05-25-2023, 04:54 PM
So this may not be the right thread for this, but I was thinking of ways to improve the NBA draft lottery to remove the ping-pong ball luck that's currently involved. Here's the outline of my idea:
1. Instead of a lottery pick, each lottery team gets the equivalent amount of $$$ that can potentially be spent on the draft player of their choice. This amount of money is equal to the amount of what a player picked at that spot would receive and is in order of record (so worst record would have the (most) amount of money equivalent of what the 1st pick would be paid, etc).
2. Each lottery team then internally ranks the players that they would be willing to spend their "pick money" on. For example, maybe the team with the worst record (and most money) sees four players they would be willing to spend the money on, so they rank those four players one through four. Or maybe the team with less money (like the equivalent 7th or 8th pick) ranks 8 players or maybe even all of them.
3. Players are then assigned to teams based on how the teams ranked them. If the team ranks a player number 1 and no other team ranked that player as highly then that team gets that player and it's designated as the pick that corresponds to the salary slot listed above. For instance, if the team with the fourth highest salary slot ranked player X as their top pick then player X is considered to have been picked fourth in the draft. This also would not have to be ranking a player number 1 - if a team that didn't get their first choice ranks Player X as their second choice (or third, etc) and no other teams ranked him higher then that player would still go to that team.
4. If more than one team rank the same player with the highest ranking then the player gets to choose which team they go to. Whichever team has the worse record will be able to offer more money based on their slot, but perhaps the player wants to take less money for a better fit/team/situation. (This could create some nice NBA drama based on snubs)
5. If there are players or teams that don't get "matched" in this process then the draft continues in order from that point forward just like a normal draft with the remaining lottery teams picking in order followed by the other teams.
There would be some interesting team decisions to be made - for example, in this last draft every team would rank Wemby first. But maybe a team doesn't want to play those odds and ranks another player they like first which would practically guarantee that that player would go to them.
I'm sure there are some holes/things that would need to be tweaked, but I feel like this would remove the lottery luck while still giving the worst teams in the league a fair chance of improving. I think it would also be interesting to watch live as the lottery portion of the draft could focus on each player and display which teams had him ranked highly as well as which team he picks (in the event there's a tied bid like described above).
1. Instead of a lottery pick, each lottery team gets the equivalent amount of $$$ that can potentially be spent on the draft player of their choice. This amount of money is equal to the amount of what a player picked at that spot would receive and is in order of record (so worst record would have the (most) amount of money equivalent of what the 1st pick would be paid, etc).
2. Each lottery team then internally ranks the players that they would be willing to spend their "pick money" on. For example, maybe the team with the worst record (and most money) sees four players they would be willing to spend the money on, so they rank those four players one through four. Or maybe the team with less money (like the equivalent 7th or 8th pick) ranks 8 players or maybe even all of them.
3. Players are then assigned to teams based on how the teams ranked them. If the team ranks a player number 1 and no other team ranked that player as highly then that team gets that player and it's designated as the pick that corresponds to the salary slot listed above. For instance, if the team with the fourth highest salary slot ranked player X as their top pick then player X is considered to have been picked fourth in the draft. This also would not have to be ranking a player number 1 - if a team that didn't get their first choice ranks Player X as their second choice (or third, etc) and no other teams ranked him higher then that player would still go to that team.
4. If more than one team rank the same player with the highest ranking then the player gets to choose which team they go to. Whichever team has the worse record will be able to offer more money based on their slot, but perhaps the player wants to take less money for a better fit/team/situation. (This could create some nice NBA drama based on snubs)
5. If there are players or teams that don't get "matched" in this process then the draft continues in order from that point forward just like a normal draft with the remaining lottery teams picking in order followed by the other teams.
There would be some interesting team decisions to be made - for example, in this last draft every team would rank Wemby first. But maybe a team doesn't want to play those odds and ranks another player they like first which would practically guarantee that that player would go to them.
I'm sure there are some holes/things that would need to be tweaked, but I feel like this would remove the lottery luck while still giving the worst teams in the league a fair chance of improving. I think it would also be interesting to watch live as the lottery portion of the draft could focus on each player and display which teams had him ranked highly as well as which team he picks (in the event there's a tied bid like described above).