Solving For Tanking, We're smart, let's figure it out

[SoberasHotRod]

I think where I've landed after all of the great suggestions is that draft picks are tied to cap space somehow. The players union would never let it happen, but I think teams should have options on how to build a team with the draft being one option, trades being an option, and free agency being an option. I would still want to create more parity in free agency with a hard salary cap and removing max contracts, but it wouldn't be as big of a priority if teams still had a way to build their team through the draft.

Here is one way this could work:

- Continue to have a salary floor, so that teams can't just completely gut their teams
- At the end of the year teams with cap space can use the space to bid on different draft positions.
- If there is a tie bid, then those teams are put in to a lottery with equal odds for the pick.
- The draft bidding would start with the 1st pick and move through picks 30. So if a team lost out on the 1st pick they can then put all of their cap space in to the 2nd pick and so on.
- Once your cap space bid wins a pick it is taken away from your cap space for future picks. So a team could choose to go all in for a bid on a pick or they could choose to divide it among multiple picks.
- The second round would be based off of record.

I was waiting for some criticism of this idea, but I'll go ahead and throw it out there myself. The risk would be that when a generational prospect would come around that everyone would create as much cap space as possible, which would really cause some chaos.

The other thing people might not like is that a large portion of the NBA would regularly be at the salary floor, which I'm actually ok with. Some of the alternatives involve super flat odds where many teams have a chance at winning the lottery and this would basically do the same thing. At least with this option teams can still be strategic.

Potentially to appease the players union you could take all of the cap space that is used to win bids on draft picks and divide it amongst the players so that they aren't losing out on that money. I would also be in favor of giving them increased revenue sharing.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

In order of preference for proposals I think the Wheel + Hard Cap + No Max Contracts would be my first preference since every team would be incentivized to be as good as possible every year. Also, trading for draft picks would be extremely straight forward. I don't like the idea without the hard cap/no max contracts because it makes building a team harder for small market teams. My second preference is for my idea with the cap space used for bidding on draft picks. I think this idea works even if you don't have a hard cap/no max contracts. It will disincentivize some teams from building the best team possible in the off season, but would eliminate teams not trying to win during the season. My third favorite proposal is HH's idea of getting to pick someone else's draft pick the following year. It would be really fun, but it doesn't completely discourage losing.

Unfortunately all of these ideas are so far out there that I don't think they are realistic. I think I need to go back through and look at the most realistic and effective idea. At that point I think you might be more interested in limiting tanking vs eliminating it.

 

[sanders]

Great points! I’ve been thinking about the same thing for a while. Tanking is a tough topic, especially when you look at the long-term benefits vs. the short-term pain. But I do think there’s a smart way to go about it.


One idea I’ve heard that makes a lot of sense is to build the team with younger, high-upside players who can develop and improve, even while the team isn’t winning a ton of games. This way, you’re not just throwing away seasons; you’re letting guys like Kessler, Markkanen, and maybe even some of the younger draft picks really grow. If they can get consistent minutes, they might surprise people down the line and actually end up contributing much earlier than expected.


Another aspect is looking for trades that set up for future flexibility rather than just accumulating picks for the sake of it. Some teams might be willing to move solid, but not star-level, players for younger talent and future picks. That way, you’re not just tanking for a high pick but also securing assets that could be part of the future build.


But at the end of the day, it’s all about balance. You can tank, but if you end up losing that fan interest or damaging the team’s culture, it can set you back in other ways. So yeah, it’s about getting smart with how you build and develop during these lean years.


What are your thoughts on trying to blend a rebuild with staying competitive in certain games, even if it means losing for the bigger picture?

 

[Coach Ellis]

I think they should actually eliminate the lottery. No more flat odds, just do it like the NFL does. Worst team gets the best pick, 2nd worst gets #2, etc. (they can start this year if they want to. . .)

Will it eliminate the worst teams from tanking? No - but it will eliminate the teams that are outside of the top few picks from being bad on purpose and hopefully make it so more of them are fighting to make the play-in instead.

Combine this with limitations on having a top 3 pick in 2 out of 3 seasons (they automatically get dropped to 4 or lower) to avoid completely bottoming out for multiple years, and I think it could prove to eliminate all but the most egregious forms of tanking. Eliminated the incentive to lose and teams will stop doing it.

I also like limiting how picks can be protected moving forward. Make a standard for all pick protections - unprotected, top 3, and lottery protected. That’s it. I’m sure it will come with a bunch of unintended consequences, but that makes it very easy to know if they’ll keep their picks or not and force teams to compete because there’s little incentive to lose to keep a pick.

 

[GunterD]

I think they should actually eliminate the lottery. No more flat odds, just do it like the NFL does. Worst team gets the best pick, 2nd worst gets #2, etc. (they can start this year if they want to. . .)

Will it eliminate the worst teams from tanking? No - but it will eliminate the teams that are outside of the top few picks from being bad on purpose and hopefully make it so more of them are fighting to make the play-in instead.

Leaning in to the tanking concept instead of trying but failing to disincentivize it means the tanking teams get what they want faster and stop tanking sooner. So teams tank for less time, and fewer teams are doing it at the same time. All flattening the odds does is make it take more time to get the benefit you are looking for, while pushing the incentive to lose all the way up to the borderline playoff teams.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

I also like limiting how picks can be protected moving forward. Make a standard for all pick protections - unprotected, top 3, and lottery protected. That’s it. I’m sure it will come with a bunch of unintended consequences, but that makes it very easy to know if they’ll keep their picks or not and force teams to compete because there’s little incentive to lose to keep a pick.

The most egregious tanking that the league should care the most about is a team losing in the play in on purpose, so I think if you are limiting what protections can be placed, the lottery protected is probably the most important to remove.

 

[GunterD]

I think where I've landed after all of the great suggestions is that draft picks are tied to cap space somehow. The players union would never let it happen, but I think teams should have options on how to build a team with the draft being one option, trades being an option, and free agency being an option. I would still want to create more parity in free agency with a hard salary cap and removing max contracts, but it wouldn't be as big of a priority if teams still had a way to build their team through the draft.

Here is one way this could work:

- Continue to have a salary floor, so that teams can't just completely gut their teams
- At the end of the year teams with cap space can use the space to bid on different draft positions.
- If there is a tie bid, then those teams are put in to a lottery with equal odds for the pick.
- The draft bidding would start with the 1st pick and move through picks 30. So if a team lost out on the 1st pick they can then put all of their cap space in to the 2nd pick and so on.
- Once your cap space bid wins a pick it is taken away from your cap space for future picks. So a team could choose to go all in for a bid on a pick or they could choose to divide it among multiple picks.
- The second round would be based off of record.

It is an interesting suggestion. My gut feel would just be that its a little too complicated to not have exploitable edge cases that will result in unintended consequences, but those may be able to be ironed out with small rule changes.

The biggest problem might be that it sounds to me like it might adjust the NBA salary dynamic in a way that the players union will not allow. Pretty sure the players are going to say "tanking is a you problem" and are going to be unwilling to accept any solution that requires them to sacrifice anything at all.

You mentioned a few of these yourself. Its going to incentivize non-competitive teams to sit right at the floor salary level. You could maybe counteract that with shifting the profit sharing an equivalent percentage towards the players.

This would also probably eliminate a few roster spots from the NBA, as teams would be more incentivized to carry minimum size rosters to maximize their cap space when they want to bid on the draft.

One thing I needed to ask a clarification on. Does your cap space bid then become the salary of the player when you win? When you say a win takes away from your cap for future picks, does that mean in the same draft or in future drafts? If its in future drafts, how long does the hold last?

I interpreted it as you bid the cap space, then you pay the player that much money. Its an interesting concept, it makes building through the draft riskier because you have to commit more to higher picks, who may end up injured or not panning out. Doing that would shift the money balance among players from vets towards rookies which the union may not agree to.

The gap between cap and floor right now is about 14 million, and the first round pick salary is, looks like, about 10 million, so I guess that's not a huge deviation. Though it also probably has the effect of dramatically raising the salary for the first few draft picks, and dramatically lowering the salary for the rest beyond some kind of threshold that's probably around pick 7. Salary disparity like that is also something the union usually fights.

It probably means even after getting good players, teams still try to sit at the salary floor until they are sure they can make a championship run. So instead of spending several years trying to build up a team and find a good fit, you'd surround your guys with minimum contract players, and then once you've acquired enough high picks, you try to make a sudden surge. Its not exactly tanking, the teams at least would be trying to win, but you still have GMs intentionally assembling subpar teams even when they have good players. Though it will also get increasingly hard to keep your salary at the floor as you add bid wins so eventually you will be forced out of that strategy.

It might do something weird to draft classes. Players may actually try to congregate into a strong draft class, with the assumption that teams are going to be saving more cap space to be available in that draft, so the losers on the highest picks may still be more willing to burn a bit of space on the next guys down. Or not, I'm not as sure about this one.


I dunno. Its an interesting idea. It has some merits, the strongest being total disincentivation of intentional in-season losing, while leaving smaller market teams the ability to build through the draft. It creates lots of really fun auction scenarios with the draft and roster building strategies, in a complicated system that a really clever GM could probably use their skill to make a good team. It could work, if everyone could agree to it.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

The purpose of protections is to adjust for the value of a pick in a trade as well as protect the team against extremely bad outcomes. I think a top 4 protection is good enough to shield against extremely bad outcomes, and then teams can get creative on leveling value.

For example maybe a team could trade a top 4 protected pick and then the other outcomes are pre negotiated. For example if the pick falls between 5-10 the pick can be purchased for 4 2nd round picks. If the pick is between 11-15 it can be purchased for 3 2nd round picks.

 

[Coach Ellis]

The most egregious tanking that the league should care the most about is a team losing in the play in on purpose, so I think if you are limiting what protections can be placed, the lottery protected is probably the most important to remove.

Without the lottery, it’s at best a top 12 pick - I cant see a team throwing their chance at the playoffs for a top 12 pick. Now, if that pick has 3% chance at hitting on the #1 overall pick. . . that changes the calculation in a year like this one and next.

Maybe make it so you can make a pick unprotected, or protect it top 3 or top 10. Eliminate protections for all picks for play-in and playoff teams. If you miss the play-in, there’s zero incentive for losing a game intentionally to keep your pick?

 

[SoberasHotRod]

It is an interesting suggestion. My gut feel would just be that its a little too complicated to not have exploitable edge cases that will result in unintended consequences, but those may be able to be ironed out with small rule changes.

The biggest problem might be that it sounds to me like it might adjust the NBA salary dynamic in a way that the players union will not allow. Pretty sure the players are going to say "tanking is a you problem" and are going to be unwilling to accept any solution that requires them to sacrifice anything at all.

You mentioned a few of these yourself. Its going to incentivize non-competitive teams to sit right at the floor salary level. You could maybe counteract that with shifting the profit sharing an equivalent percentage towards the players.

This would also probably eliminate a few roster spots from the NBA, as teams would be more incentivized to carry minimum size rosters to maximize their cap space when they want to bid on the draft.

One thing I needed to ask a clarification on. Does your cap space bid then become the salary of the player when you win? When you say a win takes away from your cap for future picks, does that mean in the same draft or in future drafts? If its in future drafts, how long does the hold last?

I interpreted it as you bid the cap space, then you pay the player that much money. Its an interesting concept, it makes building through the draft riskier because you have to commit more to higher picks, who may end up injured or not panning out. Doing that would shift the money balance among players from vets towards rookies which the union may not agree to.

The gap between cap and floor right now is about 14 million, and the first round pick salary is, looks like, about 10 million, so I guess that's not a huge deviation. Though it also probably has the effect of dramatically raising the salary for the first few draft picks, and dramatically lowering the salary for the rest beyond some kind of threshold that's probably around pick 7. Salary disparity like that is also something the union usually fights.

It probably means even after getting good players, teams still try to sit at the salary floor until they are sure they can make a championship run. So instead of spending several years trying to build up a team and find a good fit, you'd surround your guys with minimum contract players, and then once you've acquired enough high picks, you try to make a sudden surge. Its not exactly tanking, the teams at least would be trying to win, but you still have GMs intentionally assembling subpar teams even when they have good players. Though it will also get increasingly hard to keep your salary at the floor as you add bid wins so eventually you will be forced out of that strategy.

It might do something weird to draft classes. Players may actually try to congregate into a strong draft class, with the assumption that teams are going to be saving more cap space to be available in that draft, so the losers on the highest picks may still be more willing to burn a bit of space on the next guys down. Or not, I'm not as sure about this one.


I dunno. Its an interesting idea. It has some merits, the strongest being total disincentivation of intentional in-season losing, while leaving smaller market teams the ability to build through the draft. It creates lots of really fun auction scenarios with the draft and roster building strategies, in a complicated system that a really clever GM could probably use their skill to make a good team. It could work, if everyone could agree to it.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. I didn't say if the bid money would be the player's salary, because I'm not quite sure what the best way to handle that part would be. You could potentially just keep the salary scale the way it is today and the bid money just goes in to a pot that is paid out to all of the players. Or on the other extreme you could increase the difference between the floor and the cap so that the first picks would make a huge amount of money. That strategy could also be a deterrent from teams taking this strategy so they aren't tying up all their cap space on young players. It also helps with the problem of teams being at the floor for multiple years since it would be difficult to incorporate multiple high cost rookies.

Anyway you do it you would have to have some kind of minimum salary for draft picks/minimum bid. At some point you run out of teams that want to bid on picks and maybe that is way less than 30 picks. Whatever the number is you start the second round at that point based on winning %. So maybe you only get bids for like 15 picks and then another 30 picks for the second round, and then after that everyone is a free agent. I actually think that is fine.

Something that would have to get figured out is how to handle trading of draft picks. It wouldn't really be possible with the system. I suppose you could trade cap space instead... I haven't thought that part through yet.

 

[GunterD]

Something that would have to get figured out is how to handle trading of draft picks. It wouldn't really be possible with the system. I suppose you could trade cap space instead... I haven't thought that part through yet.

Ah that is a good point I didn't consider. Trading cap space would be hard, just because draft pick trades are usually really future things and it would be kind of hard to guarantee that you would still have it available. You could still do 2nd round trades, and draft day trades for players. Deals after the season ended but before the draft with teams to have them use their cap space to bid for you, in exchange for a player if the bid panned out. But futures, that is pretty much eliminated by the system. So you are exchanging the "compile a number of smaller assets then consolidate them in a trade for an established star" strategy for this newer build through the draft strategy.

Ramifications would be interesting. Superstar trades and even all star trades would probably stop completely, so trading would become a tool you could pretty much just use to shift pieces around to move bad fits out for better complimentary pieces. You'd be forced to get your core through free agency or the draft. That's maybe countered a bit by making it a bit easier to get that through the draft. It does kind of reduce players' abilities to demand trades, since there's not going to be a reasonable assumption you can get near equivalent value back. Means when you sign big contracts you are stuck with them till they expire. For fans we don't get a competitive team exploded early because the front office blinked.

I dunno this is probably a big obstacle to this strategy.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

Ah that is a good point I didn't consider. Trading cap space would be hard, just because draft pick trades are usually really future things and it would be kind of hard to guarantee that you would still have it available. You could still do 2nd round trades, and draft day trades for players. Deals after the season ended but before the draft with teams to have them use their cap space to bid for you, in exchange for a player if the bid panned out. But futures, that is pretty much eliminated by the system. So you are exchanging the "compile a number of smaller assets then consolidate them in a trade for an established star" strategy for this newer build through the draft strategy.

Ramifications would be interesting. Superstar trades and even all star trades would probably stop completely, so trading would become a tool you could pretty much just use to shift pieces around to move bad fits out for better complimentary pieces. You'd be forced to get your core through free agency or the draft. That's maybe countered a bit by making it a bit easier to get that through the draft. It does kind of reduce players' abilities to demand trades, since there's not going to be a reasonable assumption you can get near equivalent value back. Means when you sign big contracts you are stuck with them till they expire. For fans we don't get a competitive team exploded early because the front office blinked.

I dunno this is probably a big obstacle to this strategy.

OK, with a little thought this is what I'm thinking on trades:

- Teams can trade their current cap space that other teams can use or save for future years. It only effects the team that trades the cap space for the year they trade it, but the team that acquires the cap space can use it indefinitely.
- Teams can't carry over or save their own cap space, only cap space money they get in trades.
- Teams can aggregate their current cap space and cap space acquired in trades, but they can only exceed the difference between the salary floor and cap on picks after 4. (If salaries are tied to bid amounts then the drafted player's salary would be capped at the difference between the floor and the cap so that the 5th pick isn't paid more than the first 4).
- Teams can combine cap space acquired from previous teams to trade to other teams. Again, this isn't actual money that goes in to the team's bank account, but a "Cap Space" number that is just tracked. The actual money is only physically transferred to the new team at the time of the first trade.

Again complicated, but I think it can kind of work and not be too different that trades today.