Just get lucky bro

No rules are going to fix institutional incompetence. Certain teams have bad owners and FO. NBA can’t fix that.

They haven’t improved under the current ones, whats the difference

Get a competent FO and/or Owner

You guys have barely done anything with any system in place since your inception. Not sure you could really blame any of the proposed rules for not improving if implemented.

Make better decisions in free agency. 

The Kings guys LITERALLY had it with the Beam Team. Y’all fumbled Hali and Luka and still built a fun, interesting team through draft (Fox, Murray), trades (Sabonis, Huerter), FA (Monk, Barnes).

All of those moves were possible under both the old AND new systems.

The Kings then threw it away by trading for the worst possible fits in DeRozan and LaVine.

Everyone saying a better owner/FO is 100% correct. The Kings suffering is driven by incompetence, NOT lottery rules.

Don’t miss with the #2 pick in 2018.

Y’all have been rotting for a franchise for two decades now. What’s new?

I mean ya there isn’t a quick fix for a team that has been sabotaging itself for years. The league isn’t entitled to fix bad teams shitty situations. The answer is you hope your team commits to a rebuild and wait for it to come to fruition. Nobody is forcing you to be a fan of the team.

Maybe a hot take, but people act like it’s the end of the world if incompetent teams stay bad. I don’t agree with that. 

Let’s say the Kings suck for the next 5 years. So they lose fans and have to lower their ticket prices. Maybe the owner sells the team. Why is that such an apocalyptic outcome for the league? I don’t understand or share the fixation on rewarding bad teams for making bad decisions and having players who underperform. 

A team isn’t entitled to get better. The rules aren’t supposed to make bad team better.

They are supposed to stop teams from intentionally being bad as a pathway to getting better by eliminating some of the incentives to lose on purpose. (The rules obviously don’t work, but that’s sort of irrelevant when we are talking about the intent).

It’s not like they’ve drafted well with the high draft picks they’ve had. And when they do hit on a pick, they give up on them

How is a team like the Kings supposed to improve under any scenario?

Giannis was the 15th pick, and his co-star was drafted in the second round and traded for peanuts. 

Jokic was drafted in the second round, and his co-star was drafted 7th. Gordon was drafted 4th, but the guys he was traded for weren’t.

The Raptors team that won a championship had no top picks either.

 The Thunder just won a championship with only one top 4 lottery pick, Chet. And it’s not like they got more opportunities for drafting high and blew them.

The warriors built a dynasty with no top 4 picks.

 Don’t blame the lottery or not having high lottery picks for the lack of success, plenty of teams have been successful without them.

As a fan of a team that’s only ever been relevant because of hitting on top picks I 100% agree

Teams that aren’t FA destinations are kinda just boned without the draft (our best FA ever is your pick of Kyle Anderson or Taj Gibson)

But hey, enjoy all the people who will tell you to just ‘get a better GM’ or ‘draft better’. 

The Kings are probably the least sympathetic of all the bad franchises in the league, to be honest. A large portion of their struggles are clearly self-inflicted.

The draft is supposed to help teams get better, but it was never intended to save chronically incompetent front offices and ownership from incessantly repeated missteps.

You guys had Fox and Haljburton and ended with Sabonis and Lavine. You stink on purpose and ask people to clean up afterward wtf

“We are horrible under the current rules, how do you expect us to be better under the new ones?” Is quite the take, even do Reddit.

Kings would mess up a high pick anyway so it doesn’t really matter for them. Points all valid for the rest of the league though

Organizational overhaul. Theres a reason teams like Boston, Miami and Golden State can find talent late in the first round and deep into the second.

The kings need to “get good” so to speak, and actually develop young players instead of recycling MFs who washed out of Chicago years ago.

Best way to do this is a hands off owner and good management. (So the Kings are basically screwed until they get sold lol)

By not having dogshit ownership with fans that continue to support and enable it

They could have drafted Luka Doncic and chose not to. Lmfao.

How does my team that sucks under the current rules not suck under the new proposed rules? Idk seems like yall just suck regardless tbh.

We aren’t illiterate. We understand how life, business and sport works. Sacramento isn’t a victim of the system. They are a victim of themselves. Do better. It’ll be fun watching yall not figure it out for another 45 years. And please keep your promise to not respond. For good measure - Don’t pick Bagley and don’t trade Haliburton.

It’s similar to most shit Silver proposes. Looks fine on paper, but usually backfires spectacularly in practice. Case in point, the latest CBA, multiple points.

Doesn’t answer your question, but just saying that if you’re asking then the suggestions have some validity to them in terms of stopping tanking

It’s irrelevant because our FO is too incompetent to tank. I’m actually optimistic as a Kings fan because at least we have a chance to win the lottery while we bounce around the 10-13 seed in perpetuity.

Get lucky with a 7th pick, an 11th pick and a 35th pick across several years, along with making decent choices on another 7th pick and a 30th pick, and they all come into their prime at the same time and add a couple of savvy vets, injury rehabs, and cast offs.

shit teams are shit teams
no matter the rules
kings suck and have no motivation to get better

They change their front office.

“ We aren’t a FA destination, we don’t have trade assets, and we don’t have young talent. ”

Then build an organization that talent is eager to join, collect trade assets, and develop young talent

I don’t know why fans think every team should be entitled to top picks and talented rosters every so often just because. The Kings aren’t in the straits they are because of their historical draft positioning.

Doesn’t matter when your org is rotten to the core. Any 18-21 year old will be ruined because there’s no system in place for development mixed with a losing culture. Nothing about the draft process will save the Kings. It starts at the top.

Kings need to start with a competent front office. Until they have that they’re just hoping for a miracle.

Kings should stop making stupid moves. Took too long to try and move off of sabonis. Poor development of Murray. Stupid trades for derozan and lavine

Like you said, your front office is one of the worst. Not drafting Luka or Trey set your team back a decade or two. Trading Haliburton was the final nail in the coffin. The kings have had plenty of top 10 pick as far as i can remember but only Cousins was worthy of his place in the draft and him not working out was no fault of the team. Every team needs a little bit of luck in draft but their scouts also need to do a semi decent job of finding talent which I’m afraid is not the case in Sactown

If you look at the last 25 years of MVPs, only 9 years have been the first pick.

And 9 years have been from the 10th pick onwards.

There’s no secret sauce.

What do you mean it’s not actionable on your part. Nothing is actionable on your part, you are a fan. Bad management = bad team, it’s as simple as that. Other than getting lucky, there’s no way for a mismanaged team in a bad free agency destination who drafts poorly to get better. I don’t think that’s the NBAs fault, that’s on the team. But it’s not like that equation changes with this lottery change. You have less chances to be lucky, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t capitalize on your luck.

It is actionable. Fire the bad management. If the team actually wants to get better fire the bad management. It’s the only way aside from getting lucky in the lottery.

Hire better people to run the team.

The Kings are like the worst example for this.

The Kings are 8th in payroll this season, and somehow already 5th in payroll for next season but we have to sit here and feel bad that they’re changing the rules to punish teams for losing on purpose?

Admittedly I’m a kings fan so I am biased. But the same questions apply to Wizards, Pelicans, so on. I acknowledge that our owner and FO are dumb as a rock, but I am curious what are we supposed to do to get better?

You should focus on this beyond anything else because you’re praying for more losing seasons to try and get bailed out gambling on ping pong balls instead of trying to focus on your FO making good roster decisions.

Just look at the top teams in the league. OKC pivoted out of their Wesbrook/PG13 team and their team is carried by a guy they traded for who was the 12th pick, a guy they drafted 12th (Williams), a ton of role players from all over the draft, and they made good trades. Their only top pick is Chet who is good but it’s not like he’d save the Kings. Boston has been the 2nd best team in the East without Tatum all season, carried by Jaylen Brown and a ton of guys they got out of the bargain bin. Knicks drafted two players in their 9 man rotation and they both come off the bench. Cavs have a top pick in Mobley on the roster, but that team is carried by two guys they traded for.

A lot of these teams came from a better asset position than the Kings are currently in but sorry, it’s your FO’s fault they looked at the mid/aging Chicago Bulls and decided to trade for those guys, its their fault they traded Haliburton away, and it’s their fault they drafted Marvin Bagley over Luka. You can’t save these teams from themselves. You should be far madder at the incompetence of your front office than the NBA for not wanting you to play the gambling game every year, praying that an 18 year old will save basketball in your city. Especially when the evidence has shown that in the brief moments when the Basketball Gods smile upon your team, Vivek yells “1,2,3 NIK ROCKS !!” and spits in their faces.

Don’t have idiotic ownership

That is, has been, and always will be the best indicator for success

You can’t just wave away the kings bad management lol. You are already acknowledging how these teams could get better- improve their front office lol. They’ve had plenty of good players to become playoff/playin teams. How can you complain about superstars when they literally had fox and haliburton and could have had luka and blew it? You could probably give them all the talent in the world and they would not know how to manage it properly to win anyways…

Why should the kings be rewarded for being a dogshit loser franchise that has fumbled good talent multiple times in recent years?

I may be biased, but the Miami heat make the playoffs every year without a single lottery player on their roster. They built a winning culture and have elite scouting and player development, and always maximize their roster. The thing is, everyone knows they won’t win anything because they lack superstar talent as well. The mid teams need talent just as bad as the bottom feeders, but at least they work hard from top to bottom to establish winning habits. The kings might not be able to contend, but they definitely could be way better. 

Someone please explain to me why does a loser mismanaged franchise deserve an influx of talent more than a team like the heat?

lol so your front office being replaced or just making better decisions isn’t actionable on your part, but making better FO decisions with new draft rules is?

This is pure rage bait - OP’s answers to comments are just bullshit.

You just do your best and let the chips fall where they may (as it should always have been, tanking is an embarrassment)

The second proposal makes it more likely for continuously bad teams to get top picks, as teams like the Pacers can’t go from the finals to the first pick. You still need to hit with the high pick you do end up getting, but that’s not something any proposal would change.

Team changing free agency is mostly dead too, no franchise has gotten superstars for free since KD joined the Warriors. For the other guys minutes and money are the important concerns, not the city a franchise plays in.

As a Bulls fan to a Kings fan…

Honestly, bro… who gives a shit. If the Kings wanted to be good, they’d be good. Not every season, of course, but at least they would have cyclical success like the other well run franchises.

If the draft is the only way your team is able to put a competitive out there, you deserve to suck. And that’s coming from a Bulls fan whose team does the same shit, but to a slightly lesser degree.

If you reward teams for sucking and poor ownership, you get sucking and poor ownership. I’m tired of every proposal to fix the league having to consider teams that they do nothing to better themselves.

Your team, my team… a number of others… are holding back the league. It’s done damage to the league and these teams can adapt or sell.

edit 2

Most of you are illiterate

This killed me LOL

“How badly we are managed” is really the key to this dilemma.

Draft better, develop better, make better trades and free agent signings…

Why do you think the NBA needs rules to help badly run organizations?

Stop trading for the 2021 Chicago Bulls.

Get better front offices

You act like star players can’t be found outside the top 2-3 picks. The kings, wizards and others have drafted terribly fora long time AND failed to develop players The way quality franchises have. It’s entirely their fault. Be upset with your front office for being utterly shit, not the NBA for finally recognizing that they’ve been rewarding and even incentivizing being terrible with the current system.

Unless you are in New York, Miami, LA or maybe SF and Chicago, no one is a true FA destination. You become one by showing players that you have a competent front office that will be able to complete for a championship

Is this taking effect this year? I know the vote is happening before the draft but theres no way they implement it now right?

If it takes effect next year i dont see how you should give a fuck

There are like 9 top 5 prospects in this draft and 5 top 3 prospects. You’ll have maxime keegan and whoever you draft, which isnt terrible

Then you get to double dip with the anti-tanking rules which seems to favour the treadmill ish teams

Same thing for the wizards and jazz who decided to buy at the deadline to speed up their process. Dont really understand why kings, wizards, and jazz fans are upset at all because their rebuild is over after this draft.

Sell the team and move.

Slow improvement year after year

Draft well, make good trades, establish a good culture where at least middle of the road “stars” would wanna play there, get a good coach, and get lucky. All easier said than done but for a team like the Kings you need everyone to actually be good at their job.

The Kings don’t improve under the current system. Why wouldn’t they want to try something different? The current system is a total failure for them.

But one where tanking is discouraged might actually make things better for them by not allowing teams like the jazz to get multiple top 5 picks in a row.

Counterpoint: the Kings never improved under any previous iteration of the rules either.

Have the owner sell the team

Ownership needs to improve, flat out. Stop interfering and hire better executives.

The Kings get better by doing what they always believed in…
Trading with the BULLS

Cortana chose Master Chief because he had one thing that set him apart from the other Spartans. Extraordinary Luck.

These new systems dont seem to be designed to help perpetually bad teams improve, nothing can help the likes of the Kings. Their truly incompetent. These new systems seem to be designed to help middling teams who are trying to win get a loto picks and get over the hump, incentivizing winning as much as you can, while also being able to get lucky.

Chances to improve simply has went down. There are no improvements to bad teams under the new measures. At the end of the day, someone has to be the “worst” team. Pick a new team, no one will be mad at you. Loyalty to a franchise is very insignificant in the grand scheme of things

I’m not sure the king’s would get better even if they had the next 5 #1 picks. In order for the salary cap to work there has to be incompetent teams like the Kings or the Wizards to soak up dead money.

Adam Silver only cares about money and increasing profits, and that means pandering to large market teams. That means ruining parity and instead making decisions that limit drafting talent and increasing enabling more free agancy moves.

Trade your young superstar to the lakers and then you’re all set.

Question why does the Kings being dogshit be less than of issue than Wizards/Pacers trying to tank and still be not ass bad?

Draft a generationaly talented fat guy at pick 42 in the 2nd round, develop him. Is simple no?

Maybe stop signing undesirable players to 14 year contracts

Why don’t they draft a wemby?

As a fan of a fellow shit team I’d prefer that the draft is 100% random and not at all tied to a team’s record. I’d like to see teams find out their draft position on draft night. That would encourage all teams to try to win.

In an ideal world I’d like to see ownership groups be forced to sell a team if they don’t hit certain win thresholds but that will never happen.

Dip into that luxury tax and sign big names. Money talks.

Get a Jokic

The unfortunate reality is that in the past, the present and the future, a badly run organization can squander anything. I agree with the proposal that neutering tanking only makes the bad teams have less hope between squanderings

Even well-run teams flame out all the time. If the team is run by fools, it will be a foolish team.

It’s probably a disservice to you that you may not even be able to pretend this reality doesn’t exist for a season or two any more if they go through with this. But. It kinda is what it is.

What you guys are missing is all 3 of these proposals make it less punishing for the kings to genuinely try to get close to .500 and still get draft equity. 

For most of the last 20 years the Kings have been in 30-40 win no mans land. This actually is more favorable to teams that operated like the Kings have (ignore this season). 

It’s harder to skyrocket from 20-62 to a contender by hitting the draft 3 times but it’s easier and safer to get to .500 and trust that if you spend a few years in the play-in you will still get the occasional chance to draft in the top 5. 

Most of the teams in the play-in need a top 5 pick every bit as much as the Jazz currently do. 

Right now we are conditioned to understand that being in the middle is absolute purgatory but it doesn’t have to be that way. This helps teams like the Raptors and Suns who are genuinely trying but don’t have enough top end talent to actually be a contender. 

Teams like the Kings can now say let’s try to get to the level of the Raptors, Suns, Blazers and Hawks and understand that it’s not purgatory once they get there. Then they try to build from that position and move up another tier. 

These ideas aren’t perfect but the goal is a league that operates in a much healthier way IMO. 

look at the pacers for inspiration. they had bad lottery luck but just traded with the kings and everything got better. can’t you try that?

The NBA already had flat odds in the lottery, and they hated it. Proposing to back to it only means that the current league leadership hasn’t learned from their past mistakes. Proposal #3 makes the worst 5 spots even more important than they already are, which means tanking hard. Proposal #1 is going to make the tanking intense for that #10 spot - which means even more teams tanking than we have currently.

Proposal 2 just incentivizes teams with injures to throw in the towel on the season, and completely bottom out, because one bad year helps their draft positioning for the next two.

If the NBA hates tanking, they need to get rid of the penalties for having lots of expensive veteran players. The second apron roster restrictions and draft pick consequences are so severe, the best way to win is have lots of rookie contract players. Which means tanking. Make it easier to build in free agency and more will do it.

When you hand wave away people telling you it’s on your front office you take away the only legitimate answer.

And how the fuck can you say it’s not actionable on your part?

In 9 of the last 10 drafts your original pick has landed top 15, you not having young talent and trade assets is a direct result of the thing you’re saying we can’t talk about

The draft is just luck man. Look at the MVP’s of the 2020’s. Giannis was the 15th pick, Jokic a 2nd rounder, Embiid was the 3rd overall pick, and SGA the 11th. You don’t need the first overall pick to become a good team. You just need to not be the incompetent bumpling organization that you are. No draft rules will ever fix your team

By doing what the wizards and jazz did this year 

Free agency is going to change when good players end up in good teams, you cannot pay everyone anymore. FA is going to become a real thing again.

The way to succeed is by acquiring young talent and developing it. The Thunder are proof that it’s possible. The way to fail is to repeatedly lose assets like Neemias Quetas and Keon Ellis.

The Kings will not succeed until ownership changes

Every sports league has to have its perennially bad team.

If the Suns can turn their disastrous situation around then anything is possible

Sounds like people should invest in player development.

A good front office will develop a good team over time, adapting their strategy to the system.

A bad front office will make mistakes - risky moves, bad draft picks, questionable free-agent signings - and field a bad team.

I know OP doesn’t want to hear this - but when a team makes a bad choice with a top draft pick, or trades a young player that turns into a star - that sets a franchise back years.

I would argue that - instead of focusing everything on the lottery - the NBA should think about ways to make it easier to move players off the salary cap when they don’t work out.

Some sort of regular “amnesty clause” that teams can employ periodically to get a bad contract off the cap.
- The player would have to get paid – no NFL-style “non guaranteed” contracts
- There would need to be limits, so the league’s richest teams don’t get an even bigger advantage

Just a way for a bad team to speed up a rebuilding process.

Offer sam presti a shit ton of money and get out of the way

I’ve asked the same thing about the Bulls and been told repeatedly “They aren’t supposed to improve”

All of those systems still benefit the worst teams though?

Re edit 2, they’re not illiterate, just pointing out the issues with your question. BY FAR, the biggest way to improve a team is making better decisions. Hire better GMs and coaches. Draft and trade for better players AND CONTRACTS. For too long have shitty teams taken on bad contracts from ‘better’ teams in exchange for their scraps. One of the reasons they’ve been willing to do that is because bad contracts can lead to easier tanking and higher draft picks. If teams can’t tank into a top 5 pick, then they’re going to tell those ‘better’ teams to keep that shitty contract.

There’s also the luck factor, but nobody can control that. Teams should focus on what they can control and many teams, including my favorite, have been doing a REALLY REALLY bad job of that.

Stop trading for overpriced old superstars

You’re rotting as a franchise under the current system. 

At the end of the day the answer IS to get new and better FO and ownership. The people at the top have been fine with being terrible for pretty much the entire existence of the franchise. There is no incentive for them to change their ways so there will be no changes. The only changes or improvements that you can expect will come from you withdrawing your support of the team.

Bro you need to improve the way you write. Your title is wack.

Every team has to improve the same way: draft well, develop your talent, hire the right staff, and make smart signings and trades. The lottery isn’t meant to magically transform teams. It’s already given the worst teams the best picks forever, and the Kings have had multiple top-10 picks over the last decade.

I think it’s unhealthy for the league to act like the main strategy should be, “Let’s just keep our heads down and lose as hard and as long as possible until we get a franchise-changing player at #1 who can win a championship.” If you draft a bust with a top-3 pick, you shouldn’t just punt another season and try again. I really believe the league should reward teams that actually TRY.

Look at the NFL—teams are happy to make the playoffs even if they have no real shot at a Super Bowl. But in the NBA, it often feels like teams only try to win games when they know they have a realistic shot at a title or have a player they can go all in behind.

There’s so much turnover in organizations, and too little effort put into creating a sustainable winning culture. Look at Phoenix this year…they’re not even playing their 10th overall pick, they traded an All-NBA player, and they’re still having a really solid season without relying on multiple tanked-for players. They brought in a great coach, added high-character players, and built an environment where young guys can thrive. That’s a story the league should want more of…

Op just wanting to argue. Kings haven’t improved for years under the current system. Why do you think it should be preserved

How to get Kings to improve in 3 easy steps:

1. Get rid of everyone that’s bloated (demar, Westbrook)

2. Keep the young players that are worth developing (Keegan Murray, etc)

The first two step pretty much prove that you are not trying to tank, and you don’t have the “tanking” Stigma

1. GET A NEW OWNER (one that doesn’t interfere with front office, or have his daughter and a murderer boyfriend affecting the front office) AND A ENTIRE NEW FRONT OFFICE.

I saw the comment about not responding to “better front office/owner”, but that’s unrealistic. You need owners that gives a damn and know when to shut up and let people that work in the department do their job. Look at Warriors, you can say they “luck into 3 HOFers and a HOF Coach”, but that’s also because Lacob know when to STFU and just pay the bill (which amazed me because Vivek came from the Warriors ownership group, and he didn’t learn jack about how to be an owner), and let people that are more basketball knowledge like Meyers and Dunlevey work in Front office (as well as listen to Jerry West), and you can also see what happen when owners get into player situation too much (see Kuminga situation).

Literally the only thing Kings fans can do to protest the situation is just not showing up to games, and not being Kings Fans, and literally pray Vivek has a awakening, or he sold his team to someone that actually follow that philosophy, otherwise you will stuck in the same mud and spinning that eternal lottery tire. And this is coming from a Warriors fan that went through the Chris Cohen era with damn BIMBO COLES as our point guard.

#1 would be so bad. Looking forward to that first time the team with the worst record gets to pick 15-18.

#2 looks like the best option to me.

But none of it solves the problem. And it’s all hysterical in light of Silver’s repeated use of “integrity” concerns. The only thing they are concerned about the integrity of is their bottom line.

The kings don’t need anyone help or permission to lose games

Invest in front-office decision-making, scouting, coaching, and player development. SGA, Jokic, Mitchell, and Giannis were all taken outside the top 10– four of the top five All-NBA players.

Your attempt to dismiss the clear answer to your question just because you don’t like it is hilarious 😂😂 Don’t make consistently shit decisions and hire proper people and change owner

Trying to go “what else” to that is saying that “ignore the fact that I don’t have any tires on my car, I’ve had everything else checked and it’s still not moving. What am I supposed to do? Everything else works and it still won’t move”

As a Pistons fan, all it took was hiring the right coach and GM to get our 1st round picks and FAs into an actual team and not just a bunch of guys. Yes Cade is why we are first in the East, but even without Cade, we’ve been way more competitive than in prior years, so its very much a culture thing.

I’ll admit to being totally shocked at how quickly things turned around once the culture changed. I very much thought all our years of falling to 5 would doom us to being mediocre at best because we didn’t get our pick of the most elite talent, but turns out, management plays a huge role in a team’s success more than anything else than maybe injury luck.

I wish they had more inventive penalties for poor performance, like management receivership if the team stays in the bottom for a set number of years. In this scenario, the management (VPs, presidents, GM, coaches, everyone) is cleared out, the owners have no say in management, and the league sends in new management to clean house.

It would start by having a good ownership, and a good FO.

I’m biased but I think the Pacers are an interesting model for small market teams. Hali, Siakam, and Zubac were all acquired via big trades. Nembhard was drafted very late. Nesmith and Toppin were castoffs of other teams acquired via cheap trades. 

Matthurin and Walker were the only high draft picks but neither is/was really core to what they’re doing. 

What about making better draft picks, trades, and hiring of front office employees is “not actionable on our part.”

C’mon OP.