Should the NBA change the odds distribution for the Draft Lottery?

[jezzerinho]

As a Magic fan who has had to put up with years of mediocrity and the lottery draw being our superbowl, I think that the odds of getting No 1 should lengthen if you had a high lottery pick in the previous three years.

This idea of tanking for a decade and having the league repeatedly reward you not just for mediocrity, but for actually deliberately failing, is an insult to the teams who are trying and being well run.

If the league rewards you with a high pick for being bad, you should do something with that. If you dont - and continue to tank - the league should help you less and less im subsequent drafts. The real draft junkies are GMs in bad teams.

So, to answer the OP, if the lottery balls "screw" the Pistons in what is their umpteenth lottery pick of the decade... tough shít.

I don't think the Magic should have been allowed to build their young team like that either. It rewards front office incompetence, imo.

[mariller]

I'm basing this solely off of the Pistons being screwed into the 5th pick again for the 3rd straight year

The worst team in the NBA having the highest odds for the 5th pick is kinda crazy

Maybe the NBA can reach a compromise btwn what it was prior to the change and the way its distributed now.

It's almost like people don't understand maths.
The goal of the change was to discourage total tanking - the teams trying to have the worst possible season to get that 1st pick, the fight between 8 wins and 9 wins etc. It was suppose to lead to a situation where worst team has the best chances of getting first pick, but there is no guarantees, it can very well be the fifth team that wins, or even tenth.
So now you have that, the worst teams has 40% chance of getting top 3 pick.

And what happened? The Detroit has been "screwed"? By what? Math? Since when 40% is a guarantee? It does not matter what happened last 5 years - every year is new scenario, you know that right?

The new system works perfectly and I don't want it changed. Do you really want total tanking?

Clearly I understand what the odds breakdown is for the draft currently and their motivation

The point is that the draft odds aren't favorable enough for the worst of the league, hence the topic

Not that there's a misunderstanding on how the draft odds work

And yes, even with current odds, the Pistons to get 5th worst 2 seasons in a row while having the worst record in the NBA is 47.9% odds for each season:

.479 x .479 = 0.229 (22.9% chance)

If you include the season prior where they finished 3rd and still ended up 5th, odds drop more. So yeah they've been screwed, screwed by bad luck & the new lotto odds distribution, hence the thread

My problem and "not understanding" comments comes precseisly from use of the word "screwed".
They were unlucky, agreed, but noone is screwing them, unless you mean universe, then it's well deserved. They have no business being this **** after last 5 drafts.

[XtremeDunkz]

No. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do. Detroit had the #1 pick just 3 years ago. They shouldn't be this bad still. It's intentional.

[FarBeyondDriven]

Change what? You actually think this is legit and not rigged? They only use a lottery to give fans the appearance of there being some system of fairness. It's all a sham. They can't have a normal system like the NFL because they know small market teams could just sit back and collect revenue sharing while tanking for elite talent and then these stars would be stuck on small market teams. This would result in kids' openly refusing to go play for these teams when drafted, forcing trades and at minimum, having to wait for these kids to leave for bigger markets after their contract is up which takes years. It'd be bad for business. So they concoct this convoluted b.s. "lottery" to fool people and of course they buy it hook, line and sinker. By having a lottery they can control who gets what. They can punish shameless tankers. They can reward bad teams that tried. They can jumpstart expansion teams or small market teams that lose franchise players to big market teams. So there's no need for any changes. The NBA is getting exactly what it wants.

[QingJames]

I'm basing this solely off of the Pistons being screwed into the 5th pick again for the 3rd straight year

The worst team in the NBA having the highest odds for the 5th pick is kinda crazy

Maybe the NBA can reach a compromise btwn what it was prior to the change and the way its distributed now.

I don't think tanking should be rewarded. Detroit should've lost their pick because of the product they have been putting on the floor.

The draft odds change is one of the best things they did in the NBA. Intentionally putting a putrid product on the floor should never be rewarded.

What Detroit have been doing the past 4 years is embarrassing, and it's making the NBA worse. The league should do something.

A little off topic, but what do you want Detroit to do? They're probably in the lowest tier of free agent destinations, and it doesn't make sense right now to trade a bunch of picks for an All-star. Their only option is to build through the draft, and they've done okay. Not great but not awful. Hayes was a bust but beyond that they haven't made any big mistakes.

The colossal advantage teams like the Heat, Lakers, and Clippers have over a team like Detroit solely based on location flat out sucks. Cleveland struck gold with LeBron and Milwaukee struck gold with Giannis. Detroit will need to get lucky with a player like that who stays beyond their rookie deal.

The fairest thing would be to give undesirable FA destinations some kind of leg-up when it comes to draft positioning, but obviously that doesn't work in reality for a number of reasons.

While Detroit’s draft record hasn’t been terrible, their roster construction, free agent signings, and trades have been. Why should Detroit be rewarded for making one terrible team-building decision after another? Should we really incentivize teams to hand out big contracts to busts like Bagley and Wiseman when it results in such a terrible on-court product?

Current lottery odds are more than fine. Detroit has received very high picks in the last half-decade of drafts. Why do they deserve the top pick (which I assume is what Detroit fans want) year over year when they prove incompetent at building anything? I would much rather see an infusion of talent into a mediocre team that might be able to actually improve, like Atlanta.

[jk31]

I'm basing this solely off of the Pistons being screwed into the 5th pick again for the 3rd straight year

The worst team in the NBA having the highest odds for the 5th pick is kinda crazy

Maybe the NBA can reach a compromise btwn what it was prior to the change and the way its distributed now.

i mean, yes, the odds of the worst team are favoring the #5 pick. but the other seeds behind that only have a worse percentage for #5 because the later picks (#6, #7,...) get their share of percentage, which is lacking for the worst team. still, the three worst teams have the highest percentage of getting a top4 pick.

[AussieCeltic]

The Pistons get what they deserve. Hiring an average coach in Monty for a lot of money who had Ivey benched for the first part of the season, then benched the only guy who played defense in their rookie Thompson. They shut down Cade, Stewart early. Trade Bogdanovic a year too late so didn’t get any value for him.

Their lineup to end the season was James Wiseman, Metu, Troy Brown Jnr, Sasser and Ivey.

Atleast teams like the Spurs had Wemby playing right until the end, even upsetting the Nuggets in the 2nd last game of the year.

Being bad shouldn’t automatically give you the top pick.

Also, you can still get good players at 5 in every draft. Instead of Ivey they could’ve had Mathurin or Jalen Williams.

Let’s not forget they had the #1 pick only 3 seasons ago. They could easily be rolling out a lineup of.

Duren
Mobley
Jalen Williams
Pick #5 this season
Cason Wallace

That’s something to build on.

[Johnny Bball]

Spurs fan here and I voted no.

Raptors should win every lottery. Change it!

[Johnny Bball]

The current structure is defeating the original intent of the draft. As example, no way two 46 win teams should have a chance at 1st overall.

Change it.

You don't seem to understand what a lottery is.

[Message Boar]

No. This odds distribution (and drawing the top 4) is better than it was before. You can build a team without tanking or lucking into a #1 pick; which the Pistons did do during this rebuild, btw. Look at the Pacers. They basically never tank, but are able to put together competitive teams. Talking both about this new era and the Paul George (and Granger before that)/David West/Roy Hibbert era. And there's seemingly always at least 4 or 5 teams tanking in any given year, they can't all win on lottery night.

[MrGoat]

I didn't think it needed changing in the first place. Granted, in Detroit's case they'd be better off hoping they get the #1 pick next season anyway. They didn't even really try to tank this season, they were just bad (and unlucky, two teams actually had worse net ratings than they did, how the Blazers and Hornets managed that with 7 more wins is kind of astonishing)

[Calvin Klein]

No. This is great. Losing is not rewarded as much now. It’s the best it’s been . It’s never gonna be perfect.

[Hornet Mania]

The lotto odds are working exactly as intended. It's just taken a few years for fans, and probably some front offices, to realize that the benefits of tanking have been severely nerfed.

Play it straight, try your best, and then let the lotto balls fall where they may if you miss the playoffs.

[Celts17Pride]

The lotto odds are working exactly as intended. It's just taken a few years for fans, and probably some front offices, to realize that the benefits of tanking have been severely nerfed.

Play it straight, try your best, and then let the lotto balls fall where they may if you miss the playoffs.

Exactly, tanking is dying a slow death. Between play-in games and lottery odds there is very little reason to tank anymore.

[nikster]

This. The new draft lottery order hurts more for the smaller markets who arent trade/FA destinations

The Pistons werent even tanking this year, they were honestly trying to get some wins this yr, they tanked towards the end but what do you expect from a team that has sucked for as long as they have in a city like Detroit?

Their front office and overall team culture is awful, but damn it sucks to see any team suffer like they have since they traded Billups to the Nuggets

Well no, practically speaking it doesn't inherently hurt a smaller market team more than it does a big market team. My post was mostly off-topic. I'm fine with the current weighting and I think the biggest advantage to comes in drafts where the best player is a generational talent. Give more teams a shot at him.

It does hurt them more, because they are more dependent on the draft than a big market who can acquire players in FA/trades more easily because theyre more attractive destinations

But why is this year's lottery an example of that? It's mostly all small market teams. Atlanta and Houston are probably the 2 biggest markets in the entire lottery.

[KembaWalker]

The problem is that okay, if you’ve “fixed tanking” what exactly are you left with..bad teams with even fewer avenues to improve than they already have? To fix what problem? That March Hornets-Wizards games weren’t watchable? Y’all think that was fixed? lol

It’s just dumb because the league offers so few routes for these small market bad teams to get better. I’d be ok with it if free agency was also reworked into a viable route to acquire talent. It’s all trash players or guys that want a 25% premium to play outside Cali or Miami. The trade market is a total disaster, everyone is turning into an Ainge Morey guy wanting a kings ransom for some random starter level player. There’s literally no viable route for a bad small market to add talent but for some reason this is the first priority issue for them to fix. Dumb

[ItsDanger]

The current structure is defeating the original intent of the draft. As example, no way two 46 win teams should have a chance at 1st overall.

Change it.

You don't seem to understand what a lottery is.

You don't 'seem to understand the purpose of the draft in the first place. No surprise there with your attitude,

[Saints14]

The Hawks are exactly the team you want to see win the lottery and get the top pick. They haven't been tanking, they're trying to win and found themselves stuck on the treadmill. It's better for the league for a team like them to luck out one year and retool than all-out tank to try and get a top pick

[KembaWalker]

The Hawks are exactly the team you want to see win the lottery and get the top pick. They haven't been tanking, they're trying to win and found themselves stuck on the treadmill. It's better for the league for a team like them to luck out one year and retool than all-out tank to try and get a top pick

It’s better for a team that’s riding the fact that already hit gold in the lottery recently to pick highly again? Why

[Saints14]

The Hawks are exactly the team you want to see win the lottery and get the top pick. They haven't been tanking, they're trying to win and found themselves stuck on the treadmill. It's better for the league for a team like them to luck out one year and retool than all-out tank to try and get a top pick

It’s better for a team that’s riding the fact that already hit gold in the lottery recently to pick highly again? Why

2018 isn't that recent. And to the extent they "struck gold" it got them 1 ECF appearance and now stuck in mediocrity

Btw I sympathize with the Hornets because they're continuously screwed out of the top pick, but landing LaMelo at 3 and Miller at 2 is still decent recent lotto luck