Imagine the Spurs getting Wemby after being bad for 2 years out of 25 years

I mean, as is Dallas got Flagg the year after making the finals.

It would include the 4 teams (2 play-in losers from each conference) who didn’t make the playoffs. Not the teams who advance into the playoffs.

Edit: misread the title. Thanks for the feedback.

Both of that would be extremely low probability here though. No solution is perfect but at least this really does get rid of tanking.

This is the #1 example imo of how crazy it could get. A play l-in team with a deep playoff run securing the first pick

Yeah but think how hard teams would have been playing for that spot if they knew they still had an equal chance at Wemby

Raptors and Bulls too. any team that isn’t good at tanking 🤣

This is our reparations for Rozier

I know who suggested this and his name is Rat Piley

Is it too late to implement this for 2026? Wouldn’t mind an 8% shot at Dybantsa/Peterson.

A lottery FOR the lottery

every team to miss the playoffs, gets dumped in a bucket. First round through is the % chance at the top pick.

Second time through is who actually picks.

Let’s get crazier.

The 1st picking team chooses a player, but the #2 team chooses where that player goes. Do this for the entire lottery, so #2 team will choose a player but the #3 team chooses where that player goes, and so on.

Coinflip at the end of the season. Heads, it works like now, tails, we reverse the entire thing and the top teams have the best odds.

Theyd make the playoffs and still have the lottery chance. All play in teams getting into lottery, includes teams that win the play in. Thered be weird stuff with preferring the 7 potentially over the 6 seed, but teams i think wouldnt really want to risk their sure playoff spot in a risky play in which has variance, even when youre the better team.

The idea is that the difference would be negligible so why not go for the experience, more data for the future etc. That’s something that we saw maybe for a year but the play-in on its own didn’t incentivize it well enough.

I’ll echo what I said before, all of this is going to sound weird and it’s easy to be skeptical but we won’t know either way until we see how teams actually behave.

Because every home playoff game is over $1M in revenue for the team owner, and even away game is hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. And on top of that you’d still be in the lottery for 1st overall.

Mid teams are FAR more likely to compete and try to get an upset than to tank. So I wouldn’t say it shifts tanking, it highly minimizes tanking..

I think that’s somewhat the point. Make all the teams trying to be historically bad year to year into more mid teams, hoping it’ll improve the product some, and make more games from February on a bit more of an entertaining product.

Incentivizing the middle class seems optimal. A team should try to win games. And if they become mid-tier? Cool, they still have a shot at a lottery pick. That’s what needs to be addressed anyways. The incentive to tank is higher than the incentive to compete.

The tanking is always going to get shifted. There’s no one solution for it. What they are trying to avoid is the mass of teams boatracing to the bottom.

At some tier, there might always be an incentive to tank but if Play-in teams are included in the lottery, does that then incentivize teams jumbled at 5th and 6th place to tank down to 7-10th? My guess is probably not. 5th and 6th place teams are competitive and maybe were fighting for 4th or better seeding in the playoffs until the end of season and certainly hoping to get out of the first round of the playoffs and make some noise. Also, tanking to drop to Play-in status is very risky because you could tank yourself right out of the Play-in altogether as others have mentioned. I would think they would be doing everything they can to stay out of the Play-in. Even the lottery bound teams would fight to make the Play-in just to have a chance. The only thing I would add is some revenue share for the players for making the Play-in as they already get something for making the playoffs. I think the NBA is on the right track with this…much less incentive to tank if they make these changes.

Teams who miss the playin already get a 1.5% chance or so

Yeah this is going to seem fine next year but just wait till attendance absolutely craters in towns with zero hope of competing and no exciting prospects to watch develop.

There may not be tanking but there will just be legitimately dogshit teams that remain that way.

Everyone can’t be good.

I think it’s too early to tell. The second apron being a hard cap should theoretically force the really good teams like the Thunder for example to shed talent because they can’t afford to pay everyone. That should allow other teams to acquire talent other than the draft.

But if Silver doesn’t drop the hammer on Kawhi and the Clippers then this is a moot point because all the premier destinations will just circumvent the cap. Deals like Brunson’s wink-wink discount deal will be more common.

The flattened odds and harsh penalties should also homogenize the 2nd tier talent. The Wembys of the league are absolutely not going anywhere unless they want out. So more teams would have guys like Siakam on their roster. But then this could create another problem where if you don’t have a top 5 player on your team then you just may not be able to compete.

The primary obstacle to becoming good is management, not draft position.

The only example of poorly-managed teams becoming good via draft position I can think of is ironically the Lakers.

I feel like that’s always the issue. So many people just focus on fixing tanking and seem to forget that the problem arose in the first place because bad teams need ways to get good, which is good for both the fans and the league.

Right now, bad teams are not incentivized to marginally improve because going from 20 wins to 30 wins does nothing for the playoffs/fanbase but fucks up their draft chances. This way, bad teams can try and sign players to improve but still hope to get lucky in the lottery.

Would actually force bad teams to get good management rather than be perpetually tanking

As it is you already need to get pretty lucky to get a top pick and actually have someone in the draft good enough to turn around your franchise - not sure making it even harder is the solution

We’re going to get a 7 seed make a run to the Finals and then get the number one pick the next year, I can feel it.

if a solution works for a few years that’s good enough. the league will keep evolving and other solutions will be implemented through the years.

This is catastrophic to small market teams and basically confirms that Adam Silver wants every team to be consolidated into ~5 cities on the coasts.

Media has fans so up in arms over tanking to distract them from bigger issues it’s wild 

It’s also changing a ton of fundamentals in a very short amount of time. Play in, in season tournament, position-less all nba, stricter luxury tax penalties, strict games played requirements, and now complete flat lottery odds + potentially two expansion teams all within the last 6 years. The luxury tax change already disproportionately benefits richer owners (look at wolves trading KAT to the Knicks. Knicks right now are just paying the difference (10 million) in roster cost because James Dolan could stomach the cost easier than the Wolves owners) and now they’re trying to do this to screw small markets even harder.

Let the play in teams that go into the playoffs have a chance as well, fuck it!

Give them an incentive to go all out. Teams want to get to the playoffs and play a series even if its to get swept. Let the fans see the top seed, and also have a shot at a top pick.

And… what if the 8th seed goes to have a magical run and wins the trophy and also get a 1st pick? LET IT BE! That would be such a rare scenario, everyone would be so hyped to see those 7th/8th seed teams trying to punch up!

Well that would be stupid because regardless of whether you make the playoffs from the play-in you get 2.5 percent. 

This is unrealistic, no team that’s a sixth seed this deep into the season is going to pick a bad lottery spot over an opportunity to not be in the play-in

If that happens so be it at that point. It’s dumb as fuck if they do on many fronts.

• Potential to miss out on a ton of playoff revenue
• Most 6 seeds at this point are trying to play themselves up in the standings to win a ship
• Fans would be mad as hell. Imagine Houston tanking right now to slide into the play in

Agree. Flattening the odds only gave more incentive for those mid teams to switch to full blown tank mid season. 

I’m with you, unless they make fundamental changes to way too many aspects its here to stay.

With revenue sharing, fully guaranteed contracts and a single player having so much impact on a team, there will always be teams finding ways to manipulate the odds. You fully flatten the odds and suddenly every 6 seed is throwing games to get the 7th seed for a shot at the lottery.

Nah as someone who watches a ton of ball it’s worse than ever. DNPs of healthy players like Nurkic. Multiple teams shutting down their starters in the 2nd half or 4th if they’re winning. And the usual shenanigans of shutting players down for the season, sitting players on back to backs who are completely healthy, and long extended injury recoveries. We even have Giannis telling the Bucks he wants to play and the Bucks are just like no lol

And your solution is you wanna make tanking worse by incentivizing teams to lose even more cause it’ll guarantee their draft pick??? Beyond delusional.

I’m genuinely curious why you think this?

The obvious “concern” here is that decent/mid teams get even better talent, which propels them up to be potential contenders, while the actual bad teams miss out on elite talent. IMO, this would 1) Create more potential contenders which is good (see Spurs now being an actual threat to OKC) and 2) Incentivize teams to actually try to be good over time, knowing that they won’t obliterate their chances at getting a top pick.

Like, let’s say the the Hornets get the #1 or #2 pick this season and the Wizards fall. They can potentially become a contender with a guy like Boozer, which I think is good for the league to make more contenders. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t want the Wizards to basically just try to tank again. I’d rather they play Trae/AD as much as possible knowing that either 1) They are mediocre and still have chance at the #1 pick or 2) Are actually a good team, which is good. That’s the goal.

They might as well just let it be atp cause I don’t think they will come up with an actual solution.

To be fair, I don’t think it was the Pacers who triggered all this tanking issue. It was the Jazz

I think the play-in is kind of dumb as designed right now anyway, as having the #7 seed effectively no longer matters.

As long as they keep the draft tanking will happen. As you have put so well, it’s just a matter of where the line is and how that drives incentive to win.

It’s the same issue as flattening the odds last time as well. Likely will just make it worse. This is execs throwing shit at the wall just to say they tried 

Under this proposal, teams who make the playoffs as the 7 and 8 seeds would be in the lottery, just with the lowest odds (probably under 2% at the #1 pick).

The issue there is that, for most people, SLC is inherently a lot less desirable of a city to live in than somewhere like LA, even before considering that it’s the Jazz

That’s too easy. Silver’s NBA needs to over complicate everything while somehow making the problem they’re trying to solve worse.

The scouts know the elite prospects a good 2-3 years in advance. They would just time their tanks to match up with good draft classes.

Nah this is a good starting point because it disincentivizes losing. If all the odds are the same then what’s the point of putting yourself at a disadvantage by running G-League lineups when everyone else is trying to develop their talent? There’s no point so you won’t see all these shenanigans from teams that are trying to game the lottery.

This is also not a stand alone thing. We’re into the 2nd apron so we’re essentially going to see a lot of roster churning soon. We’ve already seen it with the Celtics who had a fire sale on their former championship squad. The Thunder can’t afford to pay everyone as well. J Dub, Chet, I Hart and others are all really good players as well who need to be paid. Unfortunately for the Thunder some cost cutting is going to have to be done which is good for everyone else.

I feel like this plus the 2nd apron will reward competent FOs more than ever. The Celtics literally ripped up their old roster and had Tatum miss a large part of the season and are still a top seed because they have competent people running things.

Imagine if the Kings managed to get Wemby because they were the best at losing. That sounds completely counterintuitive. If they can’t even properly manage the assets they’ve had in the past (Fox, Hali, Bagley over Luka) what shot do they have at building around Wemby?

The reason why nobody wants to do that is it encourages tanking even more with teams targeting spots by losing.

And the reason why they are in favor of flattening the odds is that it heavily reduces tanking. Not completely eliminates but largely reduces it, especially for the worst teams who are the most susceptible to tanking.

Hmm, that wouldn’t be completely flat though so it’d defeat the purpose and you would introduce tanking again because teams ultimately want a chance at the top stars.