anything different this year? I doubt it. It wouldn't change anything.

Probably not, but it may change the tanking that is going to happen later in the season when teams realize they are not likely to make the playoffs.

 

[green]

Probably not, but it may change the tanking that is going to happen later in the season when teams realize they are not likely to make the playoffs.

Maybe, but how would that be any different than this year? Right now, isn't Utah the only team actively tanking? They are in the West. In the East, NY and Brooklyn aren't tanking. I don't think Philly is actively tanking either. Milwaukee has said they are trying to make the playoffs this year to get a new arena.

I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Utah knows they have only one shot to win it all, and it is drafting another superstar. This draft has 2-5 superstars in it. The Jazz are going after that guy.

I guess I just don't see tanking as hurting the NBA. Heck, if the Jazz get Jabari, and he is as marketable as Durrant, then isn't that better for the NBA? They have just taken a 100% irrelevant team, and sold some Jabari jerseys in Chicago and LA, two cities that have never sold a Utah jersey before. That isn't a bad thing at all.

Worst case scenario is that Utah drafts the wrong player, still sucks, and nobody cares.

 

[8]

wtl; dr

Why would want this 'problem' addressed? The Jazz are killin it

 

[nateboz]

You want to fix the NBA.
NO restrictions on free agent contracts period. Rookie contracts, they are kept the same with 3 & 4 year- Team options. Hard salary cap NO EXCEPTIONS. If you have an injury and to sign a new player you must remain under the hard cap. And lastly non guaranteed contracts with penalties are available. The penalties are a $3-1 exchange. Meaning you cut a guy that was paid 3 million. You have only 1 Million to spend on another player. The penalty will count as long as the original contract was signed.
That would make the NBA so much more competitive. If stars want to all sign on one team they will literally have to pay for it. That would force teams to make wise money decisions, and the talent would be much more evenly distributed.

 

[8]

If you want higher quality basketball just shorten the games and the season. Force more consistent effort.

 

[JimLes]

So, you don't want parody in the NBA?

I prefer a good farce to a parody, but then again, the NBA has been a farce since the Jordan years.

Again, how does a team like Utah stay solvent without a clear way to get better? You haven't answered that question.

How did the Jazz stay solvent for decades without a lottery pick?

I mean, the question you're asking is "What would ****ty teams do without the promise of the lottery?" Well, they'd stay ****ty, probably. Funny enough, that's what most of them do right now, anyway. In the past 15 years, you managed to find two examples of franchises who found long term stability and success through the lottery. I could give you another 10 who just kept effing up their lottery picks year after year.

The Clippers had a stretch of 11 years right after they started doing weighted lottery odds where they had 10 top 10 picks. Ten! This included a stretch of 4 consecutive years where they picked first, fourth, third, and second. What did they parlay this into? Sweet jack all. Those four players averaged less than 3 years with the team. That's less than the rookie contract!

More recent stuff? The Kings are well on their way to an 8th straight losing season. They've had 6 top 10 picks in the past 7 years. Again, how does their future look?

The Cavs have had 4 top 4 picks in the three years since LeBron left them. Two top picks. Ridiculous. How do they look? The future's so bright, you gotta wear shades, eh?

The Raptors. They haven't made the playoffs in 5 years. Had a number one pick 7 years ago, and three more top 10 picks since. Dynasty, right? Did I also mention that they had 4 top 8 picks between 2003 and 2006. Those cats should all be peaking right about now, eh?

And should I even bring up the Knicks? Between 2002 and 2009, they had 5 top 10 picks. They could've had a few more around there since, but they keep trading them away. Same thing, should be peaking right about now, right?

What about the successful teams? The Spurs whom you use as an argument have had one top 20 pick since they got Duncan. One! They were built through draft alright, but late first round and below.

The Pacers? Their starting five were picked 10th, 17th, 17th, 40th, and 26th. Three of the five weren't even Pacers' picks.

The Heat? We all know how they were built.

The Blazers? They picked Lillard 6th. That's it. The only other player in their 10 man rotation was drafted by someone else.

The Clippers may have gotten Griffin through the draft, but they are where they are because of the Chris Paul trade.

Which leaves the Warriors and the Thunder as the only teams that were actually built thanks to the lottery.

If the lottery is a "clear way to get better" for ****ty teams, I'm sorry to tell you, it ain't working.

 

[NUMBERICA]

Demote one team from each conference to the D-League in a lottery system (where the odds of winning the draft lottery would be similar to losing the D-League lottery). The finalists in the D-League finals get entry into the league the next year with the winner getting better NBA draft lottery odds. This has the additional benefit of making the D-League better, which would likely improve that "D" aspect which seems to be lacking.

This would enable the league to have only two divisions per conference, not three. This makes divisions kind of matter, or at least more so than now. Make inter-division teams play 5 times a year, inter-conference/trans-divisional teams that aren't in the same division play 3 times a year, and trans-conference play stays twice per year. That makes more than 1/3 of the season division games (a number similar to the NFL's).

I haven't taken the time to work out the details of all of this. There probably needs to be some mechanism to minimize the chances of a D-League team actually staying in the NBA by virtue of dumb luck. So maybe make it so the team with the worst record in each conference automatically gets demoted and not put in an additional lottery.

 

[BTP]

While i agree that the system is flawed, it Would be a pretty hard pill to swallow to see a team that pushes a 1st round playoff series to 7 games then gets the number 1 pick (picture the thunder a few years ago after their 1st round exit --- you could tell that the next year they would start to dominate, now throw a number 1 pick on that then all of a sudden they are unbeatable for years). All the While the worst team in the league doesn't do much to improve, gets stuck where they are, with little to no hope for the fans.

Without a weighted scale, the NBA would become unwatchable. You have the really bad teams ending up with picks in the teens year after year, they would become atrocious, and be lucky to win 10 games. This is a star driven league, and if the bad teams don't get their chance at a star, then they will never have a chance to become competitive.

It is a flawed system, but there is no way to make it better via changing the draft. A hard cap might be the best way to make the league competitive, but players would hate that.

I think the unique franchise player contract each team can hand out woould take care of that...OKC wouldn't have Westbrook and Harden right now...Both pouched away by another max offer. That was my thinking. And the shorter contracts for complimentary players with stricter hard cap regulations would open up the free agent market a lot.
This is basically what I want: Each team has its own star and if multiple stars wanna join, they basically lose $50M+ per contract via lower starting salary, smaller contract length and lower raises.
Also the young guns like Durant, Westbrook, Rose, Davis and add whoever you want haven't built Rome in 1 day. Most of them were posting inefficient usage inflated stats their first two years as they were learning how to beat the pros.
So if you're lucky to be the team that got the #1 pick after losing a 7 game series you have to figure out how to groom that #1 pick the first 2 years without hurting the team, so you have a 2 year window for a double star team until he leaves via free agency or one accepts significantly less money. Or you can simply pick a player that you like and think you can extend as he's not franchise material.
Or you could eventually top5 lock the lottery for playoff teams, but then again you'd have an incentive to miss playoffs...

A true superstar will never sign with a small market team on the open market. Outside of Detroit in 2004, it is impossible to win without one. As long as this problem exists you can't have equal lottery odds. Your 3rd year signing idea helps a superstar stay put, but gives little to no avenue in acquiring one. A superstar comes out once every two years on average, so lottery teams would be looking at about a 2-3% chance to draft one each year. That's too low....small market teams could go 50 years if unlucky and never get a superstar.

With a slotted franchise player salary you can get your player regardless of location and market. Of course you have problems as there are no 30 superstars. But there are some borderline guys that would be certainly worth it if paired with the right surrounding pieces.

There needs to be a penalty for repeating teams that are in the say top 6 of the lottery, every concurrent year you should lose a % of ping pong balls and even a certain times over a determined amount of time. For example 4 times out of 6 or 7 years. Just saying that in addition to or as a supplement of other ideas.

Very good idea! Rep'd! That's basically giving teams an incentive to hit the open market stronger once they got a very high pick as they're locked out of the top draft segment.

You want to fix the NBA.
NO restrictions on free agent contracts period. Rookie contracts, they are kept the same with 3 & 4 year- Team options. Hard salary cap NO EXCEPTIONS. If you have an injury and to sign a new player you must remain under the hard cap. And lastly non guaranteed contracts with penalties are available. The penalties are a $3-1 exchange. Meaning you cut a guy that was paid 3 million. You have only 1 Million to spend on another player. The penalty will count as long as the original contract was signed.
That would make the NBA so much more competitive. If stars want to all sign on one team they will literally have to pay for it. That would force teams to make wise money decisions, and the talent would be much more evenly distributed.

I guess some team would offer Kobe $40M annually and simply fill the rest with minimum contracts. That's how I think about it. Are you going to keep restricted free agency after year4? Or is all free agency unrestricted and teams can start bidding wars?

 

[BTP]

If you want higher quality basketball just shorten the games and the season. Force more consistent effort.

That's already being planned, not sure it can be done as TV deals and sponsorship deals might shrink that way. But less injuries, less coasting would really help the games. Plus having smaller rosters with 40 min games could improve game overall, as a lot of borderline rotation players would sign abroad to strengthen their game and reputation. Having 12 man rosters instead of 15 man is sth I'd love.

I prefer a good farce to a parody, but then again, the NBA has been a farce since the Jordan years.



How did the Jazz stay solvent for decades without a lottery pick?

I mean, the question you're asking is "What would ****ty teams do without the promise of the lottery?" Well, they'd stay ****ty, probably. Funny enough, that's what most of them do right now, anyway. In the past 15 years, you managed to find two examples of franchises who found long term stability and success through the lottery. I could give you another 10 who just kept effing up their lottery picks year after year.

The Clippers had a stretch of 11 years right after they started doing weighted lottery odds where they had 10 top 10 picks. Ten! This included a stretch of 4 consecutive years where they picked first, fourth, third, and second. What did they parlay this into? Sweet jack all. Those four players averaged less than 3 years with the team. That's less than the rookie contract!

More recent stuff? The Kings are well on their way to an 8th straight losing season. They've had 6 top 10 picks in the past 7 years. Again, how does their future look?

The Cavs have had 4 top 4 picks in the three years since LeBron left them. Two top picks. Ridiculous. How do they look? The future's so bright, you gotta wear shades, eh?

The Raptors. They haven't made the playoffs in 5 years. Had a number one pick 7 years ago, and three more top 10 picks since. Dynasty, right? Did I also mention that they had 4 top 8 picks between 2003 and 2006. Those cats should all be peaking right about now, eh?

And should I even bring up the Knicks? Between 2002 and 2009, they had 5 top 10 picks. They could've had a few more around there since, but they keep trading them away. Same thing, should be peaking right about now, right?

What about the successful teams? The Spurs whom you use as an argument have had one top 20 pick since they got Duncan. One! They were built through draft alright, but late first round and below.

The Pacers? Their starting five were picked 10th, 17th, 17th, 40th, and 26th. Three of the five weren't even Pacers' picks.

The Heat? We all know how they were built.

The Blazers? They picked Lillard 6th. That's it. The only other player in their 10 man rotation was drafted by someone else.

The Clippers may have gotten Griffin through the draft, but they are where they are because of the Chris Paul trade.

Which leaves the Warriors and the Thunder as the only teams that were actually built thanks to the lottery.

If the lottery is a "clear way to get better" for ****ty teams, I'm sorry to tell you, it ain't working.

Disagree with most of your conclusions you take from the first part. The stronger availability of free agents would really balance that out and make better teams who have both young players and veteran players(not benchies). I think it's bad for the game when we deem 25 year old players too old to fit a future championship window as it's happening right now in Philly or 29 year old players too old to support a 4 year younger franchise player as happening in Chicago.
Chicago btw was built via the draft as well. All impact players but Boozer and Dunleavy were drafted by them.
But pointing out teams like the Cavs is a good thing. They're so awfully bad at basketball decisions that they'd look horrible with nowhere to improve until they developed a winning strategy under my new CBA
Other long time cellar dwellers are a thing of the past as almost every organisation nowadays is run properly(I'd say at least 80%)

 

[The Midnight]

I've grown a little bit tired lately reading guys blasting JL3, ridiculing Marvin, wishing Corbin to hell and debating over Biedrins and Gobert.
Due to the questionable quality of Jazz games I've been transitioning from rewatching the full games during the next evening to rewatching full quarters that might have been competitive and interesting according to the boxscore to watching the LP 8 min summaries during meals and now I've reached the 2 min summaries with little interest to rewatch double digit losses with uninspired coaching. But gotta do something in the morning while brushing my teeth.

Other teams I actually enjoyed watching include the Pacers, Thunder, Spurs, Mavs, Rockets, Magic, Hawks, Pistons and Suns. They have been playing some exciting fine to watch basketball.

But these serious tanking efforts this year are lowering the quality of the league and the league officials can be happy this is not a contract year for television rights, even though ESPN will certainly point out that once a decade there's a tank campaign and they are right to do so, not only to lower their costs, also to ensure better quality for the fans.

So as long as we got a system that grants you better odds to win the #1 with a worse record you'll try to outtank. We've already a CBA in place that punishes long term contracts with non franchise faces severely which should increase the free agent pool each summer increasingly giving more teams a chance to strengthen via free agency.
Look at last summer. The Bobcats, Hawks and Pistons wanted talent influx even though they are a small market while not handing out horrible contracts to good players. Millsap is already one of the most sought after contracts by pretenders that wanna make the jump to contenders. Jefferson might be slightly overpaid but would prolly have also accepted a smaller pay. 3 years duration limit the damage as well. Josh Smith is also market value even though he doesn't really fit the Pistons needs, which is why he may turn out to be a bad contract.

With an increasing number of talents declaring after freshmen and sophomore campaigns you have a lot of uncertainty with your talent in how they will turn out and each year has several gems in the 10s, 20s and sometimes deep into the 2nd round. So having high draftpicks enlarges your chances but doesn't guarantee your franchise success. There's plenty of roads that lead to Rome. Going the shortest way blindfolded is not a good choice though, Cleveland.
But in general front offices are developing in a direction where they rely more on analytics, tools and less on former NBA players who do a good newspaper quote. Yes I'm talking to you Isiah! So I'd argue they are acting more reasonable in general. The massive tanking is a sideeffect of that. They sold tryhard seasons to fans who are now extremely disgruntled to have paid money to not go to actual games of their teams. But in the digital era memory is short and drafting a top prospect will make them keep their seasontickets or get it back 1 year later.

So my proposal is: GET RID OF WEIGHED LOTTERY AS WE KNOW IT. You can't award a team a 4-9% higher chance to get #1 for winning a duel of losing the most games. Don't exclude playoff teams from it, so you don't give incentive to miss them.
So who participates in the lottery? All the teams that missed the playoffs and all the 1st round losers. That gives you a total of 22 teams. The 14 non playoff team get a slightly higher chance of scoring a higher seed.
The bottom 7 teams each get 6% of the lottery tickets for the #1 drawing. The next 7 each get a 4.857% chance and the 8 first round playoff losers each get a 3% chance. This would take any tanking incentive out of the game. Are you going to pull off shenanigans to gain 1.43% more chance? If you're a playoff team you don't do this for less than 2% more chance.
At the same time you make the draft lottery a bigger event and don't only draw the first 3, but you draw from 1 down to 10 and fill the rest according to standings. You could also make it even bigger but that would seem pointless IMO.
That obviously could give you some risk that some team that has an improving nucleus could land another #1 pick, but if you don't include them you're going to risk shifting the tankings from the cellar dwellers to the borderline playoff teams that wanna drop out. Just think about 2014...You'd rather have a 5% chance at Wiggins or get a 4-0 spanking from the Heat/Spurs/Thunder...Self explanatory. So you're not punishing any team for trying and rewarding good basketball.
Of course every 20 years that could lead to some ridiculous contention window, but I have further solutions for that.

First of all if you make rookie contracts scaled, don't leave teams the option to pay 80-120% of the scale. a scale is a scale...
Make rookie contracts incentive based and have these incentives covered by the league and don't count towards the cap. So if you're outplaying your rookie contract you don't get punished and you get rewarded. After 4 years players are restricted but I'd introduce 1 change to the max contract landscape...
The NBA has very few true franchise players and last thing you want to maintain competitiveness is these players teaming up without brutal repercussions.
Each team has 1 franchise player slot, for whom they can pay a starting salary equal to 30% of the cap starting after year 3 as nowadays you have players peaking in their early to mid 20s(athletic freaks like Howard, Stoudemire, Rose), mid 20s until threshold of 30(Durant, James seem good candidates) and sometimes even early to mid 30s(Dirk, MJ, Stockton, Kobe). This way you get paid what a team thinks you're worth from the beginning and teams can really attack youngsters after year 4 with these kind of aggressive offers if the team has 2 superstars.
So you have that 1 slot that you can pay a player a lot on and every other player can start at 20% of the cap with 4.5% raises. So stars would have to forfeit a lot of money to team up or you'd have to be playing a lot of years for the same ballclubs to reach the big numbers as a secondary options with 4.5% raises and new deals giving 105% of the previous contract.

This would leave a more balanced landscape and guarantee competitiveness. I might have of course not considered some obstacles or left out some on purpose. This would of course put new challenges on teams to put together quality teams as team chemistry and coaches might be more important than ever.
It would strengthen franchise identity for top tier talent as they'd have much to lose by swapping teams. I'm not even sure that the franchise player is a good idea but I really dislike these new age big 3 so much that I think it's important to get rid of that. They really cause half of the league to be starving in franchise talent. Building the right team with complementary pieces and stuff would be very important.

That's it for now as I fear any additional word will discourage more potential readers and participants to bring up their own ideas.

Hey bro, have a read of this. I think it would solve the tanking problem somewhat without having to rejig the whole system entirely.

Also provides a nice background info on the NBA lottery... etc..

https://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131114/nba-tanking-lottery-fix-solution/index.html

In summary, do the following with lottery odds (based on last year's results):

This should eliminate "heavy tanking" as the bottom most teams would have equal chance at the #1 pick.

Problem solved.

 

[BTP]

It's an interesting proposal but I don't think it solves it.
Look at Toronto with a 2% chance and Detroit with a 10% chance having a 5 win difference. That's a situation that simply would create a tanking war late in the season and that's simply ugly to watch. None wants that. If you weigh it so heavily you give real incentives to tank. The difference in odds between 7 and 12 is as big as is the difference between 1 and 2 nowadays. And this scenario would basically force the lottery to go 7 draws deep. Otherwise the standings are still pretty much determine the chance to score a franchise savior. And with 7 draws the 2% chacne of scoring #1 for the 14th worst team are quickly turning into something like a 20% chance of scoring one of the first 7 picks. If you're not going anywhere without more talent I'm taking the chance to get into the top7 and forfeit on getting swept in the first round.
And as mentioned before I think opening up the free agency markets each year and making superstars more accessible via restricted and unrestricted free agency is one of my main points to create a competitive balance. Because suddenly you can create scenarios where the 8th and 12th seed are really close to each other like it is in the West right now. And before you see: Well if you can create competition in the West right now, why change anything? The only reason that's the case is because there's like 8-10 teams in the East, who just learned how much they suck at sports management and are trying to abuse the system for the quickest rebuild route possible under the current CBA.