5 hours ago
Silver has it all backwards. You can't keep teams from wanting to enhance their chances to get a top-3 or so pick when the draft has some really good players. And you really WANT the worst teams to get the good players, so they can be relevant again.
The target is to make the teams try, so that the ones getting the best picks are the ones who were truly the worst. Not the ones who are talented, but decided to play to lose. Indy, Utah, and Memphis were poster children for that.
If I'm "fixing" the problem, here are the rules I implement to prod teams to play with integrity:
1 Teams can't get lottery-drawn in back-to-back years. And the higher the draw the first time, the longer you "sit out" the chance to move up. Pick 1? You are ineligible for a top-4 draw for the next 3 years. Pick 2 makes you sit out for 2 years. Pick 3/4 makes you sit for 1 year. This gives all the bad teams a chance to feed at the "Top of the Draft" table. And it discourages the teams who want to tank year after year from doing so. Tank one year, and be done.
2 If a team is blatantly "tanking" they are moved outside the top 10 and they get disqualified from being drawn in the top 4.
3 Tanking is defined by the "Team Dollar Minutes" they put on the floor. What is the combined payroll of the players you are playing, per minute? (It would be a very easy calculation.) This would target the absurdity where teams have been trotting out 3 2-ways and 2 10-days, or variations of that, as their main lineup (as a way to tank). That's putting such an inferior product on the floor that they need to be slammed. No exceptions for injuries - let's penalize the season-ending surgery for a hangnail for a good player on a team chasing a bad record, and also penalize teams who have their good players only showing up 2/3 of the games which sucks for fans who want to see the stars play. There would be a lot of ways to weigh this (is it all season, the last third of the season, does it matter for teams who are winning, and so on). But play your best players, because PLAYERS are going to play their best.
4 "Team Dollar Minutes" must exceed a certain threshold for teams who are receiving revenue sharing (because teams putting a bad product on the floor are not drawing fans) or else they lose some (or all) of that revenue sharing. But that penalty is waived for teams who make the play-in or better.
5 I'm in favor of disqualifying last year's top teams from being in the lottery the very next season. Don't tell me Indy is REALLY as bad as their record. If you won X games, or if you got to X level in the playoffs. Even if you have injuries. If someone retired, you better find a way to replace him. Credit to BOS for showing that losing a top player isn't a reason to trash your season.
The target is to make the teams try, so that the ones getting the best picks are the ones who were truly the worst. Not the ones who are talented, but decided to play to lose. Indy, Utah, and Memphis were poster children for that.
If I'm "fixing" the problem, here are the rules I implement to prod teams to play with integrity:
1 Teams can't get lottery-drawn in back-to-back years. And the higher the draw the first time, the longer you "sit out" the chance to move up. Pick 1? You are ineligible for a top-4 draw for the next 3 years. Pick 2 makes you sit out for 2 years. Pick 3/4 makes you sit for 1 year. This gives all the bad teams a chance to feed at the "Top of the Draft" table. And it discourages the teams who want to tank year after year from doing so. Tank one year, and be done.
2 If a team is blatantly "tanking" they are moved outside the top 10 and they get disqualified from being drawn in the top 4.
3 Tanking is defined by the "Team Dollar Minutes" they put on the floor. What is the combined payroll of the players you are playing, per minute? (It would be a very easy calculation.) This would target the absurdity where teams have been trotting out 3 2-ways and 2 10-days, or variations of that, as their main lineup (as a way to tank). That's putting such an inferior product on the floor that they need to be slammed. No exceptions for injuries - let's penalize the season-ending surgery for a hangnail for a good player on a team chasing a bad record, and also penalize teams who have their good players only showing up 2/3 of the games which sucks for fans who want to see the stars play. There would be a lot of ways to weigh this (is it all season, the last third of the season, does it matter for teams who are winning, and so on). But play your best players, because PLAYERS are going to play their best.
4 "Team Dollar Minutes" must exceed a certain threshold for teams who are receiving revenue sharing (because teams putting a bad product on the floor are not drawing fans) or else they lose some (or all) of that revenue sharing. But that penalty is waived for teams who make the play-in or better.
5 I'm in favor of disqualifying last year's top teams from being in the lottery the very next season. Don't tell me Indy is REALLY as bad as their record. If you won X games, or if you got to X level in the playoffs. Even if you have injuries. If someone retired, you better find a way to replace him. Credit to BOS for showing that losing a top player isn't a reason to trash your season.