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

Mr Peanut · Post #61 » by **Mr Peanut** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:07 pm

The flattening of odds has been helpful for reducing the amount of tanking so that's one reason to not change it.

As a Detroit fan I don't feel it should be changed given our recent experiences. We're in the 5th year of a rebuild and our idiot FO has continued to put a piss poor product on the floor and I don't feel like they deserve to be rewarded for that. Just feel sorry for the fans who have to put up with this mess.

Billl · Post #62 » by **Billl** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:20 pm

As a pistons fan, this sucks. I don't think we should go back to the old lottery system though because that was just too much incentive to tank. The league overall is better when more teams are fighting for the last playin spot vs the top lotto spot.

Falling 4 spots is brutal though, especially multiple years in a row. I don't know if there is a way to tweak the system to minimize the chances of that steep of a fall? Maybe just do the top3 picks vs the top4. You don't want to encourage tanking, but you do want the bad teams to improve eventually as well.

sp6r=underrated · Post #63 » by **sp6r=underrated** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:30 pm

The more you want the best prospects on the worst teams the more you'll dislike flat odds. the more you hate tanking the more you'll want flatter odds. I say no because I hate tanking but this is an unresolvable debate.

YogurtProducer · Post #64 » by **YogurtProducer** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:32 pm

Nah leave it. If anything, flatten the odds more and don't give teams any incentive to put out a garbage team. The league would benefit significantly more if the worst team was a 30-win team and not a 14-win team. It would not have been hard for Detroit to get a few vets and double their win total instead of throwing out the garbage they were.

I would much rather see rookies end up on teams that are at least resembling NBA rosters like ATL than a **** show like DET. Imagine if this was the Wemby draft.. I would be very excited to see him on a team that immediately had playoff hopes.

sp6r=underrated · Post #65 » by **sp6r=underrated** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:32 pm

Celts17Pride wrote:
Hornet Mania wrote: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.

I don't agree with everything Silver does but he understands the NBA's problems based on the reforms he's instituted.

dolphinatik · Post #66 » by **dolphinatik** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:38 pm

I think that if you're trying to change parity in the nba then boosting some of the mid tmtier teams, net finish six seventh and eighth in the playoff seating would also help.

Plutonashfan · Post #67 » by **Plutonashfan** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:38 pm

They should go back to the old odds. Teams that suck need help.

sp6r=underrated · Post #68 » by **sp6r=underrated** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:52 pm

Plutonashfan wrote:They should go back to the old odds. Teams that suck need help.

Fair enough but as basketball fans we're going to have more teams that suck because they'll choose to suck.

zshawn10 · Post #69 » by **zshawn10** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:52 pm

Read on Twitter

?s=46&t=nTTEj4pYTl_o_im2gtZyQg

sp6r=underrated · Post #70 » by **sp6r=underrated** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:56 pm

zshawn10 wrote:

Read on Twitter
?s=46&t=nTTEj4pYTl_o_im2gtZyQg

I hated the Hinkie Sixers but they were behaving rationally by intentionally trying to lose games. And if we go back to the old system we're going to have more Hinkie's out there trotting out 70 loss teams full of garbage players making the league minimum.

Onlytimewilltel · Post #71 » by **Onlytimewilltel** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:56 pm

payton2kemp wrote:No, losing shouldn't be rewarded. Its not like any of the bottom 10 teams are great.

This

D.Brasco · Post #72 » by **D.Brasco** » Mon May 13, 2024 3:59 pm

I feel no need to reward losing teams. In an ideal world teams would strive to win games to get the top pick.

Imagine gunning to win to get a Wemby like prospect as opposed to gunning to lose. It'd be better for the fans.

sp6r=underrated · Post #73 » by **sp6r=underrated** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:05 pm

D.Brasco wrote:I feel no need to reward losing teams. In an ideal world teams would strive to win games to get the top pick.

Imagine gunning to win to get a Wemby like prospect as opposed to gunning to lose. It'd be better for the fans.

The ideal system is European Soccer's promotion/relegation. Every team has to try to win as many as possible to stay in the top league. That is so much better than American sports cartels.

On some level I'm amazed sports drafts are even legal. Imagine how doctors would react if their reward for graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical was being drafted to work in rural Alaska.

LordCovington33 · Post #74 » by **LordCovington33** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:07 pm

Detroit needs to scout better.

Prestige · Post #75 » by **Prestige** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:10 pm

I would take it a step further and give all lottery teams equal odds. Don’t reward tanking and bad franchises. I wouldn’t want to be a fan of a team that pulls a ‘Process’ or is inept like the Pistons. Teams should be trying to win at all times, with the hope of some lottery luck to get a star to push them over the top.

SomeBunghole · Post #76 » by **SomeBunghole** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:23 pm

I hate it when people argue that tanking is the only path teams outside of large markets have to contention because evidence simply doesn't exist to prove it. In fact, more evidence points to tanking not being a reliable method for accomplishing this. Here's one little example of why this approach is problematic.

If tanking is supposed to be the way for you to get your franchise cornerstone and a player you can build a contender around, it doesn't seem to be working right now.

Here are the players who received significant amount of MVP votes this year. Hopefully, we can all agree these guys fit the description of a player I just mentioned above.

Jokić, SGA, Dončić, Giannis, Brunson, Tatum.

How did the teams currently taking advantage of these amazing players' dominance obtain them?

41st pick, trade(he was actually traded twice before he was 20) after his rookie season, trade before the start of his rookie season, 15th pick, signed as a RFA, multiple pick trades.

The only situation you can remotely argue came out of tanking was Dončić, but even in that case, the trade was downright huge. If they don't trade Young for him, the Mavs are probably in the same situation as the Hawks right now. Looking to offload him and blow it all up.

You could expand this shortlist of players by including Embiid and maybe a couple of other borderline cases like Mitchell or Butler(at least until this year) and you still end up with only one clear case of a team tanking to get a franchise cornerstone. Even then, the devil's advocate in me would argue that Sixers may have tanked their way to drafting an MVP, but it certainly hadn't led to anything close to contention for them.

LordCovington33 · Post #77 » by **LordCovington33** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:25 pm

sp6r=underrated wrote:
zshawn10 wrote:

Read on Twitter
?s=46&t=nTTEj4pYTl_o_im2gtZyQg

I hated the Hinkie Sixers but they were behaving rationally by intentionally trying to lose games. And if we go back to the old system we're going to have more Hinkie's out there trotting out 70 loss teams full of garbage players making the league minimum.

They were horrendous for three seasons only:
2013-14: 19-63
2014-15: 18-64
2015-16: 10-72
(They got 28 wins in 2016-17 but they were slowly starting to improve, and got 52 wins the year after. Eventually they turned things around and became competitive)
The Pistons have won 14, 17, 23, 20 and 20 games in the last five seasons. If they cannot find talent with all those top 5 picks, it is a Detroit problem, not an NBA problem.

xxSnEaKyPxx · Post #78 » by **xxSnEaKyPxx** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:25 pm

ogmagicfan wrote:
payton2kemp wrote:No, losing shouldn't be rewarded. Its not like any of the bottom 10 teams are great.

Why do people say this for the NBA but not in the NFL or MLB draft?

Bad teams are bad because they dont have good players, so lets punish bad teams more because they dont have good players?

The NBA is a more star driven league than the others. Having a superstar in the NBA goes much further than having one in those other sports. The incentive to tank is much higher.

I don’t follow baseball, but can’t think of a single NFL team that has ever actively tanked. There has been some bad teams, but they never went into games actively trying to lose them.

Onlytimewilltel · Post #79 » by **Onlytimewilltel** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:47 pm

sp6r=underrated wrote:
D.Brasco wrote:I feel no need to reward losing teams. In an ideal world teams would strive to win games to get the top pick.

Imagine gunning to win to get a Wemby like prospect as opposed to gunning to lose. It'd be better for the fans.

The ideal system is European Soccer's promotion/relegation. Every team has to try to win as many as possible to stay in the top league. That is so much better than American sports cartels.

On some level I'm amazed sports drafts are even legal. Imagine how doctors would react if their reward for graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical was being drafted to work in rural Alaska.

Well without a draft, you will basically have the same nba champion almost every year, the Lakers probably. You know like how Bayern wins their league basically almost every year, same as either Real Madrid or Barcelona taking turns in Spain.

The NBA fans don’t want that (well, maybe the Laker fans do :lol:

). But that sh*t is not as exciting if you know two decades from now who will be the the champion again with like 50% accuracy

Johnny Bball · Post #80 » by **Johnny Bball** » Mon May 13, 2024 4:48 pm

ItsDanger wrote:
Johnny Bball wrote:
ItsDanger wrote: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,

There's been a draft lottery for 40 years. It's for teams that didn't make the playoffs.

Your post was solely about teams that didn't make the playoffs but won 46 games. They are lottery teams. Therefore, they get a "chance". It isn't defeating the purpose, because they get a chance, because they are lottery teams.

The current structure doesn't defeat that. Because its a lottery for non-playoff teams. If you meant that the concept of a lottery itself defeats that, then you would have said it. But you didn't.

A longshot won. Because that longshot had a chance. Because they didn't make the playoffs. This isn't hard. For most people. With or without an attitude.

Should the NBA change the odds distribution for the Lottery?